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This article focuses on parliamentary records in the custody of the House of Lords Record Office, which are relevant to the study of economic history of Great Britain. The records which are in the care of the Lords Record Office are the following: the archives of the House of Lords from 1497 onwards; a few, post-medieval House of Commons documents which survived in the fire of 1834 and a large proportion of the Commons records which have accumulated since that time. The sources for economic history which are to be found among these records fall into three main groups. First, those which related to the public business of both Houses and to proceedings on public Bills; second, the private Bill records of both Houses and lastly, a varied accumulation of papers laid on the Table of the House of Lords.

The article comments on the paper "The Landscape and the Machine: Technical Interrelatedness, Land Tenure and the Mechanization of the Corn Harvest in Victorian Britain," by Paul A. David, that appeared in the book "Essays on a Mature Economy: Britain After 1840," edited by Donald N. McCloskey. David contends that the slowness with which mechanical reapers were adopted by British farmers is to be explained by physical features of the farm landscape in Britain which made their adoption relatively unattractive. David's evidence for the index of the harvest differential turns out on inspection to be based on rates of pay of women workers on one farm in Northumberland. Whether this is an adequate basis for estimating the movement of the differential for (predominantly) male workers in all the corn-growing regions of England, might be questioned. Given that the critical factors determining the profitability of mechanization-cum-improvement were the incremental cereal yield and the cost of improvement, it is proper to ask whether any doubt attaches to the values David posits for the other parameters and variables composing these expressions.

The article presents a list of documents on the economic history of Great Britain and Ireland. Some of the documents listed are: "Survey of Documents in Private Keeping," by J. Ainsworth; "Clyde Company Papers," edited by P. L. Brown; "Report to the General Board of Health on Darlington, 1850," edited by H. J. Smith; "Calendar of the Irish Council Book, 1 March 1581 to 1 July 1586," edited by D. B. Quinn; "The Minutes of the Edinburgh Trades Council, 1859--1873," edited by D. F. McKenzie; "Seventeenth-Century Hearth Money Rolls With Full Transcript Relating to Co. Sligo," edited by E. MacLysaght.

This article paper is concerned with the similarity of the growth performance of the British economy during the nineteen-twenties and nineteen-thirties and with the usefulness of the "new-old" industry dichotomy in illuminating the trends of the inter-war period. The inter-war years emerge as a period of growth almost as rapid as any of comparable length in British measured history. The exact rating of the performance naturally varies slightly with the growth criterion adopted and the termini used for the other periods; the simplest way to establish the validity of the conclusion and at the same time leave it open to the reader's judgment is to draw in the inter-war trends on the Matthews graph. The similarity of the growth performance in the nineteen-twenties and nineteen-thirties is largely maintained even when activity is divided into Goods production and Service production. Services get their unity partly from their physical intangibility as final products, partly from supposed differences in income demand elasticities or productivity improvement possibilities, partly, and increasingly, from the statistical difficulties of arriving at satisfactory real output series.

This article presents various papers related to economic and industrial history, published in previous issues of different journals. In the paper "Overseas: Lending and Internal Fluctuations, 1870-1914," A.G. Ford discusses, within a theoretical framework, the mechanism of the transfer of resources overseas, and concludes that overseas lending itself largely generated the requisite balance of payments surplus on current account, by damping down home consumption and hence imports, and by stimulating exports. Rising overseas issues therefore meant rising unemployment and falling imports, and vice versa. H.W. Richardson has a go at the same field with the paper "Retardation in Britain's Industrial Growth, 1870-1913." He argues that the slowing down in the rate of growth was caused by an abnormally low rate of structural change within industry, because there was a dearth of new activities capable of taking over as leading sectors which could create whole new growth industries that could more than cancel out the stagnation of the old staples.

This section presents a list of publications on the economic and social history of Great Britain and Ireland, published in 1971. Some of the publications listed are: "The Hardwick Hall Inventories of 1601," edited by L. Boynton; "Bridgwater Borough Archives," edited by R.W. Dunning and T.D. Tremlett; "Collected Writings of J.M. Keynes," edited by E. Johnson; "The Acts of William I, King of Scots: 1165-1214," edited by G.W.S. Barrow; "A Calendar of the Talbot Papers in the College of Arms," edited by G.R. Batho; "The Journal of Giles Moore," edited by R. Bird; "The Register of Winwick Parish Church," edited by R. Dickinson; "The Register of Edmund Lacy, Bishop of Exeter: 1420-1455," edited by G.R. Dunstan; "Marriage Allegations in the Diocese of Gloucester," vol. 2, "1681-1700," edited by B. Frith; "Accounts of the Treasurer of Scotland: XII, 1566-1574," edited by C.T. McInnes; "The Dorset Lay Subsidy Roll of 1332," edited by A.D. Mills; and "Minute Book of the Men's Meeting of the Society of Friends in Bristol: 1661-1686," edited by R. Mortimer.

