Chris Pearce's Blog, page 25
October 17, 2015
How an economic recovery is measured
(originally published to Helium writing site, now gone)
A range of economic indicators are used to determine whether an economy is in the recovery stage of the business or economic cycle and how well it is performing. The recovery phase kicks in as soon as an economy has past the trough and moves into the upswing, even though the economy might still be in recession. Gross domestic product is perhaps the most widely used indicator of where an economy is positioned on the cycle, although there are a large number of other indicators covering areas such as employment, production, sales, prices, housing, and more.
Gross domestic product
In the US, gross domestic product data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis indicates that the US economy bottomed out in the December 2008 quarter with a fall in annualized real GDP of 7.0%. Positive growth has been recorded for the last seven quarters (since September 2009 quarter), although the recovery has been tentative. Growth rose to 4.9% in December 2009 quarter, before slipping to 1.7% in June 2010 quarter. It then increased to 3.1% in December 2010 quarter, but fell to 1.9% in March 2011 quarter (since revised to 1.8%).
The components of GDP are often used to assist in measuring an economic recovery. In the US, personal consumption expenditures have been increasing at a slightly higher rate than GDP overall. Consumption rose 2.2% on an annualized basis in March 2011 quarter, after an increase of 4.0% in the previous quarter. Gross private domestic investment is more volatile, climbing 12.4% in March quarter, following a fall of 18.7% in December quarter. Exports have been rising strongly, by 8.6% and 7.6% in the last two quarters, while government spending declined 1.7% and 5.8% in these periods. These are signs that the US economy is in recovery mode.
There are some limitations in using GDP to measure economic recovery. Source data comes from various censuses and surveys of individuals and businesses, and administrative figures, and is subject to errors and estimations of various descriptions. Also, gross domestic product doesn’t take into account regional disparities, income inequality, non-market transactions (such as unpaid work), the underground economy (such as illegal activities), bartering, and asset values (such as housing prices). These factors can vary dramatically over time and between countries.
Leading indicators
Other indicators are usually used as well as GDP data. These indicators are often divided into leading, lagging and coincident indicators. Leading indicators give an early sign of economic performance and recovery and are available before data for the whole economy is put together. Consumer expectations and building permits are good examples. Another is stock market indexes as these usually move before the economy itself.
The Leading Economic Index, a business cycle indicator of the Conference Board, is a composite of ten leading indicators and is used to predict turnings points in the economy, progress of an economic recovery, and so on. The indicators include the labor market (unemployment rate, hourly earnings and hours worked), new unemployment claims, new manufacturing orders for consumer and capital goods, an index of supplier deliveries, building permits and housing starts, stock price index (the S&P 500), the M2 money supply, interest rates, and consumer expectations. The index increased 0.7% in March, fell 0.4% in April and rose 0.8% to 114.7 in May 2011 (2004 = 100). These figures suggest the economic recovery should continue.
The Board publishes business cycle indicators for ten other countries too, using available leading indicators in each country. The index for the UK has increased in each of the last three months, although it stood at just 103.8 in May. The Euro Area isn’t faring as well, with falls in March and May to be 108.8. Japan is struggling to come out of recession too, with an index of 94.2.
Other indicators
Lagging indicators come later than the general economy. These indicators are still important though as they can back up or confirm moves in leading indicators. Good examples are unemployment and consumer prices. The Conference Board publishes a Lagging Economic Index for major countries. In the US, this index has increased slightly in each of the three months to May, perhaps confirming the tentative recovery.
Then there are coincident indicators that measure the current state of the economy. Gross domestic product is the best known example. The Conference Board’s Coincident Economic Index includes the employment level, personal income, production and sales.
NBER
The National Bureau of Economic Research uses a business cycle dating process to determine when the US economy is in recession, recovery, and so on. NBER uses economic indicators such as GDP, gross domestic income, sales, production and employment. It defined the US as being in recession from December 2007 to June 2009, with GDP falling 12.8% during this period. Based on its analysis of economic indicators, the NBER regards the US economy as being out of recession and in the recovery stage, however tentative. This backs up the findings of the Conference Board and indeed the statistics themselves.
An economic recovery is measured by a number of indicators, none of which is perfect. The main indicator is gross domestic product, which suggests the US and many other major economies are in the economic recovery stage, although this is not to say that some areas of the economy, and some regions, aren’t struggling. The Conference Board and the NBER use a range of indicators to determine where the economy sits on the business cycle.
October 16, 2015
The difference between a recession and a depression
(originally published to Helium writing site, now gone)
The world economy took a giant hit in 2008 with the Global Financial Crisis or GFC. Many countries went into recession, and the word depression was even used. Here’s an article that looks at the difference between a recession and a depression.
Recession is the term used to describe a general economic downturn featuring lower than usual levels of gross domestic product (or GDP) and its components, such as consumption and investment, as well as falls in employment, income, profits and inflation. In broad terms, a depression includes all the characteristics of a recession but at a worse level and often includes additional factors such as a significant fall in asset prices, less credit, bank closures, shortfalls of goods, and deflation.
There are no official criteria separating a recession from a depression. Various benchmarks and definitions have been used over time and between places. In the United States, the National Bureau of Economic Research uses a qualitative definition of recession. It describes a recession as a significant decline in the economy of three months or more, reflected in GDP, production, sales, income and employment figures. It then uses these and other statistics and indicators to determine if the economy is in recession and the dates involved. The NBER defined the US as being in recession from December 2007 to June 2009, with GDP falling 12.8% during this period. It doesn’t separately identify depressions but acknowledges that these are severe recessions.
