Wages and living standards of the Ottoman State's textile factories' workers in the second half of the 19th century

Industrial wages are a neglected area in Ottoman wage history studies. This study examining workers' wages between 1848-1899 in the factories established after Tanzimat to meet the state's textile products needs aims to contribute to filling this gap. Therefore, I obtained wage ledgers kept for textile factories from the Presidency Ottoman Archives and tried to construct wage series from these ledgers. Since I create two distinctive wage series daily and monthly, workers' monthly working tempo could also be observed. The study determined the level of wages in the textile industry sector and compared these findings with other sectors. Besides the wages, as it is crucial in terms of workers' living conditions, the social benefits such as education, health, and retirement, provided by the factories to the workers and their families are among the focuses of the study. Hereke Factory provided the longest wage series, to the extent that archive sources allow between 1848-1899; however, the other factories were insufficient to provide the same data length. According to the available data, workers' monthly real wages increased more than daily real wages with the help of rising in the number of days worked per month during the second half of the nineteenth century. These changes are so few that it can be said that wages had remained stagnant during the period. However, construction and agricultural workers made remarkable gains in their real wages in the same period. Apparently, industrial workers' wages diverged negatively from construction and agricultural workers' wages during the second half of the 19th century. This result is thought to be caused by the growing increase in cheap British cotton textile products exports after the Baltalimanı Treaty.