The article comments on a paper about the crisis of aristocracy in England during 1558-1641. The author remarks that the social interpretation of the English Revolution is a controversial subject. It is tempting to say that the Civil War was preceded by a major transference of land to the gentry and to argue that they rose to political power as a consequence. The problem of demonstrating changes in the economic position of different classes in society and of establishing the relationship between such changes and subsequent political events, is a grave one. Imprecise terminology, inexact genealogy, and uncertain statistics lead only too easily to unsupported conclusions. According to the author, each of the calculations made in the paper, throws further light on the predicament of the peerage during these years. The care with which this case is presented and the support that these statistics lend to one another have commanded acceptance. Indeed, the figures have already been used as a basis for further calculations.

The article comments on a paper about the trend of land sale in England during 1540-1640. In Trinity term 1604, the index of Feet of Fines records a sale of the manor of Much Waltham by some social historians. At first sight, this appears to be yet another sale of a manor by a declining aristocrat to a rising gentleman. This transaction is a typical enforcement to use, which has appeared in the index of Feet of Fines in a form indistinguishable from a sale. The Feet of Fines, being a legal record, provide a record of legal title to land. However, the standard methods of keeping land out of wardship, among other things, involved the separation of title from possession, and it is therefore not to be expected that a list of those who held title to land will correspond very closely with the list of its actual possessors. The author remarks that, the appearance of only one purchaser in the Feet of Fines does not guarantee that the transaction is not a use. The author concludes that, it is possible that the entries in Feet of Fines and do conceal a rapid increase in the volume of land sales.

This article analyses, in relation to the West Indian colonies, the changes during Joseph Chamberlain's Colonial Secretaryship in Great Britain's Colonial Office attitudes and policy towards the supply and expenditure of capital from these three sources. The modernization of the sugar industry by amalgamation of estates and the introduction of new techniques was most successfully pursued between 1870 and 1895 in British Guiana and Trinidad. It was financed by private capital. No imperial grants or loans were available, for the policy of the British government after 1870 was to extend direct financial assistance to the West Indies only for exceptional purposes such as hurricane relief. The Colonial Office adopted a similar attitude to non-planting enterprise before 1895, namely that, in general, colonial governments should not financially assist private individuals or particular industries. Secretaries of State and officials showed little awareness of the need to overcome the reluctance of capitalists to invest in the West Indies outside the sugar industry; indeed they tended to regard most private concessionaires with suspicion. In these circumstances the main source of capital expenditure in the West Indian colonies between 1870 and 1895, apart from that undertaken by the sugar planters, was colonial government expenditure on public works, especially communications, largely financed by loans raised on the London capital market.

This article focuses on the items in the questionnaire by William Lovett, secretary of the Chartist General Convention, aimed at discovering the major economic, political and social matters affecting the working class in Great Britain. The answers to such a series of questions, with the comments of the local Chartist and Radical organizers, would provide a very considerable and useful body of information on the problems and grievances of the working classes and thus aid the central Chartist organization in its attempts to agitate the country. There is, however, no evidence to show that the Chartist Convention made any use of the information, beyond the general knowledge which it gave that body of the state of the working classes throughout the country. It may be that insufficient local associations completed the questionnaires to justify the drawing of conclusions, as is suggested by the fact that among the papers of the Convention there are collected together returns from only a few associations.

The article examines the possibility of providing a solution to the debasement of coinage in England between 1542 and 1551. It is commonplace in historical writing that the Tudor dynasty of Great Britain debasement was a fiscal experiment, devised to provide the Crown with a new and lucrative source of revenue. It is equally well known that there are conflicting views regarding the size of the revenue involved. In 1921, in his study of government finance between, F.C. Dietz calculated that from the beginning of the debasement in May 1544 until its end in July 1551 the Crown received revenues from the coinage amounting to 1,014,500 pounds: 363,000 pounds. On the other hand, in 1931, in his book "The Pound Sterling," A.E. Feavearyear stated that the debasement of the coinage, which he saw beginning as far back as July 1542, yielded a net profit of 227,378 pound, but gave no corresponding estimate for the period thereafter, believing that "no exact figures of the issues are available." The difference was great and particularly puzzling for both authors claimed the authoritative support of official mint accounts. The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the evidence with a view to determining how far it is still possible to provide a satisfactory solution to this problem.

