picture of differing social media logos on a keyboard
Researchers study Social media and suicide to find if a correlation exists between the two. Some research has shown that there may be a correlation.
Background
Suicide
is one of the top leading causes of death worldwide, and as of 2020,
the third leading cause of death in those aged 15–24. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, suicide was the third leading cause of death among adolescents in the US, from 1999 to 2006.
In 2020, people in the US ages 10-24 had a suicide rate of 10.7 per 100,000. Suicide was a leading cause of death in the United States accounting for 48,183 deaths in 2021. Suicide rates increased by 30 percent from 2000-2018 and declined in 2019 and 2020.
Despite suicide prevention programs, therapy, and pharmacological treatments, suicide remains a public health issue worldwide.
Suicide has been identified not only as an individual phenomenon, but
also as being influenced by social and environmental factors. There is growing evidence that online activity have influenced suicide-related behavior.
The use of social media throughout the 21st century has grown
exponentially. There are a variety of sources that are accessible to
the public in various forms. Sites include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat, TikTok
and more. These platforms were intended to allow people to connect in a
virtual way, but can lead to cyberbullying, insecurity, emotional
distress, and sometimes may influence a person to attempt suicide.
Bullying, whether on social media or elsewhere, physical or not, significantly increases victims' risk of suicidal behavior. Since social media was introduced some people have taken their lives as a result of cyberbullying.
Suicide rates among teenagers have increased from 2010 to 2022 as
social media has become something that people interact with more
throughout their day-to-day life.
Media algorithms
tends to popularize videos and posts to inform the country of the
rising trouble, which may create a popular appeal to the young and
immature minds of teenagers. Social media could provide higher risks with the promotion of different kinds of pro-suicidal sites, message boards, chat rooms, and forums. Also, the Internet not only reports suicide incidents but documents suicide methods (for example, suicide pacts,
an agreement between two or more people to kill themselves at a
particular time and often by the same lethal means). The role the
Internet plays, particularly social media, in suicide-related behavior
is a topic of growing interest.
Cyberbullying
There is substantial evidence that the Internet and social media can influence suicide-related behavior. Such evidence includes an increase in exposure to graphic content. According to research by Sameer Hinduja and Justin Patchin, there is also a correlation between cyberbullying and suicide. Cyberbullying increases suicidal thoughts by 14.5 percent and suicide attempts by 8.7 percent.
Children and young people under 25 who are victims of cyberbullying are
more than twice as likely to self-harm and enact suicidal behavior. Overall, teen suicide rates have increased within the past decade. This is a highly considerable public health
problem, having over 40,000 suicide deaths in the United States and
nearly one million suicide deaths worldwide occurring yearly.
Social media's influence on suicide
The media may portray suicidal behavior or language which can potentially influence people to act on these suicidal tendencies. This may include news reports of actual suicides that have occurred or television shows and films that reenact suicides.
Some organizations have proposed guidelines about how the media should report suicide.There is evidence that compliance with the guidelines varies. Some research has found that it is unclear whether the guidelines have successfully reduced the number of suicides. Other research has found that the guidelines have worked in some cases.
Impact of pro-suicidal sites, message boards, chat rooms and forums
Social
media platforms have transformed traditional methods of communication
by allowing the instantaneous and interactive sharing of information
created and controlled by individuals, groups, organizations, and
governments. As of the third quarter of 2022, Facebook had 266 million monthly active users, between Canada and the US.
An immense quantity of information on the topic of suicide is available
on the Internet and via social media. The information available on
social media on the topic of suicide can influence suicidal behavior,
both negatively and positively.
The social cognitive theory
plays a vital role in suicide attempts influenced through social media.
This theory is demonstrated when one is influenced by what they see
through various processes that form into modeled behaviors. This can be shown when people post their suicide attempts online or promote suicidal behavior in general.
Contributors to these social media platforms may also exert peer pressure and encourage others to take their own lives, idolize those who have killed themselves, and facilitate suicide pacts.
These pro-suicidal sites reported the following. For example, on a
Japanese message board in 2008, it was shared that people can kill
themselves using hydrogen sulfide gas. Shortly after 220 people attempted suicide in this way, and 208 were successful. Biddle et al.
conducted a systematic Web search of 12 suicide-associated terms (e.g.,
suicide, suicide methods, how to kill yourself, and best suicide
methods) to analyze the search results and found that pro-suicide sites
and chat rooms that discussed general issues associated with suicide
most often occurred within the first few hits of a search. also conducted a study that examined suicide-related sites that can be found using Internet search engines.
Of 373 website hits, 31% were suicide neutral, 29% were anti-suicide,
and 11% were pro-suicide. Together, these studies have shown that
obtaining pro-suicide information on the Internet, including detailed
information on suicide methods, is very easy.
While social media has been prevalent in young adult suicide,
some young adults find comfort and solace through these platforms. Young
adults are making connections with people in like situations that are
helping them feel less lonely.
Although the public opinion is that message boards are harmful, the
following studies show how they point to suicide prevention and have
positive influences. A study using content analysis analyzed all of the
postings on the AOL Suicide Bulletin Board over 11 months and concluded
that most contributions contained positive, empathetic, and supportive
postings.
Then, a multi-method study was able to demonstrate that the users of
such forums experience a great deal of social support and only a small
amount of social strain. Lastly, in the survey participants were asked
to assess the extent of their suicidal thoughts on a 7-level scale (0,
absolutely no suicidal thoughts, to 7, very strong suicidal thoughts)
for the time directly before their first forum visit and at the time of
the survey.
The study found a significant reduction after using the forum. The
study however cannot conclude the forum is the only reason for the
decrease. Together, these studies show how forums can reduce the number
of suicides.
An example of how social media can play a role in suicide is that of a male adolescent who arrived at the emergency department with his parents after suspected medication ingestion in which he attempted to overdose. Beforehand he had sent an ex-girlfriend a Snapchat picture of himself holding a bottle of acetaminophen,
which was forwarded to the young male's parents. This picture was used
by medical experts to establish the time of his ingestion, oral N-acetylcysteine was administered and he was brought to a pediatric care facility, where he had an uneventful recovery and psychiatric evaluation.
In 2013, the main cause of nine teen suicides was due to hateful anonymous messages on Ask.fm.
Cyberbullying and suicide
Cyberbullying has received considerable attention as a possible cause of suicide. With the rise of social media, the risk of falling victim to blackmail has also increased.
It has been deemed a major health concern for affected teens and a
major health threat to those affected by the psychological trauma
inflicted by perpetrators on social media.
While there isn’t one Federal Law that is specific to cyberbullying, 48
states have laws against cyberbullying or online harassment with 44 of
those states having criminal sanctions within the laws. Many states have
enhanced their harassment laws to include online harassment.
Criminal harassment statutes often provide a basis for bringing charges
in severe cases, and more serious criminal charges have been brought in
cases where evidence indicates a resultant suicide or other tragic
consequences. Civil remedies have been sought in many cases where
criminal liability was difficult to prove.
In 2006, 13 year old Megan Meier hanged herself in her bedroom closet following a series of MySpace
messages that came from a friend's mother and her 18 year old
associate, who posed as a teen boy named “Josh Evans” and encouraged
Megan to commit suicide. The mother, Lori Drew, faced federal conspiracy charges related to computer fraud and abuse, but was later acquitted.
In 2012, Canadian high school student Amanda Todd hanged herself after being blackmailed by a stalker, and suffering from repeated cyberbulling and harassment at school. On September 7, Todd posted a 9-minute YouTube video titled My story: Struggling, bullying, suicide, self-harm, which showed her using a series of flashcards to tell of her experiences being bullied. The video went viral after her death on October 10, 2012, receiving over 1,600,000 views by October 13, 2012, with news websites from around the world linking to it.
In 2014, Conrad Roy killed himself after exchanging numerous text messages with Michelle Carter, his long-distance girlfriend, who repeatedly encouraged him to commit suicide. She was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter, and sentenced to 15 months in prison. Carter was released in January 2020.
Sadie Riggs, a Pennsylvania teen, killed herself in 2015
allegedly because of online bullying and harassment at school on her
appearance. Sadie's aunt, Sarah Smith, contacted various social media
companies, police, and Sadie's school in hopes to make the bullying
stop. In desperation, Smith went as far as to break Sadie's phone, in
her presence, in an attempt to stop the bullying. No charges were ever
filed against any alleged suspect.