Other countries don’t have the services provided by the NBER and usually use a more quantitative definition of a recession, often defining it as a fall in GDP of two consecutive quarters. Interestingly, the US recession of 2000 and 2001 would not have been defined as a recession under this definition. GDP fell in three quarters but none were consecutive. Another indicator used is a rise in the unemployment rate of at least 1.5 percentage points over 12 months. The US rate rose nearly four percentage points between mid 2008 and mid 2009 to more than 9%. Sometimes an extended period of lower than usual growth is used to define a recession.
Commonly used quantitative measures to define a depression are a fall in real GDP of more than 10% in one downturn or declining GDP over a period of at least 3-4 years or more, although sometimes two years or more is used as the benchmark. The best known economic depression was the so-called Great Depression of the 1930s. Its effects were severe, prolonged and worldwide. US gross national product fell 33% between 1929 and 1933 and the unemployment rate rose to 25%. Another period of depression, sparked by speculative real estate investments, ran from 1937 to 1942.
Up until World War II, depression was the term used to describe any significant economic downturn. Many depressions were referred to as panics because they often coincided with a run on banks as people tried to withdraw their money during a sudden downturn. An early use of the term depression was in 1819 by US president James Monroe as a description of the Panic of 1819.
Many 18th and 19th century downturns were probably recessions rather than depressions but the term recession wasn’t used until after WWII. On average, pre-war depressions were considerably more severe than post-war recessions. This is because when governments in the earlier period were faced with a downturn, they made it worse by contractionary monetary policy, as well as trying to balance their budgets by increasing taxes and reducing spending, and lifting tariffs. This led to falls in wages and prices, which we don’t commonly see in recessions. Booms were also more pronounced, leading to boom and bust cycles.
After the war, major countries vowed not to allow a repeat of the depressions of earlier times and initiated expansionary economic policies during downturns as urged by leading economist John Maynard Keynes. Also, rather than dig up memories of depressions, a new word was sought, and economic downturns came to be known as recessions (recess is from the Latin “recessus”, meaning “a going back”).
The new term came with a fresh set of policy responses to downturns. Governments implemented expansionary fiscal and monetary policies to try and get the economy moving again. The general result was that post-war recessions were less severe than pre-war depressions. There have been a number of exceptions. Russia’s economy shrank nearly 50% in the first half of the 1990s, while other ex-Soviet republics were also in depression as defined above (a fall in GDP for 2-4 years, or a decline of 10% over any period). Finland’s economy contracted for three years in the early 1990s. During the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s, Indonesia’s GDP fell 18% in 1998, Thailand’s by 15% over two years, and Malaysia’s by 11% in a year.
None of these exceptions were commonly referred to as a depression though. Indeed, they didn’t display all the usual characteristics of depressions, which include falling asset prices, reduced credit, lower prices and declining economic activity, only some of them. High inflation was a feature in the ex-Soviet states and in the Asian crisis. Japan met most of the criteria, however, when its GDP fell 1.0% between 1997 and 2001. Prices also declined 1.0%, wages were down 5.5%, bank lending decreased 16% and property and share values plummeted. But the depression word wasn’t used, and perhaps rightly so as the declines were far milder than those in many pre-war downturns.
The recession of 2007-2009, with its Global Financial Crisis, has been described as the most severe global downturn since the Great Depression and has been dubbed the Great Recession. In the US, GDP fell 12.8% and the unemployment rate blew out to 10.1%. Housing prices collapsed in many areas and several large financial institutions went under. In April 2011, 26% of Americans thought the economy was still in recession, while 29% said it was in depression. This is despite annualized GDP growth of 1.8% in the March quarter.
Thus the difference between recession and depression is hazy. NBER has a qualitative definition for a recession but no separate one for a depression. Quantitative benchmarks are used in many countries to determine the difference, although the measures are far from perfect. Pre-WWII downturns were called depressions. Since then, the term recession has been used. Whether some of the post-war downturns can be called depressions is quite subjective.
October 15, 2015
Causes of inflation
(originally published to Helium writing site, now gone)
Inflation is the name given to a sustained rise in the overall level of prices for the goods and services we buy. It is usually measured by an indicator such as a consumer price index. In broad terms, inflation is brought about in the short and medium term by pressures on the demand for and supply of goods and services. Inflation over the longer term depends more on the increase in the money supply, as determined by interest rate policy.
Demand pull inflation
When an increase occurs in the quantity of goods and services purchased by individuals, businesses and governments, demand pull inflation can result. If this new level of aggregate demand exceeds the supply of goods and services that producers are willing and able to provide, prices will be bid up by those wanting the available goods and services. Producers will often be able to satisfy this increase in demand by recruiting extra employees and perhaps investing in new machinery and other assets or improving efficiency. If producers are unable to make these changes, a period of inflation might result. This usually occurs when resources are already fully employed or close to it.
Demand pull inflation can be caused by a number of factors that generally occur when the economy is at or near full capacity. For example, a rise in consumer confidence can mean that plans to purchase certain goods and services may be brought forward. Also, a favorable housing market will boost dwelling sales, leading to greater demand for household goods, which could lead to higher prices and inflation. A further cause of demand pull inflation can be a reduction in taxes, resulting in more money in consumers’ pockets and thus higher demand for goods and services.