The article lists publications on the economic and social history of Great Britain and Ireland. They include "Wells Cathedral Chapter Act Book, 1666-83," edited by D.S. Bailey, "The Inhabitants of Cardington in 1782," edited by D. Baker, "Milk to Market: Forty Years of Milk Marketing," by S. Baker, "Origins of English Feudalism," by R.A. Brown, "The Farmers of Old England," by E. Kerridge.

The article presents a list of publications on the economic history of Great Britain and Ireland. Some of the publications are "The Suffolk Committee for Scandalous Ministers: 1644-1646," edited by C. Holmes, "The London Eyre of 1244," edited by H.M. Chew and M. Weinbaum, "Recusant Rolls: 1594-95 and 1595-96," edited by H. Bowler, "The Letter Books of Samuel Wilberforce: 1843-68," edited by P.K. Hugh, and others.

This article presents a list of publications on the economic history of Great Britain and Ireland. Some of the books listed are "The Jamestown Voyages Under the First Charter, 1606-1609," by P.L. Barbour; "Records of the Trial of Walter Langeton, Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield," by A. Beardwood; "Two Estate Surveys of the Fitzalan Earls of Arundel," by M. Clough; "The Letters of Sir Francis Hastin," by C. Cross; "The Devonshire Lay Subsidy of 1332," by A.M. Erskine and "The Justiciary Records of Argyll and the Isles: 1664-17," by J. Imrie.

Presents a list of publications on the economic history of Great Britain and Ireland. "Liverpool Registry of Merchant Ships," by R. Craig and R. Jarvis; "The Correspondence of Sir James Clavering," by edited by H.T. Dickinson; "Willoughby Letters of the First Half of the Sixteenth Century," edited by M. A. Welch.

The article focuses on medieval studies published in periodicals of Great Britain concerning economic history. The year 1966 produced a reasonably large crop of medieval studies in periodicals, although the perennial subjects of debate featured in only a few of them. In one such study, A.R.H. Baker argued that the returns of the Nonarum Inquisitiones indicate an extensive contraction of arable land in several districts when they are compared with the data in the papal taxation of 1291, and that in areas as diverse as Shropshire, Sussex, the lands north and west of London, and Bedfordshire the evidence of 1342 indicates an impoverished and shrinking population. At the same time Barbara F. Harvey, writing in the "Transactions of the Royal Historical Society," surveyed the whole course of the argument since the 1930's, and concluded that land values and the present topographical studies do not support the thesis that the agricultural crises of the decade 1310-20 inaugurated a continuous decline in population down to the Black Death. The possibility of some growth in the economy after 1300, she added, should be left open, and even those who might wish to close it will find her references a useful gatherum in a subject in which bibliographical aid is always welcome.

The article examines the ryotwari tenure and Utilitarian rent developed by the British in western India in late 19th century. In western India the British developed ryotwari tenure and Utilitarian rent in their most explicit form, against a background some historians found the more promising precisely because crammed with the revenue tyrannies of native princes. Alexander Rogers, Bombay's historian of land revenue, portrayed a ruined province on the fall of the Maratha Peshwa, under whom every means of rigors and confiscation were employed to squeeze the utmost out of the people. Economist James Mill condemned Mughal revenue theory as having been ruinous, its gross produce assessments comprising the deleterious standard of rude governments. Mill believed that these appropriations made no allowance for allowance for variations in productivity of soils, and that by imposing outlandish tax burdens on impecunious areas, Mughal revenue officials prevented all but lands of a certain degree of fertility from being cultivated.

This article discusses the paper "Entrepreneurial Efficiency in the British Coal Industry Between the Wars," by N.K. Buxton, published in the previous issue of the journal "Economic History Review." The purpose is to show that whilst Buxton has correctly identified what has come to be regarded as "the greatest shortcoming" of British colliery owners, he has, at the same time, demonstrated a complete misunderstanding of the nature of the issues involved in reorganization. By his failure to define his terms rigorously Buxton has confused the issues that were at stake. Instead he embarked upon an analysis of the relationship between size and efficiency of mines. He begins by comparing the findings of the Royal Commission on the size of colliery undertakings with information derived from the Ministry of Fuel and Power Statistical Digest from 1938 relating to the size of mines. Colliery owners were not criticized for the small size of their mines, but for their failure to create large undertakings by means of colliery amalgamations. Although amalgamation of undertakings provided the basis for the interwar rationalization program, an important, but subsidiary, part of this program was the elimination of surplus capacity. The essential point to note here is that it was never suggested that surplus capacity should be eliminated solely by the closure of small mines.