In a 2018 Florida case, two preteens were arrested and charged with cyberstalking
after they were accused of cyberbullying another female middle school
student, 12 year old Gabriella Green. Online rumors were spread about
her, and she hanged herself immediately after a call with one of the
abusers, who told her that "If you're going to do it, just do it" and
ended the call, according to police.
In 2019, Canadian Inuk pop singer Kelly Fraser, who was most popular for her Inuktitut language covers of pop songs, was found dead in her home near Winnipeg, Manitoba. Her death was ruled a suicide, which Fraser's family attributed to "childhood traumas, racism, and persistent cyberbullying."
Media contagion effect
Suicide contagion can be viewed within the larger context of behavioral contagion,
which has been described as a situation in which the same behavior
spreads quickly and spontaneously through a group. Suicide contagion
refers to the phenomenon of indirect exposure to suicide or suicidal
behaviors influencing others to attempt to kill themselves. The Persons most susceptible to suicide contagions are those under 25 years of age.
Media coverage of suicides has been shown to significantly increase the
rate of suicide, and the magnitude of the increase is related to the
amount, duration, and prominence of coverage. A recent study by Dunlop et al.
specifically examined possible contagion effects on suicidal behavior
via the Internet and social media. Of 719 individuals aged 14 to 24
years, 79% reported being exposed to suicide-related content through
family, friends, and traditional news media such as newspapers, and 59%
found such content through Internet sources.
This information may pose a hazard for vulnerable groups by influencing
decisions to die by suicide. In particular, interactions via chat rooms
or discussion forums may foster peer pressure to die by suicide,
encourage users to idolize those who have died by suicide, or facilitate
suicide pacts.
Recently there has been a trend in creating memorial social media pages
in honor of a deceased person. In New Zealand, a memorial page was made
after a person committed suicide, this resulted in the suicide of 8
other persons thereafter, which further shows the power of the media
contagion effect. One South Korean study demonstrated that social media data can be used to predict national suicide numbers.
Suicide notes
It has generally been found that those who post suicide notes online tend to not receive help.
Paul Zolezzi indicated via a Facebook update his intent to commit suicide.
In 2010, John Patrick Bedell left a Wikipedia user page and YouTube videos interpreted by some as a suicide note; the former was deleted by Wikipedia administrators.
Chris McKinstry, an AI researcher, committed suicide after posting a note to both his blog and the Joel on Software off-topic forum explaining the reasons for his demise.
A girl who attended a Louisville-area
high school posted a video suicide note and then killed herself in
2014. The girl did not receive any help prior to her suicide, leading H.
Eric Sparks, director of the American School Counselor Association, to
say that troubled students should be directed to help hotlines or to
trusted authorities to seek intervention as quickly as possible.
Suicide pacts
A
suicide pact is an agreement between two or more people to die by
suicide at a particular time and often by the same lethal means.
Suicide pacts are found to be rare. Traditional suicide pacts have
typically developed among individuals who know each other, such as a
couple of friends. A suicide pact that has been formed or developed in
some way through the use of the Internet is a cyber suicide pact.
A primary difference between cybersuicide pacts and traditional suicide
pacts is that these pacts are usually formed among strangers.
They use online chat rooms and virtual bulletin boards and forums as an
unmediated avenue to share their feelings with other like-minded
individuals, which can be easier than talking about such thoughts and
feelings in person.
The first documented use of the Internet to form a suicide pact
was reported in Japan in 2000. It has now become a more common form of
suicide in Japan, where the suicide rate increased from 34 suicides in
2003 to 91 suicides in 2005. South Korea now has one of the world's
highest suicide rates (24.7/100 000 in 2005), and evidence exists that
cyber suicide pacts may account for almost one-third of suicides in that
country.
Suicide pacts are also in the United States. In April 2018, Macon
Middle School, a middle school in North Carolina, became aware of a
group on social media called "Edgy" or "Edgy Fan Page 101" in which this
group came up with a suicide pact and had suicidal ideations.
The middle school contacted the parents and informed them to look into
their children's social media pages and talk with them about the dangers
of a group like this.
Suicide intervention
on social media has saved many lives on Twitter, Instagram, and
Facebook. All of the aforementioned companies have slightly different
ways to report posts that may seem suicidal.
Facebook
Facebook, assisted by, among a handful of other experts, Dr. Dan Reidenburg of Suicide Awareness Voices of Education—"uses
an algorithm to track down buzzwords and phrases that are commonly
associated with suicide" and has intervened in over 3,500 cases,
according to company reports. The algorithm reportedly tracks buzzwords and phrases associated with suicide and an alert is sent to Facebook's Safety Center.
"The technology itself isn’t going to send somebody to their house. A person at Facebook would have to do that…"
–Dr. Dan Reidenburg
Twitter
Demi Moore and her followers intervened to stop a suicide that had been announced on Twitter.
Twitter followers of Chicago rapper CupcakKe
alerted authorities after the rapper posted ominous phrases onto
Twitter. She later thanked all of her followers after receiving help.
Forums
A German was prevented from killing himself after Spanish internet users saw him announcing his decision.
Discussion and support groups
The Defense Centers of Excellence have expressed interest in using social media for suicide prevention. Facebook groups have sometimes been set up for suicide prevention purposes, including one that attracted 47,000 members.
Although many teens and preteens encounter suicide-related posts from
peers on different social media apps, they also encounter suicide
prevention hotlines and website links as well.
SAMHSA's Suicide Prevention Lifeline operates on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.
The American Foundation For Suicide Prevention is trying to understand
and prevent suicide through research, education, and advocacy.
A black market in Shinbashi in 1946A black market salesman (fly by night) depicted in graffiti in Kharkiv, Ukraine (2008)Barcelona 2015
A black market, underground economy, or shadow economy is a clandestinemarket
or series of transactions that has some aspect of illegality or is
characterized by noncompliance with an institutional set of rules. If
the rule defines the set of goods and services whose production and
distribution is prohibited or restricted by law, non-compliance with the
rule constitutes a black market trade since the transaction itself is
illegal. Parties engaging in the production or distribution of
prohibited goods and services are members of the illegal economy. Examples include the illegal drug trade, prostitution (where prohibited), illegal currency transactions, and human trafficking. Violations of the tax code involving income tax evasion constitute membership in the unreported economy.
Because tax evasion
or participation in a black market activity is illegal, participants
attempt to hide their behavior from the government or regulatory
authority. Cash is the preferred medium of exchange in illegal transactions since cash transactions are less-easily traced.
Common motives for operating in black markets are to trade contraband,
avoid taxes and regulations, or skirt price controls or rationing.
Typically the totality of such activity is referred to with the definite
article, e.g. "the black market in bush meat".
The black market is distinct from the grey market,
in which commodities are distributed through channels that, while
legal, are unofficial, unauthorized, or unintended by the original
manufacturer, and the white market, in which trade is legal and official.
Black money is the proceeds of an illegal transaction, on which income and other taxes have not been paid, and which can only be legitimised by some form of money laundering. Because of the clandestine nature of the black economy it is not possible to determine its size and scope.
Background
Mercado Negro, so called "Black Market", in La Paz, Bolivia
The literature on the black market has not established a common
terminology and has instead offered many synonyms including:
subterranean, hidden, grey, shadow, informal, clandestine, illegal, unobserved, unreported, unrecorded, second, parallel, and black.
There is no single underground economy; there are many. These
underground economies are omnipresent, existing in market-oriented as
well as in centrally planned nations, be they developed or developing.
Those engaged in underground activities circumvent, escape, or are
excluded from the institutional system of rules, rights, regulations,
and enforcement penalties that govern formal agents engaged in
production and exchange. Different types of underground activities are
distinguished according to the particular institutional rules that they
violate:
the illegal economy
the unreported economy
the unrecorded economy
the informal economy
The "illegal economy" consists of economic activities pursued in
violation of legal statutes that define the scope of legitimate forms of
commerce. Illegal economy participants produce and distribute
prohibited goods and services, such as drugs, weapons, and prostitution.
The "unreported economy" circumvents or evades institutionally
established fiscal rules as codified in the tax code. A summary measure
of the unreported economy is the amount of income that should be
reported to the tax authority but is not so reported. A complementary
measure of the unreported economy is the "tax gap":
the difference between the amount of tax revenues due the fiscal
authority and the amount of tax revenue actually collected. In the U.S.
unreported income is estimated to be $2 trillion resulting in a "tax
gap" of $450–600 billion.