Depreciation in the value of the currency is another factor that can lead to inflation. Here, import prices rise and export prices fall, leading to increased demand for the products of export industries and import substitution industries, placing pressure on prices. Demand pull inflation can also occur if benchmark interest rates are set too low and financial institutions increase their borrowings, boosting the level of funds they have available to lend to consumers and businesses.
Cost push inflation
When the supply of goods and services is curtailed, this can mean households, business and government have to compete for the smaller stock, pushing prices up, often resulting in what is called cost push inflation. A reduction in supply can be due to higher input prices or the effects of natural disasters. A rise in the price of oil, for example, will increase costs across all industries, forcing companies to raise their prices. Higher labor costs will have the same effect, pushing up prices, as will an increase in indirect tax such as an excise duty on certain products.
Built-in inflation can be caused by expectations that inflation will continue into the future, due to past demand pull and cost push inflation. This is where both labor and capital are continually seeking catch ups in wages and prices because of previous price and wage increases respectively.
An increase in the money supply
If the supply of money, including through bank lending as well as deposits and currency, rises faster than the rate of real economic growth, this can result in inflation. Economists disagree on the importance of this link as a cause of inflation. There are two main schools of thought. Keynesian economists feel that an increase in the money supply is just one factor that can cause inflation, while the main influence is demand and cost pressures. Monetarists regard changes in the money supply as by far the most important cause of inflation.
Most governments aim to control the supply of money through a central bank by raising or lowering key interest rates, depending on economic circumstances. If rates are set too low for the current economic conditions, this can result in an increase in lending by financial institutions above the desired level. This leads to greater amounts of money in the community and a rise in aggregate demand, which can lead to inflation if the economy is already close to full capacity. Responsible interest rate policy should result in moderate and desired levels of inflation only.
Where the money supply rises at a much faster rate than the increase in production, this can result in hyperinflation. Here, consumer demand will far exceed the supply of goods and services produced, so businesses will raise their prices. At the same time, labor will seek pay increases to compensate for the higher prices. This can lead to a wage-price spiral, which can quickly get out of control and which can be made worse by government policy favoring an increase in bank lending or simply printing more money.
Perhaps the best known examples of hyperinflation have been in Germany and Zimbabwe. Hyperinflation in Germany in the 1920s was largely caused by successive devaluations of the mark due to a huge war reparations bill. In Zimbabwe, current hyperinflation stems from the government continuing to spend and print more money while the economy was falling apart.
The causes of inflation can be many. The major ones are pressures on supply and demand and increases in the money supply. The main way governments aim to control inflation these days, and keep it within an acceptable band, is through official interest rate policy, thereby influencing the amount of money in an economy.
October 14, 2015
Why traffic exchange sites and autosurf sites are a waste of time
The web has a large number of traffic exchange sites. Website owners submit their site to these programs and then view each other’s sites in order to increase their page views. Traffic sites use a manual rotation where the user has to click to get to the next site, while autosurf sites use an automatic rotation system. Some programs offer both.
Users have to view a certain number of sites, such as 200 a day, to get credits. Most work on a 1:1 basis. You see 200 different sites and this means your own site will get 200 views from other members. You might have to have a site on your screen for, say, 20 or 30 seconds before you proceed to the next site. Traffic exchange and autosurf sites are often used by web businesses and affiliate marketers for advertising and to gain views and potential sales.
Generally, the more views a site gets, the higher it appears in search results, which means it will get even more views when people do searches. Submitting a site to traffic exchange sites means that a single page is usually viewed by a large number of members, who then race on to the next site, and the next, in order to get sufficient credits to get their own site viewed multiple times.
These people aren’t usually interested in your site and the quality of views is low. This results in a high bounce rate away from the site because other pages on the site aren’t viewed and the search engines will think that the site isn’t useful to users and will penalise it in searches accordingly. You can damage the reputation of your site.
Google advises against using traffic exchange sites to boost advertising and page views and doesn’t allow AdSense ads to run on webpages that are included in these traffic sites. This is because Google is concerned about the low quality of visits to webpages from these sites. In fact, Google and the other search engines tend not to take account of views via traffic exchange sites in ranking websites. The Google algorithm, for example, has hundreds of ranking factors, and some of these include the quality of views a site gets.
Be wary of any traffic exchange type sites that offer upgrades for a sum of money and that promise to pay money for surfing a certain number of sites. Not all of these sites actually pay and are clearly scams. Most traffic exchange sites aren’t scams, but they are still not worth the effort of going through a large number of member sites each day. Owners of traffic sites will promote them as beneficial but there really aren’t any benefits.
October 13, 2015
PaymentSurf scam
PaymentSurf is one of those paid to surf programs. Problem is it doesn’t seem to pay and seems to be a scam. The idea with these sort of sites is that you join up and proceed to surf through a large number of sites and get paid some small amount for surfing each one. Sometimes you need your own site; sometimes not. PaymentSurf doesn’t seem to require a site.
Paid to surf sites tend to attract affiliate marketers, who think they are going to get some leads and sign-ups for their site. But people belonging to paid to surf programs aren’t in it to check out offers made via the web pages of affiliate marketers. They are there to earn pennies by ploughing through scores if not hundreds of pages.
