Where Did We Go Wrong Industrial

Performance Education and the

Economy in Victorian Britain Routledge
Library Editions Education 1800 1926
Gordon Roderick
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookstep.com/product/where-did-we-go-wrong-industrial-performance-educat
ion-and-the-economy-in-victorian-britain-routledge-library-editions-education-1800-19
26-gordon-roderick/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

Victorian Education and the Ideal of Womanhood

Routledge Library Editions Education 1800 1926 Burstyn

https://ebookstep.com/product/victorian-education-and-the-ideal-
of-womanhood-routledge-library-editions-
education-1800-1926-burstyn/

Education and Imperial Unity 1901 1926 Routledge

Library Editions Education 1800 1926 Greenlee

https://ebookstep.com/product/education-and-imperial-
unity-1901-1926-routledge-library-editions-
education-1800-1926-greenlee/

The Higher Education of Women in England and America

1865 1920 Routledge Library Editions Education 1800
1926 Eschbach

https://ebookstep.com/product/the-higher-education-of-women-in-
england-and-america-1865-1920-routledge-library-editions-
education-1800-1926-eschbach/

The Universities in the Nineteenth Century Routledge

Library Editions Education 1800 1926 Michael Sanderson

https://ebookstep.com/product/the-universities-in-the-nineteenth-
century-routledge-library-editions-education-1800-1926-michael-
sanderson/
Samuel Wilderspin and the Infant School Movement
Routledge Library Editions Education 1800 1926 Mccann

https://ebookstep.com/product/samuel-wilderspin-and-the-infant-
school-movement-routledge-library-editions-
education-1800-1926-mccann/

Elementary Schooling and the Working Classes 1860 1918

Routledge Library Editions Education 1800 1926 Hurt

https://ebookstep.com/product/elementary-schooling-and-the-
working-classes-1860-1918-routledge-library-editions-
education-1800-1926-hurt/

The Origins of Civic Universities Manchester Leeds and

Liverpool Routledge Library Editions Education 1800
1926 Jones

https://ebookstep.com/product/the-origins-of-civic-universities-
manchester-leeds-and-liverpool-routledge-library-editions-
education-1800-1926-jones/

Pestalozzi His Thought and its Relevance Today

Routledge Library Editions Education 1800 1926
Heafford

https://ebookstep.com/product/pestalozzi-his-thought-and-its-
relevance-today-routledge-library-editions-
education-1800-1926-heafford/

Georg Kerschensteiner His Thought and its Relevance

Today Routledge Library Editions Education 1800 1926
Simons

https://ebookstep.com/product/georg-kerschensteiner-his-thought-
and-its-relevance-today-routledge-library-editions-
education-1800-1926-simons/
ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS:
EDUCATION 1800–1926

Volume 12

WHERE DID WE GO WRONG?

 WHERE DID WE GO WRONG?
Industrial Performance, Education and the
Economy in Victorian Britain

Edited and introduced by

GORDON RODERICK AND
MICHAEL STEPHENS
First published in 1981 by The Falmer Press
This edition rst published in 2017
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 1981 This selection and editorial matter copyright G. Roderick and M. Stephens
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identi cation and explanation without intent to
infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-138-22412-4 (Set)

ISBN: 978-1-315-40302-1 (Set) (ebk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-21706-5 (Volume 12) (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-44156-6 (Volume 12) (ebk)

Publisher’s Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but
points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.
Disclaimer
The publisher has made every e ort to trace copyright holders and would welcome
correspondence from those they have been unable to trace.
Where
Did
We Go
Wrong?
Industrial Performance)Education and
the Economy in Victorian Britain

Edited and Introducedby

GordonRoderick
and
Michael Stephens

The Falmer Press

(A member of the Taylor & Francis Group)
 This selection and editorial matter copyright G. Roderick and M. Stephens.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or ,otherwise, without the prior permission
in writing from the Publisher.

First published 1981

ISBN O 905273 II 7

Illustration and jacket designed by Leonard Williams

Printed and bound in Great Britain by

Taylor & Francis (Printers) Ltd., Basingstoke, Hampshire for
The Falmer Press
Falmer House
Barcombe, Lewes
Sussex BNS 5DL
England
 Contents

BACKGROUND
Introduction: Britain 1851-1914
Gordon Roderick and Michael Stephens
The Economy, Management and Foreign Competition
Derek H. Aldcrojt
Progress in Artisan Literacy
E.G. West 33
The Labour Force: Some Relevant Attitudes
P. W. Musgrave 49
Population and the Bio-social Background
W.H.G. Armytage

2 CASE STUDIES
The Coal Industry
Neil Buxton 85
Iron and Steel
J.K. Almond
The Textile Industries
Stanley Chapman 125
Engineering
Geoffrey Sims
The Chemical Industry
Keith Trace l 55

3 EDUCATION AND GOVERNMENT

Technical Education 1850-1914
Michael Le Guillou 1 73
The Universities
Gordon Roderick and Michael Stephens .
Technical Education and the University C~llege of Nottingham
Brian Tolley 203
The Role of Government
Gordon Roderick and Michael Stephens
Conclusions
Gordon Roderick and Michael Stephens