The "unrecorded economy" circumvents the institutional rules that
define the reporting requirements of government statistical agencies.
A summary measure of the unrecorded economy is the amount of unrecorded
income, namely the amount of income that should (under existing rules
and conventions) be recorded in national accounting systems (e.g. National Income and Product Accounts) but is not. Unrecorded income is a particular problem in transition countries that switched from a socialist accounting system to UN standard national accounting. New methods have been proposed for estimating the size of the unrecorded (non-observed) economy. But there is still little consensus concerning the size of the unreported economies of transition countries.
The "informal economy"
circumvents the costs of, and is excluded from the benefits and rights
incorporated in, the laws and administrative rules covering property
relationships, commercial licensing, labor contracts, torts, financial
credit, and social security systems. A summary measure of the informal economy is the income generated by economic agents that operate informally. The informal sector is the part of an economy that is not taxed, monitored by government, or included in gross national product (GNP), unlike the formal economy. In developed countries the informal sector is characterized by unreported employment. This is hidden from the state for tax, social security, or labour law purposes but is legal in other aspects.
The term black market can also be used in reference to a specific part of the economy in which contraband is traded.
Pricing
Goods
and services acquired illegally and/or transacted for in an illegal
manner may exchange above or below the price of legal market
transactions:
They may be cheaper than legal market prices. The supplier
does not have to pay for production costs and/or taxes. This is usually
the case in the underground economy. Criminals steal goods and sell
them below the legal market price, but there is no receipt, guarantee,
and so forth. When someone is hired to perform work and the client is
unable to write off the expense (particularly common for work such as home renovations or cosmetological
services), the client may be inclined to request a lower price (usually
paid in cash) in exchange for foregoing a receipt, which enables the
service provider to avoid reporting the income on his or her tax return.
They may be more expensive than legal market prices. For example, if
the product is difficult to acquire or produce, dangerous to handle, is
strictly rationed, or is not easily available legally if at all. If
exchange of goods are made illegal by some sort of state sanction, such as with certain drugs, their prices will tend to rise as a result of that sanction.
Consumer issues
No
government, no global nonprofit, no multinational enterprise can
seriously claim to be able to replace the 1.8 billion jobs created by
the economic underground. In truth, the best hope for growth in most
emerging economies lies in the shadows.
Even when the underground market offers lower prices, consumers may still buy on the legal market when possible, because:
They may prefer legal suppliers, as these are strictly regulated
and easier to contact. In contrast, black market vendors are
unregulated and difficult to hold accountable in case of fault in the
product(s) and/or service(s) they render;
In some jurisdictions, such as the United States, customers may be charged with a criminal offense if they knowingly participate in the black economy, even as a consumer;
They may have a moral dislike of black marketing;
In some jurisdictions (such as England and Wales),
consumers found to be in possession of stolen goods will have them
taken away if they are traced, even if they did not know they were
stolen. Though they themselves will not usually face criminal
prosecution, they are still left without the goods they paid for and
with little if any recourse to get their money back. This risk may make
some averse to buying goods that they think may be from the underground
market, even if in fact they are legitimate (for example, items sold at a
car boot sale).
However, in some situations, consumers conclude that they are better
off using black market services, particularly when government
regulations hinder what would otherwise be a legitimate competitive
service. For example, in Baltimore, many consumers actively prefer illegal taxi cabs, citing that they are more available, convenient, and priced fairly.
Traded goods and services
Some examples of underground economic activities include:
Prostitution
is illegal or highly regulated in many countries. This demonstrates the
underground economy, because of consistent high demand from customers,
relatively high pay, but labor-intensive and low skilled work, which
attracts a continual supply of workers. While prostitution exists in
every country, studies show that it tends to flourish more in poorer
countries, and in areas with large numbers of unattached men, such as
around military bases.
For instance, an empirical study showed that the supply of prostitutes
rose abruptly in Denver and Minneapolis in 2008 when the Democratic and
Republican National Conventions took place there.
Prostitutes in the black market generally operate with some
degree of secrecy, sometimes negotiating prices and activities through codewords and subtle gestures. In countries such as Germany or the Netherlands,
where prostitution is legal but regulated, illegal prostitutes exist
whose services are offered cheaper without regard for the legal
requirements or procedures—health checks, standards of accommodation,
and so on.
In other countries, such as Nicaragua, where legal prostitution is regulated, hotels may require both parties to identify themselves, to prevent child prostitution.
Personal information
Personally identifying information, financial information like credit card and bank account information, and medical data is bought and sold, mostly in darknet markets.
People increase the value of the stolen data by aggregating it with
publicly available data, and sell it again for a profit, increasing the
damage that can be done to the people whose data was stolen.
From the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many countries began to ban the possession or use of some recreational drugs, such as in the United States' war on drugs.
Many people nonetheless continue to use illegal drugs, and a black
market exists to supply them. Despite law enforcement efforts to
intercept them, demand remains high, providing a large profit motive for organized criminal groups to keep drugs supplied. The United Nations has reported that the retail market value of illegal drugs is $482 billion.
Although law enforcement agencies intercept a fraction of illegal
drugs, and incarcerate hundreds of thousands of wholesale and retail
sellers, the very stable demand for such drugs and the high profit
margins encourages new distributors to enter the market without a
decrease in the retail price. Drug legalization activists draw parallels between the illegal drug trade and the Prohibition of alcohol in the United States in the 1920s.
A tower of confiscated smuggled weapons about to be incinerated in Nairobi, Kenya
The laws of many countries forbid or restrict the personal ownership of weapons. These restrictions can range from small knives to firearms, either altogether or by classification (e.g. caliber, handguns, automatic weapons, and explosives).
The black market supplies the demands for weaponry that can not be
obtained legally, or may only be obtained legally after obtaining
permits and paying fees. This may be by smuggling
the arms from countries where they were bought legally or stolen, or by
stealing from arms manufacturers within the country itself, using
insiders. In cases where the underground economy is unable to smuggle
firearms, they can also satisfy requests by gunsmithing their own firearms. Those who may buy this way include criminals
to use for illegal activities, gun collectors, and otherwise
law-abiding citizens interested in protecting their dwellings, families,
or businesses.
In England and Wales, certain categories of weapons used for
hunting may be owned by qualified residents but must be registered with
the local police force and kept within a locked cabinet. Among those who
may purchase weapons on the black market are people who are unable to
pass the legal requirements for registration—convicted felons or those
suffering from mental illness for example.
In many developing countries, living animals are captured in the wild
and sold as pets. Wild animals are also hunted and killed for their meat, hide, and organs, the latter of which and other animal parts are sold for use in traditional medicine.
In several states in the United States, laws requiring the pasteurization of milk have created black markets in raw milk, and sometimes in raw-milk cheese which is legal in a number of EU countries but banned in the U.S. if aged less than 60 days.
Broken barrels of liquor after a police raid in 1925, in Elk Lake, Ontario
Rum-running, or bootlegging, is the illegal business of transporting (smuggling) alcoholic beverages where such transportation is forbidden by law. Smuggling is usually done to circumvent taxation or prohibition laws. The term rum-running is more commonly applied to smuggling over water; bootlegging is applied to smuggling over land. According to the PBS documentary Prohibition,
the term "bootlegging" was popularized when thousands of city dwellers
would sell liquor from flasks they kept in their boot leg all across
major cities and rural areas. The term "rum-running" most likely originated at the start of Prohibition in the United States (1920–1933), when ships from Bimini in the western Bahamas transported cheap Caribbean rum to Florida speakeasies. Rum's cheapness made it a low-profit item for the rum-runners, and they moved on to smuggling Canadian whisky, French champagne, and English gin to major cities like New York City and Boston, where prices ran high. It was said that some ships carried $200,000 (roughly equivalent to U$4.5 million in 2022 ) in contraband in a single run.
Tobacco
United Kingdom
The
United Kingdom has some of the highest taxes on tobacco products in the
world and strict limits on the amount of tobacco that can be imported
duty-free from other countries, leading to widespread attempts to
smuggle relatively cheap tobacco from low tax countries into the U.K.
Such smuggling efforts range from vacationers concealing relatively
small quantities of tobacco in their luggage to large-scale enterprises
linked to organized crime.