These sites used to attract website owners back in the days when putting your site though paid to surf sites was a good way to boost page views and therefore your search engine ranking. But Google and the others are awake to these schemes nowadays and probably won’t recognise hits through paid to surf.
Sometimes these sites are automated, meaning you just click to start the whole thing rolling and it just rolls though the pages, one at a time, with each page on the screen perhaps 20-60 seconds, while you go off and do something else. Other times, it’s manual and you have to keep clicking to get to the next page. These are often known as traffic exchange sites. Sometimes you have to pay a joining fee.
PaymentSurf (www.paymentsurf.com) has been around since 2012 and can be joined for free. It requires members to surf 240 sites a day for 35 cents, although you can upgrade at a cost of $15 each time and earn much more. Minimum payout is $40 and this is allegedly paid monthly via various payment processors or by check.
There are plenty of forum pages with comments on PaymentSurf and there is no evidence of anyone being paid and many people calling it a scam. A number of people state that they got to the $40 threshold and the system asked them to pay $15 to verify their account! One person says he tried to pay it but just went in circles. People have tried contacting admin but they don’t hear back. So it looks like PaymentSurf is good at taking money but not good at paying out. The only positive forum posts about this program are from affiliates advertising the thing.
You’ll find a number of reviews of PaymentSurf. These conclude that the site is a scam and words to the effect that the only genuine money making site on the web is such and such a site. These are usually affiliate marketers or the owner of that site and are simply writing a review of another site, PaymentSurf on this occasion, to try and attract people to their particular site which may be no better. So watch out for these too.
October 11, 2015
Home Profit System scam
I post to online newspaper Business Spectator here in Australia. Lately, there have been some inappropriate posts promoting a thing called Home Profit System, which also goes by a few other names. You may have come across it. It’s a scam, as are all of these easy money making schemes. I thought I would post here basically what I have posted at Business Spectator, so that people can be aware of this and similar scams. Home Profit System seems legitimate but it’s not, and shows how easy it is to fall for these sort of scams.
Please be aware that these out of context posts linking to sites that offer easy money by sitting on a computer relate to a scam (and this is always the case with these sorts of offers). The link, http://www.jobs35.com, goes to a page called financialzest.biz and is headed up Finance Reports. There’s a genuine looking article about a single mother making 90 grand a year sitting on her computer without selling anything.
The page gives the impression it’s part of some large and legitimate site with lots of different categories of articles, updates, and so on. The tabs across the top of the page include Home, Finance (which is highlighted for the current article), Tech, Economy, Media, Market News, Investing, etc. But if you run your cursor across the tabs, you’ll see they all go to the same page, not financialzest but homesourceforincome, and headed up Home Source for Income, which has a couple of testimonials and invites you to sign up.
But back to the article about the single mother making 90 grand, it includes several links to something called Home Profit System and below the article are 20 favourable posts allegedly by 20 different people, but it’s all part of the scam. The Home Profit System links also go to the homesourceforincome page, just like every other link on the page. Under the tabs are even some market update information on Dow, Nasdaq, US$, etc and they appear to be constantly updating, but take a closer look and you’ll see that the alleged change in each of them just toggles back and forth between two set numbers. And if you delete the string of characters after the site name in your address bar, you still end up at the same article about the single mother.
Apparently the scheme initially costs about $3 to enter and have a look. You have three days to say yay or nay, then you get charged about $140 and there’s a monthly charge of about $5. People have complained that it takes a week before they get the package and they’ve already been charged the $140. One guy had to cancel his credit card to stop the monthly charge. If you run with it, you will be creating and marketing online stores and trying to sell things from them. No one usually buys anything from these stores.
For more, see:
http://www.ivetriedthat.com/2010/05/17/do-not-sign-up-for-the-home-income-profit-system/
http://reviewopedia.com/workathome/home-income-profit-system-review-is-it-a-scam/
This second site asks people to rank the scheme on a scale of 1 to 5. There are 261 reviews of this scheme and the average score is 1.1 and that includes at least one person who rated it as a 5 and who is probably part of the scam.
Herbalife – Is it a scam?
The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced on 12 March 2014 that it will investigate weight management and fitness company Herbalife. Those investigations are continuing. The company was set up in 1980 and uses 3.7 million distributors to sell its products in 91 countries through a multi-level marketing (MLM) model. Sales in 2013 were $4.8 billion and its net income was over $500 million.
A new member or distributor must be sponsored by an existing member and buy an International Business Pack, the price of which varies. Here in Australia, the price is reported as $60-70. You then buy products to sell. Herbalife claims that most members join to buy the products for their own use and to on-sell. But its 125 page Sales & Marketing Plan is very complex and revolves around multi-level marketing and numerous rules.
Distributors can become senior consultants, success builders, qualified producers and supervisors and can progress through numerous levels such as World Team, Global Expansion Team, Millionaire Team, President’s Team, Chairman’s Club, and Founder’s Circle. The number who reach such dizzy heights is very small indeed. The company’s Australian site has 2012 statistics on its 16,583 distributors. Of these, 12,566 (76 percent) are single level distributors with no downline. A further 1730 (14 percent) are non-supervisors with a downline. Both groups buy the products wholesale and can use them and sell them online (such as eBay) or wherever.