Index 2 53
I
Background
 Introduction: Britain I8JI-IJI4

Gordon Roderick and Michael Stephens

In 18 51, the year of the Great Exhibition, Britain was almost exactly at mid-point
of the period at which, it is claimed, she was 'the workshop of the world' .1 The
period, which began in the 1820s and ended with the depression of the 1870s, was
the high noon of economic advance. Britain's natural resources (especially of coal
and iron), her skilled, adaptable manpower and the industrial developments of the
eighteenth century enabled her by 18 51 to rise to a position of global influence and
power 2 and to lead the world in the supply of machinery, manufactured and textile
goods. At this time, Britain was experiencing a level of industrial production and
foreign trade which set her far ahead of all other countries. 3
Although natural resources and inventiveness were central to Britain's rise to
economic power, other factors also played a part: her naval strength guarded her
overseas trade routes and had removed all danger of destructive wars; the growth
of population gave manufacturing industries an increasing home market as well
as a supply of workers; free trade encouraged overseas commerce; and the railways
accelerated industrial and commercial development. The Great Exhibition, whilst
confirming Britain's position as the leading industrial nation, also marked the
beginning of an age of rapidly accelerating industrial production of coal, iron and
steel and many other commodities. The mood of euphoria and complacency lasted
for the next twenty years, at the end of which period the foreign trade of the United
Kingdom was still more than that of France, Germany and Italy together, and four
times that of the United States.
By the end of the century, however, a dramatic transformation had come about
as a decline set in in the rate of increase of industrial production relative to her
competitors. There appeared to be a failure of British industry to maintain the
momentum it displayed in the first half of the nineteenth century. During the final
guarter of the century prices fell, factories closed down, unemployment went up
and there was widespread distress. The age of British economic supremacy was over.
In steel, American production passed Britain's in 1890, followed six years later
by that of Germany; by 1900 the United States and Germany between them were
producing three times as much steel as Britain. Steel was only one element in the
challenge, although the most significant one. The British chemical industry in 1913

}
Where did wego wrong?

accounted for only 11 per cent of world output as against 34 per cent by the United
States and 24 per cent by Germany, while the latter exported twice as much as
Britain. 4 The initiative had passed to Germany, particularly in the production of
synthetic dyes from coal tar (which replaced the traditional dyes from natural
sources) and in the production of a whole new range of products - fertilisers,
explosives, cyanides and pharmaceuticals. The British had pioneered electrotechnics
yet by 1913 the output of the British electrical industry was only a third of Germany's
and its exports barely half. By 1913 Britain ranked a poor second to the United
States in car production whilst in the machine tool industry, which had been British
in origin, 'nowhere did foreign countries and yet again chiefly the United States
leap ahead more decisively'. 5 By the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Britain was
short of khaki dye, acetone for explosives and magnetos for transport because
Germany had become the chief source of supply.
Yet it would be wrong to assume from the foregoing that Britain stagnated
industrially. Rather, industrial activities developed on a great scale: basic industries
increased their output - between 1893 and 1913 coal, shipping and steel increased
75 per cent, 100 per cent and 136 per cent respectively; others such as boots and
shoes, brewing, soap and tobacco also grew fast and new technical inventions led
to electrical engineering, motor cars, bicycles, aluminium, ferro-concrete and
artificial silk. \Xfhat cannot be denied, however, is that the bare facts of industrial
production reveal lower increases in Britain than was the case for her competitors,
Germany and the United States.
\1?ith regard to exports, the position was even worse. There was little ground for
complacency as competition caused Britain to lose export markets in America,
industrialised Europe and underdeveloped countries. By 1913 Britain's share of
world trade in manufactures was 2 5.4 per cent as compared with 37 per cent in
18 8 3 (in the same period Germany increased her share from 17 per cent to 20 per cent
and the United States from 3.4 per cent to 11 per cent). In a group of fifteen manu-
factures, British exports to protected foreign markets between 1895 and 1907
increased by 44 per cent while those of Germany and America increased by 12 5
per cent and 500 per cent respectively. The same exports to identical markets in
the British Empire registered an increase of 91 per cent for Britain as against 129
per cent and 5 59 per cent for Germany and the United States. By 1913, textiles still
accounted for one third of total exports, while the share of total exports of the· new
categories (machinery, chemicals and electrical goods) stood at only 15.9 per cent
in 19 ro. The fastest growing export category before 1914 was the staple product
coal; in general Britain tended to retain her specialisation in the older lines rather
than in the more recently developed products - inorganic rather than organic
chemicals, locomotives rather than motor vehicles, textiles and farm machinery
rather than machine tools and electrical goods.
The entry of the United States into world markets occurred in the mid-189os
and appeared to have fewer harmful effects on British exports. This was partly
because her export structure was complementary to Britain's rather than competitive,
and partly because American export growth was concentrated on areas like Canada
and Latin America. Industrialization in the United States, behind tariff barriers,

