Year: 1979 Language: English Author: Sidney Pollard; Paul Robertson Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 9780674436152,9780674436145 Format: PDF Quality: Scanned pages Pages count: 328 Description: There is a high level of agreement among historians as to the chief trends in the history of the British economy between 1870 and 1914. After the boom of the early 1870s, Britain's private enterprise economy entered the "Great Depression" of 1873-1896 which - whether it be assessed as "myth" or as paradoxical reality - was marked by the collapse of grain-growing agriculture, by an intermittent deflation of the currency, by generally falling profit margins, by intermittent high unemployment, and by a significant rise in real wages. It was during these same years that Britain lost its distinctive if temporary role as "workshop of the world": its entrepreneurs, for a complex of reasons, became less enterprising, and both Germany and the United States surpassed Britain not at merely in steel production but also in the overall rate of economic growth. The "Edwardian boom" that followed was noted for currency inflation, for rising profit margins, for tendencies toward oligopoly, and for less unemployment but stagnating real wages and a growing trade union membership. The boom could not disguise underlying structural problems in the economy that became manifest only during the interwar years. As the authors of The British Shipbuilding Industry, 1870-1914 rightly observe, such macro-economic generalizations tend to mask a multitude of significant but often contradictory developments. To what extent, then, does this detailed analysis of a major industry confirm or challenge the historiographical consensus? The book confirms many of our expectations. The ship-building industry did demonstrate a trend toward larger companies, only a handful of which could build the giant passenger liners that became the symbols of pre-World War I national pride and achievement. Despite moves toward standardization and an evening out of regional divergencies, much of the industry - beset as it was by alternating periods of boom and depression - remained keenly competitive. As late as 1914, the top ten firms built no more than forty per cent of the total shipping tonnage. Shipyard workers remained subject to lengthy spells of unemployment. At the same time their real earnings grew - according to the records of one major shipyard, they tripled between 1860 and 1914, despite the stagnation that befell them (like those of other British workers) during the first decade of the twentieth century. The British lagged behind the Germans and the Americans in preferring apprenticeship to technical education; "as late as 1914 science and research were still the poor stepchildren of the industry."
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The British Shipbuilding Industry, 1870–1914
Language: English
Author: Sidney Pollard; Paul Robertson
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674436152,9780674436145
Format: PDF
Quality: Scanned pages
Pages count: 328
Description: There is a high level of agreement among historians as to the chief trends in the history of the British economy between 1870 and 1914. After the boom of the
early 1870s, Britain's private enterprise economy entered the "Great Depression" of 1873-1896 which - whether it be assessed as "myth" or as paradoxical reality - was marked by the collapse of grain-growing agriculture, by an intermittent deflation of the currency, by generally falling profit margins, by intermittent high unemployment, and by a significant rise in real wages. It was during these same years that Britain lost its distinctive if temporary role as "workshop of the world": its entrepreneurs, for a complex of reasons, became less enterprising, and both Germany and the United States surpassed Britain not at merely in steel production but also in the overall rate of economic growth. The "Edwardian boom" that followed was noted for currency inflation, for rising profit margins, for tendencies toward oligopoly, and for less unemployment but stagnating real wages and a growing trade union membership. The boom could not disguise underlying structural problems in the economy that became manifest only during the interwar years.
As the authors of The British Shipbuilding Industry, 1870-1914 rightly observe, such macro-economic generalizations tend to mask a multitude of significant but
often contradictory developments. To what extent, then, does this detailed analysis of a major industry confirm or challenge the historiographical consensus?
The book confirms many of our expectations. The ship-building industry did demonstrate a trend toward larger companies, only a handful of which could build
the giant passenger liners that became the symbols of pre-World War I national pride and achievement. Despite moves toward standardization and an evening out
of regional divergencies, much of the industry - beset as it was by alternating periods of boom and depression - remained keenly competitive. As late as 1914,
the top ten firms built no more than forty per cent of the total shipping tonnage. Shipyard workers remained subject to lengthy spells of unemployment. At the
same time their real earnings grew - according to the records of one major shipyard, they tripled between 1860 and 1914, despite the stagnation that befell
them (like those of other British workers) during the first decade of the twentieth century. The British lagged behind the Germans and the Americans in preferring
apprenticeship to technical education; "as late as 1914 science and research were still the poor stepchildren of the industry."
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