This article presents a reply from the author on the recent debate on the effects of the British Navigation Acts on colonial welfare. Any disagreement on the size of the burdens relative to Gross National Product is based upon differences in the estimates of the numerator, not the denominator. Despite differences in the estimates and techniques of measurement, the apparent measured exploitation was slight. Of course, its subjective importance to the colonists is another matter, as noted by author Frank J.A. Broeze. Although it is not possible to measure the subjective importance of such legislation, perhaps author Peter D. McClelland's reminder merits repeating. The Declaration of Independence, for example, makes no mention of the Acts of Trade, and those hardest hit by export restraints, the planters of Virginia and Maryland, almost never included those restraints in their list of grievances against the mother country. In addition author Lawrence Harper's point that the colonists had lived under the restraints for over 100 years, and that the associated burdens relative to income were probably less on the eve of rebellion than in decades earlier, should not go unnoticed.

The article lists publications on the economic and social history of Great Britain and Ireland. They include, "Population in the Past: Family Reconstruction by Computer," by R.S. Schofield, "The History of the Dutch Slave Trade: a bibliographical Survey," by P.C. Emmer, "Sixteenth-century fiscal sources for the social and economic history of the Flemish countryside," by N. Maddens, and "The socialist trade unions after the First World War (1919-21)," by M. Nauwelaerts.

The article comments on the article "British Armaments and European Industrialization, 1890-1914: The Spanish Case Re-Examined," by R.J. Harrison. Harrison's article examined the economic and political conditions in Spain from 1890 to 1914. It is discusses the industrialization of European countries and how Great Britain was imbibed on building armaments. The article also considers Spain's working population that is engaged in agriculture during the period. It explores the scandal involving the Spanish naval program of the government of Antonio Maura. Official Assessor of the Naval Ministry, Juan Macias, accused the whole government of prevarication in the adjudication of tenders for the squadron.

The article measures the effect of public finance during the period 1793-1815 on the rate and direction of Great Britain's economic development. It explores the country's involvement in war during the period. One aspect of the war which has intermittently attracted economists" attention from the time of the "bullionist" controversy is the effect of the expedients that were adopted in the field of public finance. The article describes the sources of data which economic historian can use to be able to fairly measure the effect of the country's finance on the rate and direction of economic growth. An analysis on the economic indicators during the period is presented.

The article presents comments of the author on the article "Did Victorian Britain Fail?" by D.N. McCloskey. Basically McCloskey thesis falls into two parts. First, he regards the growth performance of the economy as reasonably satisfactory and argues that there was little potential for faster growth, through either home demand or exports, because of the inelastic supplies of labour and capital. Second, given the fact that total growth was fixed by the availability of resources and productivity gains, he then maintains that any allegation of failure must be attributed to a slowing-down in productivity growth. McCloskey is substantially correct in claiming that there is no really sharp deceleration in industrial production and real product growth before the turn of the century, though before 1900 there were in both one or two awkward dips that require some explaining. However, these were not sufficient to warrant a break in trend. Using a varied collection of data drawn from different sources, McCloskey calculates annual growth-rates for labour, capital and productivity over decades starting with the year 1860.

The article presents a detailed account of the attitudes which British entrepreneurs in two important related industries, shipbuilding and marine engineering, held towards technical education for their employees, of what they did to put their ideas into effect, and of the economic reasons for their actions. As late as 1914, both industries remained highly dependent upon skilled trades which could best be learned through on-the-job training. By concentrating on the cultivation of manual skills, British were able in many cases both to avoid the cost of providing extra schooling and to obtain a more productive workforce than their competitors abroad who gave more emphasis to technical education. The cheapness of apprentice labour, combined with the wide range of trades which came to work in the shipyards, inevitably disrupted the carefully controlled apprenticeship programmes inherited from the pre-industrial era. There was general agreement on the training of artisans. Their jobs required manual adeptness and a knowledge of conditions which could only be obtained through experience.

This article discusses the impact of managerial innovation on the rise of the large scale company in interwar Britain. In the first section the importance of the managerial factor is discussed and evidence of contemporary concern about management failings is adduced. The two subsequent sections describe developments in technical and accounting aids to management and the method of organizational decentralization adopted in one of the largest and most merger-intensive firms of the period. Finally the record of a wider range of firms, including some which had pushed the managerial barriers to expansion to their limits, is examined and is found to throw light on the impact of the managerial constraint on the pattern and limits of company growth. This is not to say that mergers remove the barriers to the growth of firms. Indeed the historical evidence suggests that large mergers are significantly constrained by managerial factors. The managerial strains of merger growth are a function of two measurable variables, the number of firms involved and the rate of growth implied for the core firm.