4
 Introduction: Britain r8r;~r9r4
affected British exports to the American markets. Germany, on the other hand,
posed a far greater threat. Together with Belgium she made great strides in capturing
European markets which were former British preserves: by 191 3 Germany was
selling more than Britain to nearly every European country. She was also expanding
her trade more rapidly with the economically underdeveloped countries such as
Russia, Latin America and Turkey. By 1913 Germany monopolised the Russian
market, her exports to that country being four times greater than those of Britain. 6
Clearly there seemed to be something 'radically wrong' both with regard to
industrial productivity and to Britain's ability to sell goods abroad. Few students,
of the period after 1870, deny that there was a slowing down in the rate of economic
growth during the final quarter of the century. Some argue that a break occurred
in the 1870s, whereas others point to the 1 890s. If figures for real income per head
are examined, it is evident that the real check to growth, apart from a temporary
break in the 1870s, did not occur until towards the end of the nineteenth century.
On the other hand, in the case of exports and industrial production, the break in
growth trends occurs somewhat earlier, probably around the 1870s. Thus whilst
it is generally accepted that there was a slowing down of the rate of economic growth
sometime after 1870 there is no measure of its exact timing, its extent or its causes.
The Great Debate about Britain's decline was begun by the Victorians themselves.
There was little doubt in the minds of contemporary observers in the late nineteenth
century that a decline had set in in Britain's industrial progress. A flood of documen-
tary evidence was produced which, although prejudiced, was not entirely inaccurate
for the more scholarly and analytical accounts contained similar conclusions. There
must have been an element of truth since informed opinion was almost unanimous
on the question. Up to recent years, there was a consensus also among twentieth
century historians that a decline had set in between 1870 and 1914, a decline which
was attributable to a failure of British industry and to management in particular.
Serious reservations however are now being expressed.
Contemporary observers and earlier historians based their assessments on sta-
tistics relating to industrial output and trade figures which clearly indicated a
'relative decline' vis-a-vis Britain's competitors. Economic historians of more recent
times, on the other hand (in particular mathematical economists and ecomone-
ticians ), have attempted to provide an assessment based on quantitive tests using
a variety of more sophisticated economic measures. Their results, whilst invalidating
many earlier arguments, have at the same time triggered off a spate of arguments
and counter-arguments over the applicability of these methods.
Was there a 'failure' of the British economy as a whole to maintain the momentum
of the earlier years? There may well have been individual industries which were
deficient, but it appears that such a charge may no longer be justified for British
industry as a whole. Indeed, an extreme view is that there is little left of the dismal
picture of British failure painted by historians and the conclusions of a conference
of economic historians in 1970 was that 'during the critical period 1870 to. 1900
when the balance tilted from dominance to dependence the British economy ...
performed as one would expect a competitive and prosperous economy to perform'. 7
Nevertheless, the argument about Britain's 'assured failure' is by no means over.

J
Where did wego wrong?

Of the many factors advanced as being contributory to the failure of British industry
to innovate and increase production as rapidly as its competitors, two have stood
out as being of overriding importance; these were the quality of entrepreneurs and
the role of education and training.
The theory of entrepreneurial failure reached its culminating point with David
Landes' (1969) UnboundedPrometheusin which he points to the leads lost, the oppor-
tunities missed and the markets relinquished that need not have been. The theory
embraces familiar accusations of amateurism, indifference and complacency; in-
competent and indifferent salesmanship involving the unwillingness to try new
products; a stubborn refusal to suit goods to the needs of potential clients or to
engage technical salesmen with a facility in foreign languages; lack of dynamism
and adventurousness by managers; technical and organizational lag within individual
firms; conservatism in the face of new techniques and a reluctance to abandon
individuality and tradition. Because England industrialized early English entre-
preneurs were second or third generation entrepreneurs in the critical period 1 879
to 1900 and were more likely to be distracted from business life by social life.
Furthermore, their lack of formal training told against them - they lacked technical
expertise and were less able to judge the commercial prospects of particular in-
novations.
The early entrepreneurs, pioneers of the Industrial Revolution, had been un-
tutored, lacking formal education, products of the ancient traditions of British
craftsmanship - men such as Crompton, Smeaton, Bramah and Maudslay. The
Industrial Revolution, it seemed, owed little to education systems or to direct
action from the state. At mid-century the prevailing philosophy was that Britain
owed her success to the natural character and qualities of her entrepreneurs, to her
craftsmen and engineers endowed with native ability. These, allied to daring
entrepreneurship and individualism, had brought Britain to the top. What indeed
was owed to education?
In 18 51 Lyon Playfair, in his lecture to the School of Mines, drew attention to
the fact that the ready availability of cheap natural resources had been in Britain's
favour but in the future, with the widespread development of transport and
communications systems, the race would go to the nation which commanded the
greatest scientific skill. But belief in individualism and the superior qualities of
British workmanship, together with a dislike of state interference, held back state
intervention to create systems of scientific education and training. Arnold (1892)
summed up the British attitude to the state in the words 'as an alien, intrusive power
in the community, not summing up and representing the action of individuals, but
thwarting it'. This attitude, together with 'our high opinion of our own energy
and prosperity' 8 were stumbling blocks to progress. In Germany - the main con-
tinental rival - there was extensive state and municipal support for education,
whereas the attitude to education in England is well represented by a statement of
Robert Lowe when Chancellor of the Exchequer: 'I hold it as our duty not to spend
public money to do that which people can do for themselves'. 9 These attitudes led
to grave deficiencies in secondary and higher technical education and to a lack of
central direction by Government. The absence of an overall plan or blueprint led

