www.lesswrong.com/posts/4MCuvdsZFEBAaGCsb/if-ai-is-normal-technology-history-is-...
1 correction found
In 1840, over a third of the British population worked in a factory.
This overstates factory employment. Historical sources say roughly a third of the workforce was in manufacturing in 1841, not a third of the total population in factories.
Full reasoning
The "over a third" figure comes from historical census summaries of manufacturing employment, not from counts of the entire population working in factories.
Two separate problems make the sentence inaccurate:
- Population vs. workforce: The Office for National Statistics' historical census summary says manufacturing accounted for 36% of the workforce in 1841. That is not the same as 36% of the total population.
- Manufacturing vs. factories: The Vision of Britain historical database warns that 19th-century manufacturing figures overstate factory work, because many people classified as in manufacturing actually worked in small workshops behind shops, not in factories.
So the sentence inflates the claim twice: it turns a statistic about the workforce into one about the whole population, and it turns manufacturing into factory work. A more accurate version would be that in 1841, about a third of the workforce was in manufacturing.
2 sources
- Chapter 9: Summary of results - Office for National Statistics
Manufacturing was the most dominant industry in 1841 accounting for over a third (36 per cent) of the workforce, followed closely by services at 33 per cent.
- Great Britain Country through time | Historical Statistics on Industry | Rate: Manufacturing - A Vision of Britain through Time
Our 19th century data tend to overstate the size of manufacturing, because many goods counted as 'manufacturing' were made not in factories but in small workshops behind shops run by the people making the goods.