This article explains the effects of state policy on Britain's airframe industry. The first section of the article outlines the main technological advances in aeronautics between the wars, while subsequent sections examine the industry's readiness to produce aeroplanes which embodied the latest ideas. The first world war brought about a transformation in the British aircraft industry, changing it from a technologically immature infant to a powerful arm of war. The change from biplane to monoplane was one of the most important structural alterations in the aeroplane during the inter-war years. The airplanes of the 'thirties were revolutionary not only in their monoplane construction; they were made of metal rather than wood, and speeds were increased by the use of retractable undercarriages and the variable-pitch propeller. The obvious advantage of the wooden aeroplane to the manufacturer and the purchaser was its cheapness. Wood was relatively easy to work with, it did not require the same number of specialist workers as metal, and elaborate jigs were not necessary for the manufacture of components.

The article deals with the Anglo-American business cycle and the dynamics of its economic system from 1820 to 1860. The dynamics of the Anglo-American economic system resulted in large part from the mechanics of price formation in Great Britain and the United States. The aggregate price level in the United States was determined by the price-specie-flow mechanism, operating in more or less textbook fashion, except that the specie in question was largely silver for the 1830's and gold for the 1850's. The aggregate price level in England, however, was the result of more complex forces. The underlying forces were the same as those working in the price-specie-flow mechanism, but they did not always work through changes in the British supply of bullion, as that mechanism implies. Output in Great Britain grew more rapidly than its trend in the 1830's because of an expansion in domestic investment. As R.C.O. Matthews, the author of the classic monograph on this cycle, said that the mainstay of the British cycle was domestic investment.

The article examines technological change in the British wrought iron industry. The refining sector of the iron industry stagnated in the first half of the eighteenth century. Bar iron output was slightly higher at mid-century than in the period 1716-20, yet the share of the British bar iron market held by domestic producers had fallen off significantly since the early part of the century. There were no major changes in the technology of wrought iron production during these years. Forgemasters converted charcoal-smelted pig iron to bar iron in charcoal-fired "finery" and "chafery" fires. Their efforts to replace charcoal with coal or coke were largely unsuccessful before mid-century. Coal first replaced charcoal in the final process of bar iron production, the reheating of the refined metal in the chafery. The use of coal in the chafery fire had become a common practice among forgemasters by the 1760's.The first real breakthrough came in the early 1760's when the Wood brothers patented a new process for producing wrought iron with coal.

This article examines some hypotheses concerning the invasion of British engineering industry by the U.S. competition in the years before the First World War. Most recent comment on the American invasion in engineering products rests on the work of scholar D.L. Burn and S.B. Saul. Burn, in his pioneering article in 1931, argued, rather gloomily, that the view that England was industrially without a serious rival till quite late in the nineteenth century needs more qualification than it usually receives and that there was, between 1850 and 1870, very frequent adoption of American methods in English industry, and to a much smaller degree effective competition in neutral markets. Burn mentioned in particular the adoption of American methods and machinery in the fields of sewing machines, agricultural, small arms, and woodworking machinery, and hardware. Because of changing customs classifications, he found it impossible to compare the course of British and American exports in these commodities and relied instead on the comments of contemporary engineers and travelers. He did not adduce any particular explanation for the American success, although he paid considerable attention to the factor-cost explanations of the Whitworth-Wallis report, that the high costs of raw materials and labor were not merely a constant stimulus to the adoption of laborsaving devices, but a stimulus to the inventive faculty.

This article presents information on several periodical literature on economic history, published in 1972. Increasingly the archaeologists are throwing light upon medieval economic history and in most parts of England they appear to brave been busily occupied delimiting roads and building plots and uncovering medieval timbers in farmhouses. The interest in the house of the "common man" remains unabated almost to the exclusion of work on grander buildings. The deeper study of the social structure of the rulers of the city of London has been begun by S. Reynolds in her article 'The Rulers of London in the Twelfth Century" published in the journal "History." Her work is a most important guide to the members of the ruling class and she concludes that probably there were no common economic interests that determined city policy at this period. Wide-ranging survey articles were in short supply in 1972 with most authors preferring to plough a fairly narrow strip of knowledge. One of the more notable exceptions was R. Brenner's "The Social Basis of English Commercial Expansion 1550-1650," published in the Journal of Economic History.

This article presents information on the sale of crown lands during the English revolution. The sales of crown land in England, however, were carried out under slightly different circumstances. Although the financial motive was paramount, there were, political reasons as well, and there were limitations imposed upon the free play of the market. As a consequence, the overall effect of the sales was not simply a reinforcement of the existing social structure. By 1649 the arrears of pay of the parliamentary Army had become a problem urgently requiring attention. Four years before, it had been intended that the New Model Army should be regularly and punctually paid, but arrears had begun to accumulate almost from the date of its formation. After the end of the first Civil War, the process accelerated, as the crucially important monthly assessment went unconnected from October 1646 to January 1648. By that time the total back pay of all the parliamentary forces from 1642 had reached about 3 million. Parliament's attempt in the spring of 1647 to disband part of the New Model and send the rest to fight the Irish rebellion precipitated the army revolt of the summer of 1647.