6
 Introduction: Britain IS J 1-19 I 4

to a situation which contrasted the haphazard British system with the organized
German system.
Despite the impressive performances of British industries in winning medals at
the Great Exhibition, England was one of the few major competing countries
without an organized system of technical education. The aim in the early part of the
century was to produce an industrious workforce. The conviction grew during the
first quarter of the century that, with increasing industrialization, there was a need
for the industrial worker, variously described as a mechanic or artisan, to have a
knowledge of science related to his industrial practice. Consequently, technical
education, from its origins, became associated in the public mind with the education
of the artisan. At elementary level, prior to mid-century, education was in the hands
of the voluntaryists. The church bodies were anxious to preserve their dominant
position and the progress of a state system of education was hindered by the
secular-religious power struggle over the control of education. Manufacturers and
landowners, too, had their own economic interests to defend whenever the state
attempted to introduce new legislation requiring school attendance. The first
central government support came in the form of a grant of 20,000 in r 8 33, but not
until r 870 were the proper foundations of a system laid down. Widespread poverty
and apathy and indifference to educational needs were common among the populace.
A comprehensive survey by the Newcastle Commission, which reported in 1861,
discovered that the average attendance at elementary schools was only 76 per cent;
one third of pupils attended for less than a hundred days, and less than one fifth
stayed on after the age of ten. Following Robert Lowe's Revised Code of r 86 r
the passing of examinations in the three Rs became the necessary condition for the
award of grants to schools. Government policy and action in the next two decades
were more often activated by the concern for cheapness rather than efficiency. Prior
to this many teachers had taken a delight in teaching elementary science, but as it
now no longer counted for grant purposes innovation and experimentation of this
kind disappeared from the schools.
Deficiences in day school education were compensated for by the evening schools.
The principle of supplementary early schooling and of remedying defects had been
adopted by the Sunday Schools and adult schools at the end of the eighteenth
century. By the mid-nineteenth century, evening schools and night schools had
become an established part of the educational scene. They were very much a second
best, and their grave deficiencies were revealed by Michael Sadler, Professor of the
History and Administration of Education at Manchester University, in r 907. They
were
in some respects little but a makeshift for what should have been done in
elementary day schools. Much that was attempted in the evening schools
would have been better done by a well organized system of day schools ...
There was no legal compulsion to attend them and they left untouched large
sections of the community . 10
In Sadler' s ( r 907) view:
the question to be decided is whether we in England gain more through

7
Where did wego wrong?

stimulating and rewarding the energy of the few by our voluntary system
of continuation schools than is lost through our failure to raise the general
average of trained and disciplined efficiency by means of compulsory
attendance for all. The same question comes up in some form or other in
every attempt to balance the advantages of what may broadly be distin-
guished as the English and German forms of educational organization.
The Germans make thriftier use of their average material than we succeed
in doing ... Can we afford the waste which our lack of organization
entails ?11

In the field of secondary education there was a greater reluctance on the part of
the state to interfere or to allocate adequate resources. Government action was
largely confined to the setting up of numerous Commissions, few of whose recom-
mendations were implemented, and of a Charity Commission whose function it was
to oversee the considerable number of endowments, many of which were grossly
abused. In the r 86os and r 870s, three Royal Commissions under the Chairmanship
of the Earl of Clarendon, Baron Taunton and the Duke of Devonshire all revealed
that Britain had remarkably little education, much of it inadequate in quality, and
drew attention to the deplorable state of scientific education. Thirty years later
the Board of Education in its Report of 190 5-6 concluded: 'The most conspicuous
fact that emerges is of how much there is yet to be done in secondary education ...
the short-comings are too often less than disastrous'. A few years later it highlighted
a fundamental weakness when it pointed to the lack of positive state action:

That the state has any concern with secondary education is a comparatively
modern idea in England ... This isolation and consequent neglect of
secondary education over so long a period is at the root of the difficulties
which have had to be faced in the last few years in all grades of education
in England ... The formidable inertia of the nation reinforced by intense
jealousy of state interference and dislike of public control held up much
needed reforms. 12

A cohesive pattern of secondary education was not laid down until the turn of the
century. By the time the Bryce Commission was appointed in r 894 there. were
numerous bodies participating in the provision and funding of secondary education.
Fragmentation and lack of cohesion were the hallmarks. There was an uneven
distribution of endowments; an overall inadequacy of finance; an absence of
inspection; a too narrow curriculum and a paucity of free places. The Bryce Com-
mission was the first body to attempt a visionary definition of secondary education.
It was the springboard for the formation of the Board of Education in r 899 and the
Education Act of 1902. To overcome 'the usual results of dispersed and unconnected
forces, needless competition between the different agencies and a frequent over-
lapping of effort' the Bryce Commission proposed a single statutory body presided
over by a Minister, which would supervise action by local authorities in whom
responsibility for secondary educatio.n was to be invested.
Throughout the greater part of the century the main middle-class schools - the