A third group of 2287 (14 percent) distributors are supervisors and above with a downline. Nearly a third (722) of this group earned nothing in 2012 and 873 got $1-1000. A further 418 made $1001-5000, 109 earned $5001-10,000, 56 made $10,001-25,000, 40 made a living of $25,001-50,000 and 37 made a comfortable living of $50,001-100,000. Only 32, or 0.2 percent of the total, earned more than $100,000, including 15 or 0.1 percent (1 in 1000) who made more than $250,000.
Yet, much of the hype used by distributors to try and recruit more members revolves around promises of a rich and carefree lifestyle by joining. A distributor here in Brisbane, Australia, has a small box ad in our local newspaper each week calling on “smart mums & others” to a “work from home” opportunity with “full training and support”. It includes a phone number and a web link. The website has a number of detailed pages and targets people around the world of an “incredible opportunity”.
There are testimonials of people buying a BMW and a penthouse with an ocean view, although it does say it’s not a get rich quick scheme. Herbalife happens to be mentioned in one of many testimonials, the only mention on the site. It offers training material, a mentor program, training seminars and “powerful internet tools”. You send your details through an online form and they will book you a session with a “business coach” to explain the “opportunity”.
Herbalife CEO Michael Johnson was America’s highest paid CEO in 2011 earning $89 million, but much less in 2012. The company’s gross profit is about 80% of net sales, more than double the average. Its products are often manufactured by third parties. The top selling product is a meal replacement shake called Formula 1. It costs 2-3 times competitors’ products. Sales are based on what it sells to its distributors, who often spend thousands, and there is no record of sales to actual consumers.
Company sales are high because it is selling a lifestyle of wealth, and distributors are buying a dream and are therefore willing to part with large sums. There are also various charges including fees, freight, shipping and taxes. Herbalife has been sued and been before the courts many times and has been found to be a pyramid scheme. In a class action in 2003-2005, Jacobs v Herbalife International, 2700 distributors claimed over $27 million in losses or over $10,000 each. But the company has plenty of money to fight legal battles.
Bill Ackman of Pershing Square Capital Management has done a lot of research into Herbalife and believes that members earn tenfold more from recruitment than product sales. He estimates that 10 million non-sales leaders have lost many billions over the decades. He also says that distributors have a high failure rate and a large majority lose money.
Herbalife tends to target the most vulnerable. Sales to distributors in Mexico are higher than the US, as are sales to Central and South America, and also the Asia Pacific region. US sales only account for 18% of the total. Falling sales in advanced countries are often made up by an increase in less wealthy nations. But this can’t last forever, as with any company that uses an MLM model. Sooner or later, they run out of recruits.
I would classify Herbalife as a scam.
Sources:
http://www.herbalife.com/global
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbalife
and various articles and forums.
October 10, 2015
A Weaver’s Web novel excerpt: Baby dies
But soon they fell on hard times again as business suffered another slump and wages went down and prices up. When Henry’s winnings had gone, the higher rent they were now paying meant they ate little other than potatoes and oats or corn. They began wishing they hadn’t moved from the cellar. And he was down on his luck, losing at cards more often than he won. He went to the Cloak and Dagger less and less. Johnno and Isaac didn’t go much either. None of them could afford to, with just about all their money going on food and rent.
Henry often worked into the evening. When he finally finished, he would slump in the armchair and stare at the wall in front of him, not having the energy to talk or read or do anything. Sarah sometimes told him to cheer up, reminding him they were better off than most of their friends and neighbours. She somehow forced herself to make supper and clean the house after twelve hours at the factory. And she and Emily had to care for Bridget – the Wakefields still called her Baby – who constantly had fever and was clinging to life. And Emily and Catherine had croup and Thomas diarrhoea. At eight, he had to work as the money was so short.
Then, one winter’s morning in early 1819, Sarah went to pick Bridget up from her cradle and found her little body cold and lifeless. She held the baby in her arms and was about to cry, when she realised it was for the better. It was no life for a sick baby, in Manchester. The little tot had suffered long enough. She decided not to go to work that day, even though she would lose a day’s pay and her master wouldn’t be happy. She held her emotions together while she got the boys off to work. Henry had already gone out to collect yarn from a factory. Emily and Catherine were resting on their bed. Quietly, she picked the baby up again and carried it round the house a while and prayed. Then she took it back upstairs, kissed it and laid it ever so gently in its cradle. She sat on the side of her bed and stared at the tiny figure, lying there so peacefully.
Sarah wondered what her youngest daughter would have been like as she grew up, whether she would have got over her illnesses, if she would have faced the same hardships her siblings currently suffered, and if she would have married and had a family of her own and afforded to feed them more than potatoes and oatmeal and perhaps moved back to the country one day. Now Sarah would never know any of these things.
As she sat there going over what might have been, she thought how unfair things were. She felt it was her baby’s right to have lived. Poverty and misery weren’t the baby’s fault. She knew if only they had more money and everything wasn’t so expensive they could afford more food. And if they had more time to go to the country to fetch plants, they could make up more medicine. The children wouldn’t get so sick and Baby mightn’t have died.
Perhaps Henry had been right after all, she mused, when he went to his reform meetings at Middleton. She now felt sad the Hampden clubs had disbanded soon after thousands of workers took their blankets and tried to march to London to take a petition to the Prince Regent but were stopped before hardly leaving Manchester by magistrates and troops and the march’s leaders arrested. The push for reform stalled. Workers became frustrated with authorities and resorted to unruly demonstrations, often leading to riots. Later, union societies had been set up and there were strikes and meetings of spinners and weavers, and reform was revived, but neither she, nor Henry of late, had taken part as they couldn’t afford to lose pay. One day many operatives from Sarah’s factory had gone on strike to attend a meeting to seek reform, but she worked instead.