This article presents information on the development of the British charcoal iron industry and its fuel consumption. Great Britain was one of the least wooded countries in the European forest zone, and in the eighteenth century the British iron industry was the first to succeed in replacing charcoal by coke as its principal fuel. Moreover, fuel is as important as ore for the iron industry, so that iron masters were much concerned with its procurement. Such concern might be taken as indicating that there were special problems. The argument has proved so persuasively coherent that it has hitherto resisted attempts at partial revision. For the last 150 years the early seventeenth century has been accepted as the peak period of British charcoal iron production. England and Wales were credited with 300 furnaces and 500 forges in the second decade of the seventeenth century. The full extent of Welsh and English woodlands in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries remains undetermined, but in the 1950's their remnants occupied about 2,300,000 acres. Crown lands in 1608 may have included more than 200,000 acres of woodland of which almost 50,000 acres were coppice. Twenty-two thousand acres of such coppice would therefore have supplied all the needs of the British iron industry for a year, the crown woods alone could have fed it for ten years.

The article examines the system of sugar production by the planter class and the British West Indians before and after emancipation in 19th century Great Britain. The traditional view of the planters in the age of slavery was derived from the polemical works of nineteenth-century abolitionists who denounced them as coarse, stubborn conservatives guilty of brutalizing their slaves by an unconscionable attachment to crude and anachronistic techniques. The seasonal nature of sugar production, the system of slavery, and the stiff soils and rugged terrain of the British West Indies combined to render the use of animal-powered farm machinery generally of less value to sugar planters than to European husbandmen. The great economies occasioned by the use of the plough in the U.S. and Europe depended upon a powerful and efficient draught animal. No such beast was available to West Indians. West Indian estates produced a raw brown sugar called muscovado. The open pan process by which it was made was crude and wasteful, but British mercantile restrictions, not the conservatism of the planters, inhibited the introduction of more sophisticated manufacturing techniques and equipment. Level lands and gently undulating cane fields, which were free of obstructions were universally brought under the plough.

The article provides information on the control of competition in the British coal-mining industry in the 1930s. The reasons for the failure of the interwar rationalization programme in the British industry and in coal-mining in particular are discussed. One of the attempted remedies embodied in the 1930 Coal Mines Act is considered, namely the operation of the statutory cartel system. The apparently contradictory policy of amalgamation, which found reflection in Part II of the Act, is investigated. The article attempts to show whether the two major aspects of government industrial policy were capable of being reconciled. The experience of coal-mining in the interwar years could not be regarded as typical of that of other industries. In the strictest sense, the only directly comparable example is that of the iron and steel industry where the granting of a degree of protection by the Government in 1932 was on the clear understanding that the industry itself would undertake the necessary rationalization. Yet it is the very unrepresentative nature of the experience in coal-mining, especially the degree of state involvement, that makes its study particularly interesting. Rationalization of industry failed because of the existence of schemes of output and price control, many of them having statutory force, or at least government encouragement.

The article examines the status of price associations and competition in the British pin industry during the 19th century. The circumstances in which five associations in the pin industry failed are examined. However, in explaining the failure of two of these associations, a hypothesis is advanced that might have some bearing on the collapse of associations in other industries. The central theme of this hypothesis is that the recurring commercial crises of the early nineteenth century induced firms to break price agreements in order to avoid illiquidity. Pin manufacturing was a labor intensive activity up until the 1840's, with the ten or so separate processes requiring comparatively little in the way of capital equipment. Yet despite the fact that pins were almost entirely hand-made, the application of the principle of the division of labor to the manufacturing process was productive of substantial economies of scale, as generations of economists will doubtless be aware. This may have influenced the degree of concentration in the industry, for by 1815 the market was shared between fewer than 20 relatively large manufacturers.

The article discusses the history of British armaments and European industrialization in the period 1890-1914. From 1890 onwards a complete new armoury of destructive engines was produced in Great Britain. All of them were weapons that worked harder and more precisely, imposed greater strain on materials, and developed more energy than any of their predecessors, and, in the process, confronted armourers with wholly novel problems, with formidable specifications and with soaring research budgets. As these problems were solved by the application of resources and skills rarely found outside the defence industries, several innovations of general importance were produced. Among them were stress-resistant alloys, metal-drawing and cutting techniques, machine-tool practices and interchangeable methods of manufacture. These became available for use by both armament and civilian manufacturing interests. The British armourers used a variety of methods to bring about the improvement of Russian shipbuilding practice. Most important were the technical agreements arranged between consultant firms, like Vickers or Brown, and the Tsarist government, very much as had been done in Spain. Under these agreements the British firms would make available to the Russian constructors their designs, their guarantee of quality and of expert supervision, and any patents relevant to the work in hand.