8
 Introduction: Britain r 8r J-191 4

public and grammar schools - were almost exclusively classical. The Devonshire
Commission (1872) carried out an extensive survey of the place of science in the
schools:

We regret to observe in many of the larger schools the number of science

masters is totally inadequate. X1e fear that the fewness of the science masters
in the great schools and the slowness with which their number is allowed
to increase must, to a certain extent, be due to an inadequate appreciation
on the part of the authorities of those institutions of the importance of
the place which science ought to occupy in school education. 13

In,defending themselves against criticisms the schools sought a scapegoat in Oxford

and Cambridge which offered few scholarships and fellowships in the sciences; the
vast majority being awarded for classics. Sir John Lubbock, a member of the
Devonshire Commission, observed:

They do not prepare them (in science) at schools because there is not the
same number of awards for it in the universities and the universities do not
award them because science is not taught in the schools and the schools do
not teach them because they are not rewarded in the universities. 14

Few products of the leading schools went on to study science and engineering, with
the notable exception of some schools. A Committee set up under Sir J. J. Thomson
in 1916 found a deplorable state of affairs fifty years after the Clarendon Commission
had first drawn attention to the poor state of science education:
Not for the first time educational conscience has been stung by the thought
that as a nation we are neglecting science ... Y/e cannot regard it as anything
but unsatisfactory that it should be impossible to form even a rough
estimate of the number of children receiving secondary education in this
country nor of the value of that education. 15

The fortunes of the leading schools were bound up with the ancient universities
and a great deal of blame attached to the latter. Oxford and Cambridge, with their
continued adherence to traditional studies and their neglect of science, were a
stumbling block to progress. They were a perpetual thorn in the flesh of those who
viewed with concern the rise of the German universities and technical high schools.
Royal Commissions to Inquire into the State, Discipline, Studies and Revenues
of the Universities and Colleges were set up in the 18 5os. They discovered that the
wealth of the Universities resided in the colleges which resisted reforms and were
reluctant to devote funds to science. The Devonshire Commission discovered that
the funds devoted to science were 'lamentably deficient'. Of a total of 449 fellowships,
212, (46 per cent) were in classics and 12 5, (27 per cent) were in mathematics, whereas
seven only were in natural science. Teaching was predominant over research, of
which little was done.
Early in the nineteenth century the two London colleges- University and King's -
had been established to provide for the sons of the middle classes studies which
were not available at Oxford and Cambridge. Later (beginning with Owens College,

9
Where did we go wrong?,

Manchester, in r 8 5r) a spate of 'civic' colleges were set up in the major cities with
the teaching of science and technology as a principal aim. These colleges were
handicapped in their development by government indifference; financial support
not forthcoming until the first Treasury Grant in aid of r 5,ooo was awarded in
r 889 - the colleges having to rely on donations and subscriptions from individuals,
civic leaders, manufacturers and traders. Chronic lack of funds led to a paucity
of research scholarships. Professor Moore, the first holder of the chair of biochemis-
try at Liverpool University, wrote in r 91 r:

It is much to be regretted that in the financial system of our universities

no separate provision is made for the endowment of research apart from
undergraduate teaching ... The result is a perpetual struggle between
teaching and research for the partition of a sum of money inadequate to
supply completely the needs of both and in such a struggle, research,
though equally or even more important, comes off worst because it is
usually regarded by administrators as a luxury whereas teaching is deemed
an essential function in the work of a university. 16

The underlying philosophy of English education was 'class based'. The grammar
and public schools were exclusively middle class, whereas the cornerstone of
technical education was the artisan; the perceived needs of the artisan underpinned
thinking about technical education throughout the greater part of the century.
The widespread concern felt about the general education of the artisan, and in
particular the lack of basic instruction in science, gave rise in the second quarter
of the nineteenth century to the Mechanics' Institutes which were to provide
instruction in the various branches of science related to the industrial arts which
the members practised. Government action in the early r 8 5os led to the creation of
a Di vision of Science being added to the Department of Practical Art to form a new
Department of Science and Art for the encouragement of the teaching of the applied
sciences. But the working man, due to the absence of efficient primary and secondary
systems of education, lacked the basic educational skills necessary to enable him to
benefit from such provision created for him. An even greater weakness in technical
education was middle and higher technical education. There was little provision
at higher levels until the formation of technical schools and civic university colleges
during the final quarter of the century, and these were badly handicapped by lack of
adequate funds and suitable pupils. In contrast, higher technical education in
Germany was catered for by a system of well endowed state-sponsored technical
high schools which produced cadres of well trained and qualified scientists and
technicians for the rapidly expanding German industrial machine. The neglect of
'higher' technical education can be seen as a fundamental weakness of the English
scene. In Germany money was allocated according to pre-determined needs and
the whole of education was characterised by zeal and systematic thoroughness.
Professor Margaret Gowing in her \X!ilkins Lecture, 17 delivered to the Royal
Society in r 976, lists five factors as affecting Britain's industrial progress. These
were finance, administrative structure, social class, the Church and imperial purpose.
She points to the absence of any wide and sustained interest in scientific and technical