British authorities have aggressively tried to detect and confiscate
such illegal imports, and to prosecute those caught. Nevertheless, it
has been reported that "27% of cigarettes and 68% of roll your own
tobacco is purchased on the black market".
United States
Smuggling one truckload of cigarettes from a low-tax U.S. state to a high-tax state can result in a profit of up to $3 million.
Because traffic crossing U.S. state borders is not usually stopped or
inspected to the same extent as happens at the country's international
borders, interdicting this sort of smuggling (especially without causing
major disruption to interstate commerce) is difficult. Low-tax states
are generally the major tobacco producers, and have come under criticism
for their reluctance to increase taxes. North Carolina
eventually agreed to raise its taxes from 5 cents to 35 cents per pack
of 20 cigarettes, although this remains far below the national average. As of 2010, South Carolina has refused to follow suit and raise taxes from seven cents per pack (the lowest in the USA).
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), illegal organ trade occurs when organs are removed from the body for the purpose of commercial transactions. The WHO
justifies its stance on the issue by stating, "Payment for... organs is
likely to take unfair advantage of the poorest and most vulnerable
groups, undermines altruistic donation and leads to profiteering and
human trafficking." Despite prohibitions, it was estimated that 5% of all organ recipients engaged in commercial organ transplant in 2005. Research indicates that illegal organ trade is on the rise, with a recent report by Global Financial Integrity estimating that the illegal organ trade generates profits between $600 million and $1.2 billion per year across many countries.
A racket is a service that is fraudulently
offered to solve a problem, such as for a problem that does not
actually exist or that would not otherwise exist if the racket did not
exist. Conducting a racket is called racketeering.
The potential problem may be caused by the same party that offers to
solve it, although that fact may be concealed, with the intent to
engender continual patronage for the racketeer. An archetype is the protection racket,
wherein a person or group (e.g., a criminal gang) indicates to a store
owner that they could protect her/his store from potential damage,
damage that the same person or group would otherwise inflict, while the
correlation of threat and protection may be more or less deniably
veiled, distinguishing it from the more direct act of extortion.
Racketeering is often associated with organized crime. The term was coined by the Employers' Association of Chicago in June 1927 in a statement about the influence of organized crime in the Teamsters union.
Where taxicabs, buses, and other transportation providers are
strictly regulated or monopolized by government, a black market
typically flourishes to provide transportation to poorly served or
overpriced communities. In the United States, some cities restrict entry
to the taxicab market with a medallion system (taxicabs must get a
special license and display it on a medallion in the vehicle). In most
such jurisdictions it is legal to sell the medallions, but the limited
supply and resulting high prices of medallions have led to a market in
unlicensed carpooling/illegal taxicab operation. In Baltimore, Maryland, for example, it is not uncommon for private individuals to provide illegal taxicab service for city residents.
Housing rental
In places where there is rent control and subsidized affordable housing,
which provide housing below the market cost, there may be a black
market for housing rentals. For instance, in the UK there is illegal subletting of social housing homes where the tenant illegally rents out the government-subsidized home at a higher rent. In Sweden, rental contracts with regulated rent can be bought on the black market,
either from the current tenant or sometimes directly from the property
owner. Specialised black-market dealers assist the property owners with
such transactions.
Counterfeit medicine, essential aircraft and automobile parts
A street vendor in Thailand has set up a display of illegal copies of DVD movies.
Street vendors in countries where there is little enforcement of copyright law, particularly in Asia and Latin America, often sell copies of films, music CDs, and computer software such as video games,
sometimes even before the official release of the title. A determined
counterfeiter with a few hundred dollars can make copies that are
digitally identical to an original with no loss in quality; innovations
in consumer DVD and CD writers and the widespread availability of cracks on the Internet for most forms of copy protection technology make this cheap and easy to do.
Copyright-holders and other proponents of copyright laws have
found this phenomenon hard to stop through the courts, as the operations
are distributed and widespread,
traversing national borders and thus legal systems. Since digital
information can be duplicated repeatedly with no loss of quality, and
passed on electronically at little to no cost, the effective underground
market value of media is zero, differentiating it from nearly all other
forms of underground economic activity. The issue is compounded by
widespread indifference to enforcing copyright law, both with
governments and the public at large. To steal a car is seen as a crime
in most people's eyes, but to obtain unauthorized copies of music or a
game is not. Additionally, not all people agree
with copyright laws, on the grounds that they unfairly criminalize
competition, allowing the copyright-holder to effectively monopolize
related industries. Copyright-holders also may use region-coding to discriminate against selected populations price-wise and availability-wise.
The comparison to car-theft, although common, is not truly
analogous. Automobile theft results in an item being removed from the
owner with the ownership transferred to a second party. Media piracy is a
crime of duplication, with no physical property being stolen. Copyright
infringement law goes as far as to deem illegal "mixtapes"
and other such material copied to tape or disk. Copyright holders
typically attest the act of theft to be in the profits forgone to the
pirates. However, this makes the unsubstantiated assumption that the
pirates would have bought the copyrighted material if it had not been
available through file sharing
or other means. Copyright holders also say that they did work creating
their copyrighted material and they wish to get compensated for their
work. No other system than copyright has been found to compensate
artists and other creators for their work,
and many artists do not have an alternative source of income or another
job. Many artists and film producers have accepted the role of piracy
in media distribution.
The spread of material through file sharing is a source of publicity
for artists and builds fan bases that may be inclined to see the
performer live (live performances make up the bulk of successful artists' revenues,
however not all artists can make live performances, for example
photographers typically only have a single source of income: the
licensing of their photos).
Money itself may be subject to a black market. Money may be
exchangeable for a differing amount of the same currency if it has been
acquired illegally and needs to be laundered before the money can be used. Counterfeit money may be sold for a lesser amount of genuine currency.
The rate of exchange between a local and foreign currency may be subject to a black market, often described as a "parallel exchange rate" or similar terms. This may happen for one or more of several reasons:
The government sets ("pegs") the local currency at some
arbitrary level to another currency that does not reflect its true
market value. Certain purchases of foreign currency may be permitted at
the official rate; otherwise a less favourable black market rate
applies.
A government makes it difficult or illegal for its citizens to own much or any foreign currency.
The government taxes officially exchanging the local currency for another currency, or vice versa.
A government may officially set the rate of exchange of its currency
with that of other, "harder" currencies. When it does so, the peg may
overvalue the local currency relative to what its market value would be
if it were a floating currency. Those in possession of the harder currency, for example expatriate workers, may be able to use the black market to buy the local currency at better exchange rates than they can get officially.
In situations of financial instability and inflation, citizens may substitute a foreign currency for the local currency. The U.S. dollar
is viewed as a relatively stable and safe currency and is often used
abroad as a second currency. In 2012, US$340 billion, roughly 37 percent of all U.S. currency, was believed to be circulating abroad. The most recent study of the amount of currency held overseas suggests that only 25 percent of U.S. currency was held abroad in 2014. The widespread substitution of U.S. currency for local currency is known as de factodollarisation, and has been observed in transition countries such as Cambodia and in some Latin American countries.
Some countries, such as Ecuador, abandoned their local currency and use
U.S. dollars, essentially for this reason, a process known as de jure dollarization. (See also the example of the Ghanaian cedi from the 1970s and 1980s.)
If foreign currency is difficult or illegal for local citizens to
acquire, they will pay a premium to acquire it. U.S. currency is viewed
as a relatively stable store of value and, since it does not leave a
paper trail, it is also a convenient medium of exchange for both illegal transactions and for unreported income both in the U.S and abroad.
More recently cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin have been used as a medium of exchange in black market transactions. Cryptocurrencies are sometimes favored over centralized currency due to their anonymous nature and their ability to be traded over the Internet.
Fuel
A black market fuel vendor in Tunisia sells smuggled gasoline to a passerby at a roadside stand.
In the EU, it is not illegal for a person or business to buy fuel in
one EU state for their own use in another, but as with other goods the
tax will generally be payable by the final customer at the physical
place of making the purchase.
Between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, there has often been a black market in petrol and diesel.
The direction of smuggling can change depending on variation in the taxes and the exchange rate between the Republic's euro (and previously punt) and Northern Ireland's pound sterling; indeed sometimes diesel will be smuggled in one direction and petrol the other.
In some countries, diesel fuel for agricultural vehicles or
domestic use is taxed at a much lower rate than that for other vehicles.
