| dc.description.abstract | In studying the Victorian city, historical geographers have concentrated on
defining patterns, structures and form at the expense of processes. It is
suggested that it is only via the study of processes and structures within the
urban economy that such spatial patterns and developments can be fully
understood. It is further advanced that amongst economic structures, the labour
market is an area of fundamental importance in reaching any understanding of
the Victorian and Edwardian city, and in particular London.
The subject of the late Victorian labour market is approached via a review of
modern labour market theory and subsequently of the ideas advanced by the
classical economists. This review reveals both the importance of empirical
observation in informing contemporary economists' theoretical models of the
Victorian labour market and the significant degree to which the debate within
the modern theoretical literature derives directly, although largely anonymously,
from parallel arguments in the earlier literature.
An attempt is made to establish how far the casual labour problem in late
Victorian London, the subject of considerable concern and debate amongst the
contemporary commentators, fits into the Dual or Segmented Labour Market
paradigms advanced principally by American economists since the 1960s.
The emphasis given by contemporary commentators to boy labour as a
source of the casual labour problem is seen to reflect a similar emphasis on the
importance of the point of entry to the labour market in the theoretical literature.
The social and economic importance of the boy labour problem in Victorian and
Edwardian London is explored and explained as in part a consequence of the
demographic and economic conditions prevailing in the capital at the close of
the century, but also as reflecting a continuing economic imperative and culture
of child labour and the impact of legislative intervention in the labour market. | en_US |