IO
 Introduction: Britain IS I J- I l) I 4

education among the upper and middle classes, and quotes Professor Rolleston,
Professor of Physiology at Oxford who, in evidence to the Devonshire Commis-
sioners, referred feelingly to a French report of higher education in Britain which
talked of 'snobbismeas a vanite!re'sAnglaise' .18 According to Professor Gowing ( 1977 ),
obsession with social class, which appeared on almost every page of the great
educational reports, was a cause of British backwardness. She observes that it is

strange that a country which had experienced such swift social mobility
in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and which had much admired its
self-made industrial and engineering heroes, was so dominated by class
and so reluctant to accord social prestige to science and technology. In
some other European nations class divisions were as rigid, and in France
much more bitter. In no other Western country did the class differences
prevent scientific and technical education from permeating national life.

The administrative structure of education was a weakness. The Education Depart-

ment at \'<?hitehall which looked after elementary education and the Department of
Science and Art both came under the Privy Council Committee on Education, but
they were geographically and administratively separate. Secondary education fell
in the gaps between the Departments while yet another body administered the
endowed schools. Administrative practice was too complex. The Department of
Science and Art's voluminous and ever-changing rules were unintelligible to local
committees and students; it was a 'nest of nepotism' with strangely mixed functions
and it remained the arbiter of scientific and technical education. Professor Gowing
concludes 'the late Victorians, sometimes portrayed as creative administrative
reformers, emerge in this story as patchers, improvisers and procrastinators'.

Notes and References

1 CHAMBERS, J.D.(1968) The Workshop of the World: British EconomicHisto1y ,320-,880, Oxford, Oxford
Press p. 1, defines this as the period between the financial crisis of 1821 and the Great Depression of
1873.
z HossBAWM,E.J. (1968) Industry and Empire, Pelican Economic History of Britain, Vol. 3, Harmonds-
worth, Penguin Books, p. I 3.
3 THOMPSON, D. (1950) England in the Nineteenth Century, Pc:.ican History of England, Vol. 8, Harmonds-
worth, Penguin Books, p. 101.
4 HOBSBA WM,E. J. ( I 968) op. cit., p. 180.
5 Ibid., P· 181.
6 GAY, J.E. (1917) 'Anglo Russian Economic Relations', EconomicJournal, XXVII, pp. 316-7.
7 McCLOSKEY,D.N. (Ed.) (1971) Essays on a ] ;fatureEconomy: Britain after ,340, Papers and Proceedings
of the Mathematical Social Science Board Conference of the The New Economic History of Britain,
1840-1930, London, Methuen, p. 7.
8 ARNOLD,M. (1892) Higher Schoolsand Universitiesin Germany, Second Edition, London, Macmillan,
p. zo.
9 CARDWELL, D.S.L. (1972) The Organizationof Sciencein England, London, Heinei ann, p.·98.
10 SADLER,M.E. (1907) ContinuationSchoolsin England and Elsewhere,Manchester, Manchester University
Press, p. 3.
1 I Ibid., pp. 70-1.
1z Board.of EducationReports 1905-6, pp. J 1-z.

II
Where did wego wrong?

13 Rf!YalCommissionon ScientificInstructionand the Advancement of Science(Devonshire Commission) ( 1 872),

Vol. III, Sixth Report, p. 5.
14 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 3'·
15 'Natural Sciences in Education' in the Report of the Committee on The Position of Natural Sciencein the
EducationalSystem of Great Britain, (Thomson Committee) (1918), p. II,
16 Re,earchesin Biochemistry,1908-11, Harold Cohen Library, University of Liverpool.
17 GOWING, M. (1976) Science,Technologyand Education, The Wilkins Lecture, reprinted from notes and
records of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 3', No. 1, July, 1977.
18 Rf!YalCommissionof ScientificInstructionand the Advancement of SciencePapers, Vol. 2 j, p. 373 r.