This is known as dyed fuel,
because a coloured dye is added so it can be detected if used in other
vehicles (e.g. a red dye in the UK, a green dye in Ireland). The saving
is attractive enough to make for a black market in agricultural diesel,
which was estimated in 2007 to cost the UK £350 million annually in
lost tax.
In countries including India and Nepal, the price of fuel is set
by the government, and it is illegal to sell the fuel at a higher price.
During the petrol crisis in Nepal, black marketing in fuel became
common, especially during mass petrol shortage. At times, people queued
for hours or even overnight to get fuel. Petrol pump operators were
alleged to hoard the fuel and sell it to black marketeers. Black
marketing in vehicle/cooking fuel became widespread during the 2015 Nepal blockade;
even after it was eased and petrol imports resumed, people were not
getting the fuel as intended, and resorted to the black market.
Sex toys
In
some countries including Saudi Arabia, Thailand, and India sex toys are
illegal, and are sold illegally, without compliance with regulations on
safety, etc. Platforms used to sell sex toys on the black market include
consumer-to-consumer online auction websites and private pages on
social media websites. In black market venues in Cambodia, sex toys have been seized alongside aphrodisiac products. It has been suggested that if efforts in North America to ban realistic-looking sexbots succeed, it may result in a black market.
People engaged in the black market may run their business hidden behind a front business that is not illegal.
Often certain types of illegal products are traded for each other, depending on the geographical location.
Causes
Wars
Black markets flourish during wartime. States engaged in total war or other large-scale, extended wars often impose restrictions on use of critical resources that are needed for the war effort, such as food, gasoline, rubber, metal, etc., typically through rationing. A black market then develops to supply rationed goods at exorbitant prices. The rationing and price controls enforced in many countries during World War II encouraged widespread black market activity. One source of black-market meat under wartime rationing was by farmers declaring fewer domestic animal births to the Ministry of Food
than actually happened. Another in Britain was supplies from the U.S.,
intended only for use in U.S. army bases on British land, but leaked
into the local native British black market.
For example, in the Parliament of the United Kingdom on February 17, 1945, members said that "the whole turkey production of East Anglia
had gone to the black market" and "prosecutions [for black-marketing]
were like trying to stop a leak in a battleship", and it was said that
official prices of such foods were set so low that their producers often
sold their produce on the black market for higher prices; one such
route (seen to operate at the market at Diss, Norfolk)
was to sell live poultry to members of the public; each purchaser would
sign a form promising that he was buying the birds to breed from, but
then take them home for eating.
During the Vietnam war, American soldiers would spend Military Payment Certificates on maid service and sexual entertainment.
Also if a Vietnamese civilian wanted something that was hard to get, he
would buy it at double the price from one of the soldiers, who had a
monthly ration card and thus had access to the military stores. The transactions ran through
the on-base maids to the local populace. Although these activities were
illegal, only flagrant or large-scale black-marketeers were prosecuted
by the military.
Laws and regulations
A classic example of new regulation creating a black market is the prohibition of alcohol. When such a law disappears, so does the black market. Sin taxes — taxes levied on harmfully deemed products such as alcohol and tobacco — may increase the black market supply.
One argument for marijuana legalization is the elimination of the black
market, resulting in taxes from that economy being available for the
government.
The Industrial Revolution in Scotland was the transition to
new manufacturing processes and economic expansion between the
mid-eighteenth century and the late nineteenth century. By the start of
the eighteenth century, a political union between Scotland and England
became politically and economically attractive, promising to open up the
much larger markets of England, as well as those of the growing British Empire, resulting in the Treaty of Union of 1707. There was a conscious attempt among the gentry and nobility to improve agriculture in Scotland. New crops were introduced and enclosures began to displace the run rig
system and free pasture. The economic benefits of union were very slow
to appear, some progress was visible, such as the sales of linen and
cattle to England, the cash flows from military service, and the tobacco
trade that was dominated by Glasgow after 1740. Merchants who profited
from the American trade began investing in leather, textiles, iron,
coal, sugar, rope, sailcloth, glass-works, breweries, and soap-works,
setting the foundations for the city's emergence as a leading industrial
center after 1815.
The linen industry was Scotland's premier industry in the
eighteenth century and formed the basis for the later cotton, jute, and
woolen industries. Encouraged and subsidized by the Board of Trustees
so it could compete with German products, merchant entrepreneurs became
dominant in all stages of linen manufacturing and built up the market
share of Scottish linens, especially in the American colonial market.
Historians often emphasize that the flexibility and dynamism of the
Scottish banking system contributed significantly to the rapid
development of the economy in the nineteenth century. At first the
leading industry, based in the west, was the spinning and weaving of
cotton. After the cutting off of supplies of raw cotton from 1861 as a
result of the American Civil War
Scottish entrepreneurs and engineers, and its large stock of easily
mined coal, the country diversified into engineering, shipbuilding, and
locomotive construction, with steel replacing iron after 1870. As a
result, Scotland became a center for engineering, shipbuilding and the
production of locomotives.
Scotland was already one of the most urbanized societies in
Europe by 1800. Glasgow became one of the largest cities in the world,
and known as "the Second City of the Empire" after London. Dundee
upgraded its harbor and established itself as an industrial and trading
center. The industrial developments, while they brought work and
wealth, were so rapid that housing, town-planning, and provision for
public health did not keep pace with them, and for a time living
conditions in some of the towns and cities were notoriously bad, with
overcrowding, high infant mortality, and growing rates of tuberculosis.
Owners to support government sponsored housing programs as well as
self-help projects among the respectable working class. Even with the
growth of industry there were insufficient good jobs, as a result,
during the period 1841–1931, about two million Scots emigrated to North
America and Australia, and another 750,000 Scots relocated to England.
By the twenty-first century, there were about as many people who were Scottish Canadians and Scottish Americans as the five million remaining in Scotland.
By the start of the eighteenth century, a political union between
Scotland and England became politically and economically attractive,
promising to open up the much larger markets of England, as well as
those of the growing British Empire. The Scottish parliament voted on 6 January 1707, by 110 to 69 to adopt the Treaty of Union.
It was a full economic union. Most of its 25 articles dealt with
economic arrangements for the new state known as "Great Britain". It
added 45 Scots to the 513 members of the House of Commons of Great Britain
and 16 Scots to the 190 members of the House of Lords, and ended the
Scottish parliament. It also replaced the Scottish systems of currency,
taxation and laws regulating trade with laws made in London. England had
about five times the population of Scotland at the time, and about 36
times as much wealth.
Major factors that facilitated industrialisation in Scotland
included cheap and abundant labour; natural resources that included
coal, blackband ironstone and potential water power; the development of new technologies, among them the steam engine
and markets that would buy Scottish products. Other factors that also
contributed to the process included the improvement of transport links,
which helped facilitated the movement of goods, an extensive banking
system, and the widespread adoption of ideas about economic development
with their origins in the Scottish Enlightenment.
In the eighteenth century, the Scottish Enlightenment brought the country to the front of intellectual achievement in Europe.
The focus of the Scottish Enlightenment ranged from intellectual and
economic matters to the specifically scientific. Adam Smith developed
and published The Wealth of Nations, the first work of modern economics. It had an immediate impact on British economic policy and still frames discussions on globalisation and tariffs. Key scientific work included the discoveries of William Cullen, physician and chemist; James Anderson, an agronomist; Joseph Black, physicist and chemist; and James Hutton, the first modern geologist. While the Scottish Enlightenment is traditionally considered to have concluded toward the end of the eighteenth century,
disproportionately large Scottish contributions to British science and
letters continued for another 50 years or more, thanks to such figures
as James Hutton, James Watt, William Murdoch, James Clerk Maxwell and Lord Kelvin.
An 1851 illustration showing the reaping machine developed by Patrick Bell
After the union with England in 1707, there was a conscious attempt
among the gentry and nobility to improve agriculture in Scotland. The
Society of Improvers was founded in 1723, including in its 300 members
dukes, earls, lairds and landlords.
In the first half of the century these changes were limited to tenanted
farms in East Lothian and the estates of a few enthusiasts, such as John Cockburn and Archibald Grant.