Comments on an article regarding the imperialism of free trade as a description of British overseas expansion in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. Existence and maintenance of control both by formal and informal means; Continuity in the development of British interests and ambitions overseas; Overview of the abnormal level of activity by politicians and officials in the promotion of British trade and investment in distant non-colonial territories overseas; Existence of a tradition of active government intervention.

Presents the author's reply to comments made by M.W. Kirby on the article "Entrepreneurial Efficiency in the British Coal Industry Between the Wars." Comment on the entrepreneurial efficiency in the British coal industry between the wars; Criteria governing the principles of amalgamation in the coal industry; Problem with surplus capacity in the 1930s; Implications for coal-mining of those measures being advocated by the exponents of reorganization.

Presents the author's reply to comments made by W. Johnson on the article "Entrepreneurial Efficiency in the British Coal Industry Between the Wars." Comment on the entrepreneurial efficiency in the British coal industry between the wars; Generalizations made about the entrepreneurial deficiencies in the British coal industry; Failure to undertake necessary reorganization through amalgamation; Absence of justification in the wholesale condemnation of the entrepreneur in the coal industry.

This article describes an attempt made by several large railroad companies to combine their operations in Great Britain, from 1900 to 1914. Competition amongst railway companies bore a strong relation to that between nation states and, like rival empires, the companies could call on a kind of "corporate nationalism" from, employees at all levels of the hierarchy, in their fight for market supremacy. But competition, however potent a force, could scarcely be given free rein. The dynamic, badly understood economic environment, within which the actions of any one company could materially affect the market prospects of its rivals, certainly fostered the competitive spirit; but it also created that uncertainty which gave the companies a craving for security and thereby paved the way for co-operation. It was on the "Three Greats" working union bill that the Board of Trade focused its attention in the hope of producing a compromise settlement acceptable to both the railways and Parliament. Despite the industry's difficulties and despite the obvious advantages of continuing to run the railways as a unit, nationalization was never a real possibility.

This article discusses various issues related to the currency and economy of Great Britain in the middle period of the reign of the Tudor monarchy. The article makes specific reference to the book "The Great Debasement: Currency and the Economy in Mid-Tudor England," by J.D. Gould. The study of English economic history in the early modern period has undergone a profound change during the last few decades for statistical data have come increasingly to replace literary sources as the stuff upon which interpretations of the past are based. Through statistical analysis insights into important problems, such as the geographical distribution of wealth, have become possible for the first time; conflicting and misleading figures have been corrected; old indexes have yielded place to new; and almost everywhere it has become fashionable to underpin arguments with statistics of some kind. If the numerate historian has not yet provided a panacea it still seems possible that in some areas and within carefully defined chronological limits sufficient has already been done to make substantial reinterpretation feasible. The appearance of Gould's book marks this point in respect of currency and the economy in mid-Tudor England.

This article discusses some of the circumstances concerning the restrictions that were placed on the operations of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway to win approval of the Great Britain Parliament in 1825 and 1826. As a pioneer of the railway idea the Liverpool and Manchester Railway incurred a number of exceptional costs. Among these may be counted the special restrictions that were placed on the company's operations as a result of its initial battle for survival on its road to Parliament in 1825 and 1826. During those years of desperate negotiation the directors of the project agreed to three conditions. In order to placate opposition they offered to divide the shares equally among the towns of Liverpool and Manchester and the landowners along the line of the railway; no individual subscriber would hold more than ten shares; and dividends should be limited to a maximum of 10 per cent. The first two restrictions were dissolved before the Act passed through Parliament, but the dividend limitation had a much longer life.

This article discusses various issues related to the revenue measures implemented by the government of Great Britain under King Charles I for English ships conducting trade business in the wars between and among major European colonial powers during the middle of the sixteenth century. England's wars with Spain and France from 1624 to 1630 ended the advantages gained from neutrality, but the absence of parliamentary subsidies throughout the 1630's guaranteed a pacific foreign policy and another opportunity for English ships to profit as neutral carriers. In western European waters the 1630's saw English ships heavily engaged in the trade that continued between Dutch and Spanish ports as well as between those of Spain and France. After 1632, and especially after the entry of the French into the war against Spain in 1635, the English also became the major carrier of Spanish silver coin and bullion to Flanders. As a result, they were also employed to convey the considerable Spanish-Flemish trade in textiles and colonial produce.