Later that morning when Henry got home, he guessed as soon as he saw her what had happened. All he had to say was ‘Baby?’
She nodded. They embraced silently for several minutes. He stroked her hair back off her forehead. Tears rolled down her cheeks.
‘We must be strong,’ she said to him at last. ‘Heaven’s a better place than this.’
‘I’ll pray for her every night.’
‘Henry, I’m going to the next strike meeting, and help them in their quest for reform.’
He stared at her a moment. She had never shown any interest in reform, always believing things would get better by themselves. ‘It’s dangerous these days, Sarah. The magistrates send spies who often provoke the workers and the meetings turn into a riot.’
‘We owe it to the next generation,’ she said.
‘I thought you were a loyalist at heart.’
‘I am, but we can still seek reform.’
‘We can’t afford the time to go to any meetings.’
‘But Henry, we can’t afford not to. The way we’re going, we’ll soon be worse off than we were at Middleton, and five of us are working.’
‘What’s it achieved in the past? Nothing. Look what happened to the Hampden clubs two years ago.’
‘That’s no reason to give up,’ she said, still tearful.
‘All that’ll happen is you’ll lose a day’s pay. And you could be hurt, too.’ He still had memories of his own injuries when he was thrown out of the meeting at Middleton.
She drew a deep breath. ‘Henry, I’m going, for Baby, and the other poor babies and little children that are suffering and dying.’
He sat in the armchair, not having the strength or inclination to talk her out of it, and pondered, before forcing himself back to work. That night during supper, Sarah told the children what had happened to Baby and they all prayed for her soul. They couldn’t afford a funeral or a coffin, and Baby was buried in a cotton bag in the graveyard of a little church just outside the city. There was no headstone, only a rough marker. Sarah visited the spot from time to time and picked flowers and put them on the grave.
She went to her first strike meeting, with other workers from her factory. …
– end of excerpt –
My historical novel, A Weaver’s Web, is available at the following outlets:
Amazon US: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00H52SEEK
Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00H52SEEK
Amazon Australia: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B00H52SEEK
Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Chris_Pearce_A_Weaver_s_Web?id=-hlJAgAAQBAJ
Apple iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/au/book/a-weavers-web/id775610928?mt=11
October 8, 2015
A Weaver’s Web novel excerpt: Sarah Wakefield has a baby
A week later, Sarah went into labour and could feel the baby squirming and pushing. She wondered if it was a boy or a girl. Her contractions became more intense and painful. By mid morning Henry went to the house above and got Mrs Grimshaw who had attended the births of most of her nine grandchildren. Then he went across the street and beckoned young Louisa who had helped when her older sister gave birth and had worked on and off at Manchester’s lying-in hospital where women who were sick gave birth. Next he got Jane. She had been staying with Uncle William the last few days waiting for the birth, and had slept in his rocking chair.
The three women crammed into the back room where Sarah was in bed. Henry had stacked the other beds against the wall so the women could get in and out more easily. Somehow Sarah had worked right up till earlier that week, when it became too difficult for her to walk far, let alone work. Her factory had kindly agreed to employ Emily, at a child’s rate of course, while Sarah had the baby and nursed it for a few weeks. She had urged Albert to find a job too so they could pay their way. Not surprisingly, he didn’t want to work in a factory and was at that moment out seeking an apprenticeship with a bootmaker.
Henry gave his love to Sarah and wished her well, before leaving for Uncle William’s where he would stay the night. Albert and Benjamin would stay there too, using their jackets as bedding. Louisa’s mother minded Thomas and Catherine. After work, Emily would also go there.
The women got pieces of cloth from the trunk and put them under the mother-to-be. Jane prepared various medicines for her, and some gin to help ease the pain, while Louisa added coal to the fire and made sure the door and window were shut to keep out the cold. Mrs Grimshaw, with her vast experience, held Sarah’s hand and offered her comfort and encouragement. But having a baby held no fears for Sarah. This was her sixth, though her first in Manchester. The other five had all been born in the bedroom of their Middleton cottage.
Soon she was having contractions every few minutes. She gasped and groaned, and complained of backache, so Jane rubbed her back between contractions. Louisa wet a cloth and put it on her forehead, and gave her a cup of water with plenty of gin.
To Sarah, it seemed like it was taking hours. Her grunting got louder and she pushed as hard as she could despite the pain. But she was pushing too often.
‘Only push when it contracts,’ Mrs Grimshaw said.
‘There’s the head,’ Jane said, getting ready to pull the baby out. ‘It’s got Henry’s hair.’
When its head and shoulders were out, Jane took hold of it and eased it the rest of the way. The baby gave a loud cry. Sarah, panting with relief but still in pain, managed a slight smile as Jane held up the newborn, umbilical cord still attached, just far enough for her to see it.
‘A girl,’ was all Sarah could say. She knew Henry would have preferred a boy, but she was quite happy with a girl.
Louisa clamped the cord and cut it, while Mrs Grimshaw told Sarah to keep pushing to expel the placenta.