Not all were successful, with Cockburn driving himself into bankruptcy,
but the ethos of improvement spread among the landed classes. Haymaking
was introduced along with the English plough and foreign grasses, the
sowing of rye grass and clover. Turnips and cabbages were introduced,
lands enclosed and marshes drained, lime was put down, roads built and
woods planted. Drilling and sowing and crop rotation were introduced. The introduction of the potato to Scotland in 1739 greatly improved the diet of the peasantry. Enclosures began to displace the runrig
system and free pasture. There was increasing specialisation, with the
Lothians became a major centre of grain, Ayrshire of cattle breading and
the borders of sheep. Although some estate holders improved the quality of life of their displaced workers, the Agricultural Revolution led directly to what is increasingly known as the Lowland Clearances,
when hundreds of thousands of cottars and tenant farmers from central
and southern Scotland were forcibly moved from the farms and small
holdings their families had occupied for hundreds of years. Improvement continued in the nineteenth century. Innovations included the first working reaping machine, developed by Patrick Bell in 1828. His rival James Smith
turned to improving sub-soil drainage and developed a method of
ploughing that could break up the subsoil barrier without disturbing the
topsoil. Previously unworkable low-lying carselands could now be
brought into arable production and the result was the even Lowland
landscape that still predominates.
The development of Scottish agriculture meant that Scotland could
support its increased population with food and it released labour that
would take part in industrial production.
Banking
The former headquarters of the British Linen Bank in St Andrews Square, Edinburgh
The first banks formed in Scotland were the Bank of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1695) and the Royal Bank of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1727).
Glasgow would soon follow with branches of its own (notably, the first
was to be Dunlop, Houston & Co. in 1749, known as "the Ship Bank"
for the image of a ship printed on all their bills)
and Scotland had a flourishing financial system by the end of the
century. There were over 400 branches, amounting to one office per 7,000
people, double the level in England. The banks were more lightly
regulated than those in England. Historians often emphasise that the
flexibility and dynamism of the Scottish banking system contributed
significantly to the rapid development of the economy in the nineteenth
century.
As a joint-stock company the British Linen Company had the right to
raise funds through the issue of promissory notes or bonds. With its
bonds functioning as bank notes, the company gradually moved into the
business of lending and discounting to other linen manufacturers, and in
the early 1770s banking became its main activity.
Transport
The
extensive Scottish coastline meant that few parts of the country that
were not within easy reach of sea transportation, particularly the
central belt that would be the heartland of industrial development.
Before the eighteenth century most roads were relatively poor dirt
tracks. In the late eighteenth century there were improvements carried
out by turnpike trusts and the creation of a series of military roads.[2] Canal building also developed, with four major lowland canals: the Forth and Clyde, Union, Monkland and Crinan and further north the Paisley, Caledonian and Inverurie canals, carrying thousands of passengers and tons of goods by the early nineteenth century.
Exports
Ships off Greenock, Scotland (1813) by Robert Salmon
With tariffs with England abolished, the potential for trade for Scottish merchants was considerable, especially with Colonial America.
However, the economic benefits of union were very slow to appear,
primarily because Scotland was too poor to exploit the opportunities of
the greatly expanded free market. Scotland in 1750 was still a poor
rural, agricultural society with a population of 1.3 million. Furthermore, Scotland's economy had been ravaged by the Darien scheme:
according to some estimates, half of all the circulating wealth in
Scotland went into the scheme. Glasgow merchants had been particularly
enthusiastic, and consequently had no ships of their own for twenty
years following the disaster.
Some progress was visible, such as the sales of linen and cattle to
England, the cash flows from military service, and the tobacco trade
that was dominated by Glasgow after 1740. The clippers belonging to the
Glasgow Tobacco Lords were the fastest ships on the route to Virginia. The trade had started as smuggling during the 1600s, but with the Act of Union, it became legal and trade picked up.
Merchants who profited from the American trade began investing in
leather, textiles, iron, coal, sugar, rope, sailcloth, glassworks,
breweries, and soapworks, setting the foundations for the city's
emergence as a leading industrial centre after 1815.
The tobacco trade collapsed during the American Revolution (1776–1783),
when its sources were cut off by the British blockade of American
ports. However, trade with the West Indies began to make up for the loss
of the tobacco business,
reflecting the extensive growth of the cotton industry, the British
demand for sugar and the demand in the West Indies for herring and linen
goods. During 1750–1815, 78 Glasgow merchants not only specialised in
the importation of sugar, cotton, and rum from the West Indies, but
diversified their interests by purchasing West Indian plantations,
Scottish estates, or cotton mills. They were not to be self-perpetuating
due to the hazards of the trade, the incident of bankruptcy, and the
changing complexity of Glasgow's economy.
Other burghs also benefited. Greenock enlarged its port in 1710 and
sent its first ship to the Americas in 1719, but was soon playing a
major part in importing sugar and rum.
Linen
New Lanark, cotton mills and housing on the River Clyde, founded in 1786
Linen manufacture was Scotland's premier industry in the eighteenth century and formed the basis for the later cotton, jute, and woollen industries. Scottish industrial policy was made by the Board of Trustees for Fisheries and Manufactures in Scotland, which sought to build an economy complementary, not competitive, with England. Since England had woolens, this meant linen.
The Scottish members of parliament managed to see off an attempt to
impose an export duty on linen and from 1727 it received subsidies of
£2,750 a year for six years, resulting in a considerable expansion of
the trade. Paisley adopted Dutch methods and became a major centre of
production. Glasgow manufactured for the export trade, which doubled
between 1725 and 1738.
Encouraged and subsidised by the Board of Trustees, so that they
could compete with German products, merchant entrepreneurs became
dominant in all stages of linen manufacturing and built up the market
share of Scottish linens, especially in the American colonial market.
The British Linen Company, established in 1746, was the largest firm in
the Scottish linen industry in the eighteenth century, exporting linen
to England and America.
In 1728, 2.2 million yards of linen cloth had been produced and by 1730
it had already supplanted woollen cloth as the major manufacturing
industry. By 1750 it reached 7.6 million and it peaked at 12.1 million
yards in 1775. However, there were sharp slumps, particularly in the
periods 1734–43 and 1763–72. It was a mainly rural industry, with most
of the manufacture carried out in homes, rather than factories. It
employed perhaps 100,000 people, four out of five of which were women
who spun the flax, while men operated the looms.
The government promoted the use of linen from the late 17th
century: a 1686 Act of Parliament stated that all Scots were to be
buried in Scottish-made linen winding sheets, using Scottish flax. In
1748, an embargo on the import or use of French cambric provided a further boost to the linen industry. By 1770, Glasgow was the largest linen manufacturer in Britain, and in 1787, Calton, Glasgow
was the site of Scotland's first industrial dispute when 7,000 weavers
went on strike in protest against a 25% cut in their wages. The 39th Foot were sent in, and three people were killed.
Sheer linen, which had then come into vogue, was almost
unobtainable in Scotland in the 1780s. In a bid to stay competitive,
Glasgow manufacturers turned to fine cotton muslin, at which they
succeeded so well that it became cheaper than imported Indian muslins. With the popularity of Indian muslins, from the 1760s onwards, had come a fashion for tambour lace, or sewed muslin, which briefly became a flourishing business in Ayrshire, thanks to the enterprising spirit of Mrs Jamieson.
Nineteenth century
A lantern slide, showing later missionary David Livingstone (1813–73) as a cotton piercer around 1825
The economy, long based on agriculture,
began to industrialize after 1790. At first the leading industry, based
in the west, was the production of cotton. After the cutting off of
supplies of raw cotton from 1861 as a result of the American Civil War the country diversified into engineering, shipbuilding, and locomotive construction, with steel replacing iron after 1870.
Cotton
From
about 1790 textiles became the most important industry in the west of
Scotland, especially the spinning and weaving of cotton. The first
cotton spinning mill was opened at Penicuik
in 1778. By 1787 Scotland had 19 mills, 95 by 1795 and there were 192
by 1839. The rise of cotton was the result of a sudden fall in the price
of the raw materials because of slavery, mostly imported from the US,
and the availability of a pool of cheap labour caused by population rise
and migration. In 1775 137,000 lb of raw cotton were being imported
into the Clyde and by 1812 it had increased eightfold to over 11 million
lb. The capital invested in the industry increased sevenfold between
1790 and 1840. By 1800, cotton was the main industry in the Glasgow area: New Lanark mills were at the time the largest in the world. Early production was aided by the new technology of the spinning mule, water frame and water power. Steam powered machines were introduced into the industry from 1782. However, only about a third of workers were employed in factories and it continued to rely heavily on the hand loom
weaver, working in his own home. In 1790 there were about 10,000
weavers involved in cotton manufacture and by 1800 it was 50,000. The cotton industry flourished until in 1861 the American Civil War cut off the supplies of raw cotton. The industry never recovered, but by that time Scotland had developed heavy industries based on its coal and iron resources.