I2
 The Economy, Management and Foreign Competition

Derek H. Aldcroft

The retardation debate

It seems to be a favourite pastime of the British public to criticize the performance

of their country's economy. For a century or more now Britain's economic perfor-
mance and her industrialists have been under close scrutiny by economists, historians,
journalists. and others and, generally, the tenor of their observations has been
unfavourable. British businessmen, in particular, have frequently been the target
for critical comment, if not outright abuse, and it is curious that a country which
pioneered the breakthrough into modern industrial growth should have so little
admiration for its industrial leaders. 1 Indeed, the present author, while having a
rugh regard for thrusting and dynamic enterprise, has contributed his share to
tarnishing the image of industrialists and, ironically, it has been foreign observers,
notably American scholars, who have come to the rescue of the maligned British
businessman.
The origins of the businessmen's 'bad press' date from the latter part of the
nineteenth century. 2 This was the period when Britain's industrial supremacy began
to be challenged by the newer industrializing nations and when, by all accounts,
Britain's economic performance began to falter. Much has been written about the
nature and extent of this decline and it is not the purpose of this paper to rehearse
all the arguments and data yet again. While acknowledging the fact that the subject
is still somewhat controversial, there are several points on which a broad measure
of agreement has been reached. First, no one would dispute the fact that in the
half century or so up to r 914 Britain steadily lost her former supremacy as industriali-
zation proceeded abroad (notably in Germany and America) and foreign competition
consequently increased. In terms of both world production in manufactures, and
world trade in those products, -Britain's importance declined considerably through
to r 914; a not unexpected happening given her domination in the middle of the
nineteenth century. Second, rates of growth.of total output and industrial production
decelerated in this period, though the timing and the extent of that deceleration are
still being debated. 3 Not only was growth less rapid than it had been previously but
it also compared unfavourably with the growth performance of some of the later

13
Where did we go wrong?

industrializing countries, notably Germany and the United States. Third, and more
serious, there was a marked slowing down in the rate of growth of industrial
productivity. Though the statistical data leave room for improvement, evidence
so far seems to indicate a significant check to productivity growth at quite an early
date and by the beginning of the twentieth century industrial productivity was
scarcely rising at all.
It is true that the ten ta ti ve nature of some of the statistical data makes it difficult
to determine precisely the timing of the break in the trend and the extent of the
retardation. Nor do all series show the same pattern of deceleration. Most observers
are prepared to accept, albeit with varying emphases on its timing and severity,
that there was some element oflagging in Britain's economic performance. However,
a few writers have not been prepared to accept fully this conventional wisdom.
McCloskey (1970), for example, maintains that the growth performance of the
economy was reasonably satisfactory and that the slowing d~wn in productivity
growth amounted to no more than a check in the r9oos which was 'too short, too
late, and too uncertain to justify the dramatic description "climacteric"' .4 He also
argues that there was very limited potential for faster growth through either home
demand or exports due to inelastic supplies of labour and capital, and, at the same
time, dismisses the suggestion that a diversion of resources from foreign to domestic
investment would have made much difference. 5 Similarly, in a recent study on
British industry, Musson (1978), while acknowledging the debate about retardation,
paints a fairly glowing picture of the period 'as that in which the Industrial Revolu-
tion really occurred, on a massive scale, transforming the whole economy and
society much more widely and deeply than the earlier changes had done'. 6
Despite such reservations, the general interest shown in Britain's retardation,
and the variety of causes adduced to explain it, seem to indicate that it was more than
just a myth. Indeed, as with Britain's current problems, some of which are not
unlike those of a century ago, the reasons for the poor performance have been one
of the most hotly debated subjects in economic history; a debate which looks like
continuing for some years to come. The list of causes includes the handicap of an
early start; over-commitment to basic industries; a slowing down in export
growth due partly to industrialization abroad and partly to excessive commitment
to certain products and markets; the lack of technical education and trained workers;
obsolete machinery and a low rate of capital accumulation; imperfections in tbe
capital market and excessive foreign investment; a low rate of technical progress
and, of course, entrepreneurial deficiences of one sort or another. Such a long
'laundry list'·of faults has not, however, done much to clarify the issue since it has
usually proved difficult in practice to quantify the importance of each factor and
thereby rank the order of priority.
It is not the purpose of this essay to traverse familiar ground yet again by discussing
in detail the retardation debate and all its possible causes. There are, indeed, many
loose ends still to be tied up but in this paper we shall concentrate attention on two
important issues around which the debate has crystallized in recent years: first,
the potential for faster growth via structural change and shifts in the use of resources;
and second, the vexed question of the rate of technical progress in British industry
 The Economy,Managementand ForeignCompetition

and the associated issue of the calibre of British management and enterprise. In
fact, a good part of the recent controversy has centred around the entrepreneur
and his alleged failings or otherwise. Indeed, part of the original impetus for the
current debate developed from earlier comments by contemporaries and later
writers, which implied that much of the blame for Britain's deteriorating perfor-
mance in late-Victorian Britain could be attributed to the 'malpractices' of business-
men of the period. Not surprisingly, an attack along such lines eventually brought
forth a response, especially from American scholars, who have been more anxious
to rescue the name of the British businessman than his compatriots have been.
McCloskey, Sandberg, Harley and others have argued that it is misleading to
generalize on an economy-wide basis given the wide diversity of performance
between industries and between different branches of the same industry. Further-
more, where there was a recognizable lag in the adoption of new techniques (as for
example in iron and steel, cotton, coal, chemicals and parts of the engineering
industry) this, it has been claimed, did not necessarily signify a failure of enterprise.
Indeed, it could be argued that in many instances British industrialists were behaving
in a rational manner in response to a given set of economic conditions, which
included relative factor prices, market structure and profit opportunities. Only
when the particular conditions no longer held, that is after World War r, did it
become apparent that the pre-1914 entrepreneurial response was misplaced, but
then the businessman's time horizon and powers of perception do not encompass
the long-run.