When Sarah and baby were cleaned up and calm, Mrs Grimshaw gave her the little bundle, wrapped in a shawl to keep it warm. The pair lay together. She put the baby on her bosom, but the little one was too tired to feed. The women bustled about, tidying up and preparing supper for themselves. While Louisa went home at dusk, Jane and Mrs Grimshaw put the beds down and stayed to help Sarah during the night. At daybreak Jane could just make out mother and baby lying next to each other, asleep. Life was so beautiful, she thought.
– end of excerpt –
My historical novel, A Weaver’s Web, is available at the following sites:
Amazon US: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00H52SEEK
Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00H52SEEK
Amazon Australia: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B00H52SEEK
Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Chris_Pearce_A_Weaver_s_Web?id=-hlJAgAAQBAJ
Apple iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/au/book/a-weavers-web/id775610928?mt=11
History of the clock
(originally published to Helium writing site, now gone)
In prehistoric times, people used the sun to tell the time of day. When the sun rose in the morning, they knew it was time to rise and get on with their daily tasks. They knew that the middle of the day was when the sun was highest in the sky. As the sun sank towards the horizon, they knew it was time to return to their camp and prepare for nightfall. Accurate time keeping wasn’t necessary.
With the development of bureaucracies, religion and other activities, a need emerged to better organise time, and civilisations in the Middle East and North Africa started dividing the day into parts.
An obelisk, a type of sundial, was the first device to tell the time. These were made by the Egyptians as early as 3500 BCE and were tall, thin, tapering, four sided structures made from a single piece of stone. Often over 70 feet high and weighing many tons, their moving shadow formed a kind of clock, dividing the daylight hours into two parts either side of midday. These structures showed the year’s longest and shortest days, when the shadow at noon was shortest and longest respectively. Later examples included markings around the base to show further divisions of day. Twenty-six ancient Egyptian obelisks survive but they are scattered around the world, with 11 in Italy, eight in Egypt, three in England and one each in France, Israel, Turkey and the United States.
In about 1500 BCE, the Egyptians developed a more accurate type of sundial, the shadow clock. This was the first portable timepiece. It divided daylight hours into ten parts plus a twilight hour at each end of the day. An elevated crossbar cast a moving shadow over a long stem that had five spaced marks. But it had to be turned the other way at noon and was no good on overcast days. Various improvements were made over the centuries and by 30 BCE, Roman writer Vitruvius identified 13 different sundial types used in Greece, Asia Minor and Italy. The Romans had pocket sundials only a few centimetres in diameter.
The star clock or merkhet, developed by the Egyptians around 600 BCE, is the oldest known astronomical tool and was used to align the foundations of pyramids and temples with the compass points. It was made from the central rib of a palm leaf and used a string with a weight on the end to obtain a vertical line. Using the Pole Star, two of them could be used to determine a north-south line and thus night-time hours when other stars crossed the meridian.
Another Egyptian invention was the water clock. It was more accurate than the obelisk and perhaps the earliest timekeeping device that didn’t depend on using celestial bodies. One was found in the tomb of pharaoh Amenhotep I, who was buried around 1500 BCE. The Greeks used them from about 325 BCE, calling them clepsydras, meaning ‘water thieves’. They were stone vessels with sloping sides and a tiny hole in the bottom that allowed water to drip out at a constant rate. Others were cylindrical or bowl shaped, designed to slowly fill with water through a tiny hole, with markings on the inside measuring the number of hours it took. They could be used by day or night and were often set up alongside a sundial for use on gloomy days and at night. Similar bowls, made of metal, were still in use in North Africa in the 20th century.
Greek and Roman horologists and astronomers developed more elaborate, mechanised water clocks from 100 BCE to 500 CE. They regulated pressure, had bells and gongs (probably the first alarm clock), or had doors and windows that opened to show little figures of people, or moved pointers or dials. Some included astrological models of the universe.
Macedonian astronomer Andronikos built the Tower of the Winds in Athens in about 50 BCE, to show scholars and customers mechanical hour indicators and sundials. It had a 24 hour mechanised clepsydra and indicators for the eight winds, as well as showing the seasons and astrological information. The building still stands, near the Acropolis.
Astronomical and astrological clock making developed in China between 200 and 1300 CE. A clock tower built by Su Sung in 1088 CE shows the lengths people went to in order to tell the time. An elaborate contraption over thirty feet high, it had a water driven escapement, a power driven armillary sphere (a ball representing the earth and showing the poles, equator, meridians, parallels and apparent path of the sun) for observations, an automatically rotating celestial globe, and manikins that rang bells or gongs and held tablets showing the hour.
However, water flow rates are hard to control and a high degree of accuracy of time is not possible with water clocks. People looked for other ways. But in Europe there wasn’t much technological advancement in the Middle Ages, spanning about 500–1500 CE. Some people had simple sundials above doorways to show noon and the four ‘tides’ of time that governed the working day in the medieval period. Candle clocks were also used. Several types of pocket sundials were common from the 10th century. An English version took account of the sun’s altitude in different seasons.
Hourglasses were the first dependable and fairly accurate timepieces. Although a number of ancient civilisations had the technology to make them, such as the Egyptians who invented glassmaking around 1500 BCE, the first definite evidence was when one appeared in a painting by Italian Ambrogio Lorenzetti in 1328. They were used on ships from the 14th century and perhaps as earlier as the 11th century. Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan had 18 hourglasses on each of his five ships for his voyage around the world from 1519. From the 15th century, they were used in churches, in industry and for cooking. They are still commonly used as eggtimers, in board games, on computer screens, and as shower-timers. The Australian Parliament uses one to time certain procedures.