The article examines the impact of British overseas investment and emigration during 1870-1914 on its economy. In the international market for factors there were no legal or institutional obstacles to mobility. Here here author explores the possibility of a link between international factor flows and factor price differentials. The impact of other determinants of British overseas investment and emigration with the aid of first simple and then multiple linear regression analysis, have also been examined. The first stage of the investigation involved testing what may be called a naive neo-classical model in which the flow of capital from Britain to a given country of destination is regarded as a function of the returns to capital in the two areas. The migration results are somewhat mixed between countries. Investment was an important explanation of variations in British emigration to Australia and Canada. The change-in-population results for Australia, Canada, and New Zealand are not surprising because immigration was so important in the total population change of these countries.

The article reports that social historians have recently shown that the merchant seamen of the ports of north-east England had a history of militant action at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. In the years after 1815 economic depression and an over-supply of labor made it difficult for the seamen to organize and to bargain effectively. With the exception of a small increase in wages, obtained on the Tyne and Wear in 1818 under the threat of strike action, and granted by the Wear ship-owners in the following year, the seamen remained quiescent. It is interesting to note that strike action by the seamen before this time had been on a unilateral basis with no overall co-ordination between the north-east ports. A society was formed by the seamen called the Seamen's Loyal Standard Association, with almost identical rules, but with independent control in each locality. The almost identical nature of the rules of the various branches of the seamen's society also suggests an industrial organization rather than a benefit club.

The article presents a comment on British slave trade. Between 1807 and 1833 thousands of slaves were taken from the long-settled islands such as Barbados and Dominica and shipped to the newly acquired and much less developed colonies of Trinidad and Demerara. The traffic which arose from this discrepancy is not one of the better-known episodes in the annals of British slavery. It has received the attention of only two of the many historians who have written on slavery and the anti-slavery campaign in the British Empire. Between 1808 and 1812, and 1821 and 1825, 9,250 slaves were imported into Demerara, Berbice, and Essequibo. For other colonies, and other years, particularly after 1825, these historians do not cite figures apart from noting that 266 domestic slaves were shipped from Barbados to Trinidad in 1827. Instead they quote from contemporary observers in the later 1820's to the effect that the inter-colonial slave trade was increasing in magnitude and would always be difficult to extinguish.

The article examines the properties of the statistical technique used by economists Phyllis Deane and W.A. Cole on their book "British Economic Growth: 1688-1959." The technique is used to estimate the amount of population increase in Great Britain which is attributable to migration. These explanations of the differences in the pattern of demographic evolution in the major industrial counties in Great Britain are largely speculative, and it is not at present possible to check the assumptions on which they are based. The bulk of population increase in the industrial counties is commonly associated with the Industrial Revolution came from natural increase rather than from migration. It is not the defects in the underlying statistics which are the object of concern in this note, if by statistics Deane and Cole mean the raw data which they use. The raw data which Deane and Cole have for each county are estimates of baptisms, marriages, and burials as recorded for each parish in response to census inquiries. Deane and Cole use parish figures supplied for 1781 to provide some interpolation between 1751 and 1801.

The article presents the findings of professor E.G. West concerning the accuracy of educational statistics that were collected in the first half of the nineteenth century in Great Britain. The survey on the state of education in England and Wales was made by the overseers of the poor. These officials, in making a return for the purposes of implementing the 1832 Reform Act, had already given contemporary society adequate evidence of their incompetence. The unsatisfactory nature of many of the dame and common day schools can be demonstrated in another way, by examining the standard of living of their proprietors. England is the only country where parish paupers are considered competent to conduct the education of any portion of the rising generation. Estimates of regular attendance at schools made by semi-literate schooldames or by parents anxious to give the right answer provide a precarious basis on which to build a model of educational activity in the 1830's. Every piece of statistical evidence on education between 1800 and 1840 points to significant growth.

The article examines the extent of foreign competition and its impact upon the leather industry in Great Britain. The shoe and leather trades ranked high in terms of output among manufacturing industries early in the nineteenth century, but the growth of the great nineteenth-century staple industries outstripped the steady expansion of the leather sector, and historians have largely neglected it. Division of the leather trades into leather and leather goods manufacture is complemented by further differentiation on the basis both of products and of raw material. The difference between the British and American markets became important as an inhibiting factor after the initial innovation of chrome tanning. Whereas British leather producers successfully countered competition in the heavy branch, the weakness of British industrial chemistry, rather than a lack of entrepreneurship, largely explains the slow development of a home demand for chrome-tanned leather, and hence the British failure in this sector.

Focuses on North American beef and cattle trade with Great Britain between 1870 and 1914. Ways to preserve refrigerated meat; Development of a trade both in chilled meat and in live cattle; Importance of the expansion of cattle imports from North America.