(^224) THE WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS
The Value of Time
The Britain of the Industrial Revolution had preserved the structures
and institutions of an older time—the monarchy, the guilds, the
ceremonies, the costumes—but over a long period had sidetracked
these and reduced them to vanities and appearances. Insofar as they
retained influence and prestige, they were a drag. They gave us the
nostalgic world (our nostalgia) of Jane Austen: a world of rural
gentility and idleness, of heirs, nonheirs, and poor intriguers—
pretenders to unearned wealth. It was a world that possessed
considerable appeal, quietiy lying in wait to draw the tired and
incapable and handsome seekers of social rent into the nirvana of
triviality.
But the action was elsewhere; with new men, improving landlords,
aristocrats turned entrepreneurs, immigrants from within and
without. The energy and busyness of this society could be measured
by its material achievements, but also by its values. I would stress
here the importance it gave to time and to saving time, because
nothing better sums up the priorities. Two pieces of "unobtrusive"
evidence: (1) the passionate interest in knowing the time; and (2)
the emphasis on speed of transport.
The British were in the eighteenth century the world's leading
producers and consumers of timekeepers, in the country as in the
city (very different here from other European societies). They made
them well and pricey; they also batch-produced them and sold them
cheap, if necessary on the installment plan. They stole them and
resold them: if you couldn't afford a new watch, you could buy an
old one from a fence. Impecunious (and honest) would-be watch
owners formed pools to buy one and drew for the right to get it.
The coaching services reflected this temporal sensibility: schedules
to the minute, widely advertised; closely calculated arrival times and
transfers; drivers checked by sealed clocks; speed over comfort; lots
of dead horses. Note here the contrast with France. Across the
Channel the government set speed limits and, to save the roads,
required broad-rimmed wheels that rode heavy and slow. The
passengers apparentiy did not mind. They preferred economy over
time and quite correctiy found that speed clashed with comfort. But
nora
(Nora)
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