Large mechanical clocks, with an hour hand only, began appearing in the towers of English and Italian cities as early as the 1270s. The clocks were weight-driven and had verge and foliot escapement mechanisms, usually involving weighted rope unwinding from the barrel, turning a toothed escape wheel. The oscillation period was hard to regulate as the mechanism depended on the amount of driving force and friction. Clocks could be out by plus or minus an hour a day.
The first portable clock came around 1500 CE when German locksmith Peter Henlein invented a spring-powered clock. This allowed for smaller clocks that people could put on a table or shelf rather than on the wall. Using the same technology, Henlein created the first pocket watch in 1524, although the first wristwatch wasn’t until the late 19th century. It is thought that Henry VIII wore a pocket watch on a chain around his neck. But the clocks and watches slowed as the mainspring unwound, making them too inaccurate to worry about a minute hand. The first clock with a minute hand was by Swiss clockmaker Jost Burgi in 1577 but it wasn’t precise.
Greater accuracy of clocks was achieved in the 17th century. Dutch scientist Christian Huygens built the first pendulum clock in 1656, based on a design by Galileo. The clock was accurate to within a minute a day and soon to less than 10 seconds. A pendulum clock’s escapement usually involves a weight or spring on the gear, forcing it to rotate. The gear pushes against an arm that is connected to the pendulum, making it move from side to side. Minute hands and then second hands were introduced in the 1670s, but the addition of these hands was gradual, and a hundred years later some town clocks still only had an hour hand.
Huygens also developed the balance wheel and spring assembly in 1675, allowing watches to be out by no more than 10 minutes a day. The mechanism is still used in some wristwatches. The accuracy of pendulum clocks improved to one second a day in 1721 thanks to English clockmaker George Graham when he found a way to compensate for changes in the length of a pendulum caused by temperature variation. Pendulum clocks remained the most accurate clock type through to about 1930.
In the 18th century, English carpenter and self-taught clockmaker John Harrison refined Graham’s method and also found new ways of reducing friction. He revolutionised sea travel by inventing a chronometer, a maritime clock that could accurately assess longitude, and show the time. On the strength of an offer of £20,000 by the British Government to the person who found a way of determining longitude to within half a degree and coming up with a clock accurate to two seconds a day on a long sea voyage, Graham spent thirty years of trial and error to perfect his chronometer. It easily met the criteria but he spent many more years fighting the government before he was finally paid.
Our pursuit of accuracy and perfection continued. Siegmund Riefler of Germany developed a clock in 1889 with an almost free pendulum and accurate to a hundredth of a second a day. The first free pendulum clock was invented around 1898 by R. J. Rudd. The pendulum swings freely for one minute without control by the escapement, while he used a subsidiary or ‘slave’ clock to send an impulse to the pendulum every minute and to keep time between impulses.
But it was W. H. Shortt’s free pendulum clock, first demonstrated in 1921, that replaced Riefler’s clock as the standard in astronomical observatories. The gravity arm or slave pendulum pushes the timekeeping or master pendulum to maintain its motion and drives the clock’s hands. Thus the timekeeping pendulum has no mechanical tasks to disturb its regularity. This clock remained the norm until the development of quartz crystal clocks in the 1930s and 1940s.
Crystals generate voltage when mechanical stress is applied, allowing crystal clocks to operate. A crystal changes shape if an electric field is applied to it. By squeezing or bending it, the crystal generates an electric field. The interaction between mechanical stress and electric field makes the crystal vibrate. This gives a constant frequency electric signal to operate an electronic clock. Canadian Warren Marrison of Bell Laboratories made the first quartz clock in 1927. The clocks are far more accurate than any previous clock as they have no gears or escapements to upset their regular frequency. However, they do rely on mechanical vibration, whose frequency depends on the size and shape of the crystal. Quartz clocks still dominate the market as they are reliable, accurate enough for most purposes, and cheap.
Most car clocks now have quartz movements. In earlier times, travellers used a range of portable timepieces, including pocket sundials and pocket watches. Pendulum clocks only work when they are stationary and are no use in vehicles because motion and a change in speed will affect the movement and pace of the pendulum. In the 1790s, Swiss watchmaker Abraham-Louis Breguet, living and working in France, made the first carriage clock, selling it to Napoleon. Placing pocket watches in leather holders and attaching them to a carriage’s front board was popular. Mechanical car clocks could be bought as an accessory by 1908 and electric clocks from the 1930s.
Atomic clocks are considerably more accurate again than quartz. The first one, based on ammonia, was built in 1949 by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology. In 1955, Louis Essen of the National Physical Laboratory in the United Kingdom came up with a caesium based atomic clock. NIST completed a caesium clock in 1957. With the high degree of accuracy of these clocks, it was decided in 1967 to base the definition of a second on atomic time rather than on the earth’s revolution around the sun, which had been the case from 1956. A second is thus defined as 9,192,631,770 cycles of the caesium atom’s resonant frequency. Claims as to the accuracy of atomic clocks include a billionth of a second per day and one second in six million years.
We have come to depend on very precise time. Gone are the days when people only needed to know the time to the nearest hour, minute or even second. Technology and industry need extremely accurate clocks. Demand continues to drive the search for ever greater accuracy of time. Global positioning systems and network time protocol are used to synchronise timekeeping systems around the world.