Coal
The headgear at Francis Colliery, Fife
Coal mining became a major industry, and continued to grow into the
twentieth century, producing the fuel to smelt iron, heat homes and
factories and drive steam engines locomotives and steamships. Coal
mining expanded rapidly in the eighteenth century, reaching 700,000 tons
a year by 1750. Most coal was in five fields across the Central Belt. The first Newcomen Steam Engine
was introduced into a Scottish colliery in 1719, but water remained the
most important source of power for most of the century. With increased
demand for household fuel from a growing urban population and the
emerging demands of heavy industry, production grew from an estimated 1 million tons a year in 1775, to 3 million by 1830. Production almost doubled by the 1840s and peaked in 1914 at about 42 million tons a year.
Initially increased production was made possible by the
introduction of cheap labour, provided from the 1830s by large numbers
of Irish immigrants. There were then changes in mining practices, which included the introduction of blasting powder in the 1850s and the use of mechanised methods of transferring the coal to the surface, along with the introduction of steam power in the 1870s. Landed proprietors were replaced by profit-seeking leasehold partnerships and joint-stock companies, whose members were often involved in the emerging iron industry.
By 1914 there were a million coal miners in Scotland. The stereotype
emerged early on of Scottish colliers as brutish, non-religious and
socially isolated serfs;
that was an exaggeration, for their life style resembled coal miners
everywhere, with a strong emphasis on masculinity, egalitarianism, group
solidarity, and support for radical labour movements.
Iron and steel
Map of the Monkland Railways and surrounding lines in 1848
The invention of James Beaumont Neilson's hot blast
process for smelting iron in 1828 revolutionised the Scottish iron
industry, allowing abundant native blackstone iron ore to be smelted
with ordinary coal. In 1830 Scotland had 27 iron furnaces and by 1840 it was 70, 143 in 1850 and it peaked at 171 in 1860. Output was over 2,500,000 tons of iron ore in 1857, 6.5 per cent of UK output. Output of pig iron rose from 797,000 tons in 1854 to peak at 1,206,00 in 1869. As a result, Scotland became a centre for engineering, shipbuilding and the production of locomotives.
In the 1871 census, the workforce in heavy industry overtook textiles
in the Strathclyde region and in 1891 it became the majority employer in
the country. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, steel production
largely replaced iron production.
Railways
Britain
was the world leader in the construction of railways, and their use to
expand trade and coal supplies. The first successful locomotive-powered
line in Scotland, between Monkland and Kirkintilloch,
opened in 1826. By the late 1830s there was a network of railways that
included lines between Dundee and Arbroath, and connecting Glasgow,
Paisley and Ayr. The line between Glasgow and Edinburgh, largely
designed for passenger transport, opened in 1842 and proved highly
successful. By the mid-1840s the mania for railways had begun.
A good passenger service established by the late 1840s, and a network
of freight lines reduced the cost of shipping coal, making products
manufactured in Scotland competitive throughout Britain. The North British Railway was formed in 1844 to link Edinburgh and eastern Scotland with Newcastle and the next year the Caledonian Railway
began connecting Glasgow and the west to Carlisle. The creation of a
dense network in the Lowlands with connections to England would take
until the 1870s to complete.
A series of amalgamations meant that five main companies operated
98 per cent of the system by the 1860s. The capital invested in
Scottish railways was £26.6 million in 1859 and by 1900 it had reached
£166.1 million. The floatation of railway companies was a major factor
in the formation of the Scottish stock exchanges and the rise of share
holding in Scotland and after the early stages drew in large amounts of
English investment. The travel time between Edinburgh or Glasgow and London was cut from 43 hours to 17 and by the 1880s it had been reduced to 8. Railways opened the London market to Scottish beef and milk. They enabled the Aberdeen Angus to become a cattle breed of worldwide reputation.
Shipbuilding
Surviving cranes at the former Fairfield shipyard in Govan
Shipbuilding on Clydeside (the river Clyde through Glasgow and other points) began when the first small yards were opened in 1712 at the Scott family's shipyard at Greenock. Major firms included Denny of Dumbarton, Scotts Shipbuilding and Engineering Company of Greenock, Lithgows of Port Glasgow, Simon and Lobnitz of Renfrew, Alexander Stephen and Sons of Linthouse, Fairfield of Govan, Inglis of Pointhouse, Barclay Curle of Whiteinch, Connell and Yarrow
of Scotstoun. Equally important were the engineering firms that
supplied the machinery to drive these vessels, the boilers and pumps and
steering gear – Rankin & Blackmore, Hastie's and Kincaid's of Greenock, Rowan's of Finnieston, Weir's of Cathcart, Howden's of Tradeston and Babcock & Wilcox of Renfrew.
The biggest customer was Sir William Mackinnon, who ran five shipping
companies in the nineteenth century from his base in Glasgow. The Vulcan works, owned by Robert Napier and Sons were the first to start the production of large passenger iron ships in the 1840s.
In 1835 the Clyde produced only 5 per cent of the ship tonnage
built in Britain. The transition from wooden to iron ships was an uneven
one, with wooden ships still cheaper to build until around 1850 and the
material continued to be used until the 1860s in ships with composite
hulls, like the clipper the Cutty Sark,
which was launched from Dumbarton in 1869. Cost also delayed the
transition from iron to steel shipbuilding and as late as 1879 only
18,000 tons of steel-built shipping was launched on the Clyde, 10 per
cent of all tonnage. A similar process occurred in means of propulsion
with shifts from sail to steam and back again between the 1840s and the
introduction of the more efficient steam turbine engine that became dominant in the mid-1880s. Tonnage increased by more than a factor of six between 1880 and 1914. Production peaked during the First World War and the term "Clyde-built" became synonymous with industrial quality.
The nineteenth century saw some major engineering projects including Thomas Telford's (1757–1834) stone Dean Bridge (1829–31) and iron Craigellachie Bridge (1812–14). In the 1850s the possibilities of new wrought- and cast-iron construction were explored in the building of commercial warehouses in Glasgow. This adopted a round-arched Venetian
style first used by Alexander Kirkland (1824–92) at the heavily
ornamented 37–51 Miller Street (1854) and translated into iron in John
Baird I's Gardner's Warehouse (1855–56), with an exposed iron frame and
almost uninterrupted glazing. Most industrial buildings avoided this
cast-iron aesthetic, like William Spence's (1806?–83) Elgin Engine Works built in 1856–58, using massive rubble blocks.
The most important engineering project was the Forth Bridge, a cantilever railway bridge over the Firth of Forth in the east of Scotland, 14 kilometres (9 mi) west of central Edinburgh. Construction of a suspension bridge designed by Thomas Bouch (1822–80), was stopped after the collapse of another of his works, the Tay Bridge in 1847. The project was taken over by John Fowler (1817–98) and Benjamin Baker (1840–1907), who designed a structure that was built by Glasgow-based company Sir William Arrol & Co.
from 1883. It was opened on 4 March 1890, and spans a total length of
2,528.7 metres (8,296 ft). It was the first major structure in Britain
to be constructed of steel; its contemporary, the Eiffel Tower was built of wrought iron.
A map of Glasgow, the "second city of the Empire", in 1878
The census conducted by the Reverend Alexander Webster in 1755 showed the inhabitants of Scotland as 1,265,380 persons. By the time of the first decadal census in 1801, the population was 1,608,420. It grew steadily in the nineteenth century, to 2,889,000 in 1851 and 4,472,000 in 1901.
While population fell in some rural areas as a result of the
agricultural revolution, it rose rapidly in the towns. Aberdeen, Dundee
and Glasgow all grew by a third or more between 1755 and 1775 and the
textile town of Paisley more than doubled its population. Scotland was already one of the most urbanised societies in Europe by 1800.
In 1800, 17 per cent of people in Scotland lived in towns of more than
10,000 inhabitants. By 1850 it was 32 per cent and by 1900 it was 50 per
cent. By 1900 one in three of the entire population were in the four
cities of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen.
Glasgow emerged as the largest city. Its population in 1780 was
43,000, reaching 147,000 by 1820; by 1901 it had grown to 762,000. This
was due to a high birth rate and immigration from the countryside and
particularly from Ireland; but from the 1870s there was a fall in the
birth rate and lower rates of migration and much of the growth was due
to longer life expectancy. Glasgow was now one of the largest cities in the world, and it became known as "the Second City of the Empire" after London.
Evidence of high infant mortality on an Edinburgh gravestone
Dundee
upgraded its harbour and established itself as an industrial and
trading centre. Dundee's industrial heritage was based on "the three
Js": jute, jam and journalism. East-central Scotland became too heavily
dependent on linens, hemp, and jute. Despite the cyclical nature of the
trade which periodically ruined weaker companies, profits held up well
in the nineteenth century. Typical firms were family affairs, even after
the introduction of limited liability in the 1890s. The profits helped
make the city an important source of overseas investment, especially in
North America. However, the profits were seldom invested locally, apart
from the linen trade. The reasons were that low wages limited local
consumption, and because there were no important natural resources; thus
the Dundee region offered little opportunity for profitable industrial
diversification.
The industrial developments, while they brought work and wealth,
were so rapid that housing, town-planning, and provision for public
health did not keep pace with them, and for a time living conditions in
some of the towns and cities were notoriously bad, with overcrowding,
high infant mortality, and growing rates of tuberculosis.
Mortality rates were high compared with England and other European
nations. Evidence suggests a national death rate of 30 per 1,000 in
1755, 24 in the 1790s and 22 in the early 1860s. Mortality tended to be
much higher in urban than rural settlements. The first time these were
measured, 1861–82, in the four major cities these were 28.1 per 1,000
and 17.9 in rural areas. Mortality probably peaked in Glasgow in the
1840s, when large inflows of population from the Highlands and Ireland
combined population outgrowing sanitary provision and combining with
outbreaks of epidemic disease. National rates began to fall in the
1870s, particularly in the cities, as environmental conditions improved.
The companies attracted rural workers, as well as immigrants from
Catholic Ireland, by inexpensive company housing that was a dramatic
move upward from the inner-city slums. This paternalistic policy led
many owners to support government sponsored housing programs as well as
self-help projects among the respectable working class.
Class identity
The Carron Company trademark on the Carron Works, the objective of the 1820 Radical War
One of the consequences of industrialisation and urbanisation was the development of a distinct skilled working class.
W. H. Fraser argues that the emergence of a class identity can be
located to the period before the 1820s, when cotton workers in
particular were involved in a series of political protests and events.
This led to the Radical War
of 1820, in which a declaration of a provisional government by three
weavers coincided with a strike by Glasgow cotton workers. The climax of
the five-day war was a march from Glasgow Green to Falkirk to take control of the Carron Iron Works. It ended in a cavalry charge by government forces at Bonnymuir.
The result was a discouragement of direct political action by workers,
although attempts at political reform continued in movements like Chartism and the short hours movement in the 1830s.
From the 1830s the political influence of the working classes was
expanded through the widening of the franchise, industrial action and
the growth and organisation of trade unionism. There were less than
5,000 eligible voters in Scotland before the 1832 Reform Act saw the enlargement of the franchise to include middle-class men of business. The 1868 Act brought in skilled artisans and that of 1884 admitted many farm workers, crofters, miners and unskilled men. These changes were supported by trade unions,
which developed from the mid-century. Concerted industrial action was
undertaken by spinners in the cotton industry in 1836-7 after a collapse
of foreign markets led to wage cuts, but was ultimately defeated by the
factory owners. The most sustained industrial action was in the mining
industry, where the owners controlled employment as well as housing and
retail trade through the truck system. In 1887 colliers in the west of Scotland won a major victory over both wages and rents.
Scottish trade unionism in the nineteenth century differed from that in
the rest of Britain in that unions were often small and highly
localised and lacked higher industrial and national organisation.
Trade councils were established in Edinburgh in 1853 and in Glasgow in
1858 in an attempt to organise on a regional basis, but were often
ineffectual. The new unionism
of the last two decades of the century saw the dockers and railwaymen
organise a network of regional and national support, but this began to
wain towards the end of the century and the situation of union
parochialism would remain the dominant mode until union amalgamations
got under way after 1914.
Women
Illustration of power loom weaving in 1835, showing an idealised view of women working in a clean and spacious environment
The industrialisation of Scotland had a major impact of the roles of
women. Women and girls formed a much higher proportion of the workforce
than elsewhere in Britain and were the majority of workers in some
industries. The expansion of flax spinning and the rise of linen
industry in the eighteenth century was almost totally dependent on
female labour and the situation was similar in the sewed muslin
industry in the West of Scotland towards the end of the century. When
flax spinning became mechanised the proportion of men to women was
100:280, the highest proportion of women in the United Kingdom. In
Dundee in the 1840s, while male employment increased by a factor of 1.6,
female employment went up by 2.5, making it the only large town in
Scotland with the majority of its female population in paid employment.
In cotton in the nineteenth century women and girls accounted for 61 per
cent of the workforce in Scottish mills, compared with 50 per cent in
Lancashire. Although most women were employed in the textile industries,
they were also a significant proportion of the workforce in other
areas, making up 12 per cent of underground workers in mining, compared
with 4 per cent in Britain overall.
The expanded opportunities for women, and the extra income they and
children brought into the household, probably did the most to help
increase living standards for working-class families.
The role of women in workforce peaked in the 1830s. As heavy industry began to dominate there were less opportunities for women.
From the mid-nineteenth century there were a series of laws that
limited female roles in industry, beginning with the Mines Regulation
Act of 1842, which prevented them from working underground. This put
2,500 women out of work in the east of Scotland, causing real hardship
as their contribution to the family economy was vital. This was followed
by a series of factory acts that placed restrictions on the employment
of women. Many of these acts were brought in because of pressure from
trade unions who were attempting to secure a living wage for their male
members. Women had relatively little involvement in official trade
unions for much of the period of industrialisation. However, they were
frequently involved in unofficial disputes, the first being recorded in
1768 and of which there are known to have been 300 strikes that involved
women between 1850 and 1914. Towards the end of the century there were
increasing attempts to unionise women. The Scottish Women's Trade
Council (SWTC) was formed in 1887. From this emerged the Women's Protective and Provident League (WPPL) and the Glasgow Council for Women's Trades
(GCWT). In 1893, the National Federal Council of Scotland for Women's
Trades (NFCSWT) was established and the Scottish Council for Women's
Trades (SCWT) in 1900. By 1895 the NFCSWT alone had an affiliated
membership of 100,000.
Migration
"First Scottish Colony for New Zealand" – 1839 poster advertising emigration from Scotland to New Zealand
The growth of industry resulted in the arrival of large numbers of
workers from Ireland who moved into the factories and mines in the 1830s
and 1840s. Many were seasonal workers employed as navvies on the construction of docks, canals and then railways. An estimated 60–70 per cent of colliers in Lanarkshire were Irish by the 1840s. The arrivals intensified with the Great Famine of 1845.
By the census of 1841, 126,321, or 4.6 per cent of Scotland's
population, had been born in Ireland and many more were of Irish
descent. Most were concentrated in the west of Scotland, and in Glasgow
there were 44,000 people who were born in Ireland, 16 per cent of the
city's population. Most Irish immigrants, about three quarters, were Catholic,
leading to a major cultural and religious change in Scotland, but a
quarter were Protestant, eventually bringing with them institutions like
the Orange Order and intensifying a sectarian divide in the major cities.
Even with the growth of industry there were insufficient good jobs,
which with major changes in agriculture, meant that during the period
1841–1931, about two million Scots emigrated to North America and
Australasia, and another 750,000 Scots relocated to England.
Of those who migrated to non-European locations in the century before
1914, 44 per cent went to the US, 28 per cent to Canada, and 25 per cent
to Australia and New Zealand. Other important locations included the
Caribbean, India and South Africa. By the twenty-first century, there were about as many people who were Scottish Canadians and Scottish Americans as the five million remaining in Scotland. There was little support from the government and in the early stages many migrants agreed to indentures, particularly to the Thirteen Colonies,
that paid for their passage and guaranteed accommodation and work for
five or seven years. Later immigration was assisted by agents and
societies, such as the Salvation Army, Barnados and the Aberdeen Ladies Union, who often focused on the young or female immigrants.
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