The structural potential for faster growth

At any particular point in time most economies have some potential for faster
growth through structural change, but this potential may remain unexploited for
one reason or another. For example, many European countries had enormous
growth reserves locked away in an inefficient and low productivity primary sector
and these we~e eventually unleashed, with dramatic consequences, after World
War 2. 7 Alternatively, many mature industrial countries of the present day devote
a large share of their resources to services of one kind or another, many of which
have low productivity levels. In Britain, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, the scope for boosting growth by shifting resources from agriculture to
industry was obviously fairly limited given the already small size of the farm sector.
However, one can deduce at least two possible sources of faster growth: first,
a large share of resources were tied up in the basic staple industries with low rates
of productivity growth, whilst at the same time there was a lag in the development
of newer lines of activity or faster growing sectors; and second, a large proportion
of British savings was channelled abroad. What potential was there then for
improved growth through a reallocation of resources?
Mcdoskey's (1970) doubts about the potential for improved growth through
resource reallocation have been noted earlier. He believes that the economy was
growing as rapidly as its resources permitted; supplies of labour and capital were,

IJ
Wheredid wego wrong?

in his opinion, relatively inelastic, and a diversion of capital invested abroad to

domestic use would not have made all that much difference to the perceived growth
rate. His assumptions can be challenged on several grounds. First, it is doubtful
whether factor supplies were as inelastic as he suggests; second, the implications of
significant structural change within the economy are not properly explored; and
third, he tends to ignore the scope for productivity improvements through the
adoption of best practice techniques and 'better industrial housekeeping'. The last
of these points will be taken up in the section on innovational response. Here we
shall deal with the 'inelastic factor supply' argument and the important question
of structural change.
It is difficult to believe that factor supplies were inelastic in Victorian Britain or,
alternatively, that they could have not been augmented had the need arisen. Indeed,
in a recent paper, Harley ( 1974) has argued that it was the very abundance of skilled
labour which slowed down the rate at which new techniques were adopted in
Britain. 8 More generally, there may have been supply constraints with respect to
labour in the short-term but, given the right.conditions on the demand side, the
long-term manpower potential could be improved in several ways: by lower
emigration, reduction in unemployment, increased use of female labour or by
improving labour utilization within the labour-intensive staple industries. \'Cith
regard to capital inputs, again one can argue that better utilization would have
improved the situation but, more importantly, domestic capital supplies could
easily have been raised by diverting savings from foreign investment.
The structural potential for faster growth might at first glance appear to have
been fairly limited, at least if one confines attention to the traditional 'old' versus
'new' industries. That too many resources were being committed to the basic
trades - coal, cotton, shipbuilding - is not in question, at least from the long-term
point of view. Britain also lagged in developing the newer industries - automobiles,
new chemicals and electrical products. The latter were, however, at an early stage
of commercial development in most countries up to 1900 and it is difficult to
envisage any remarkable improvement in the growth performance of the British
economy emanating from more rigorous development of these industries given
that their quantitative importance was so small at that time. In fact, some doubts
have recently been expressed as to their importance in inter-war growth, especially
in the recovery of the 1930s, when they accounted for quite a significant share of
industrial production. However, a wider interpretation of structural change would
involve a more fundamental shift of resources within the economy as a whole and
a shift from foreign to domestic investment.
Work by William Kennedy ( 1976) on growth and structural change in this period
has made one aware of some of the possibilities in this direction. Preliminary
calculations suggest that, had Britain made a commitment of resources to tele-
communications, electricity, engineering (including electrical), car manufacturing,
construction and related industries similar to that made in the United States, then
the implied increase in growth would have been sufficient to raise British per capita
incomes to 5 5 per cent above the level actually recorded in 191 3.9 In subsequent
detailed work on structural change and resource reallocation, Kennedy ( I 978) sets

I6
 The Economy,Managementand ForeignCo11Jpdition

out possible growth profiles contingent upon a greater commitment of resources to

those sectors capable of sustaining rapid expansion and technological progress.
The upper bound growth potential is substantial, producing up to a doubling of the
realised per capita income of 1913. The structural change envisaged is also consider-
able, involving a commitment of resources to dynamic sectors greater, in relative
terms, than that in the United States during the same period. But this reallocation
was by no means outside the realms of feasibility, given earlier historical experience
during the industrial revolution, or compared with contemplated shifts in the light
of current needs. 10 It would, of course, have involved a substantial switch of
resources from foreign to home investment, 11 a shift which would be economically
rational on the assumption that most foreign investments yielded less than the
average domestic return. 12
The fact that structural adaptation did not take place along the lines posited can,
according to Kennedy ( 1978), be largely attributed to the imperfections of the capital
markets which concentrated their activities on fixed interest issues (foreign bonds
and government securities) and well-established industrial undertakings in order to
satisfy the risk-averting predilections of the British investor. What this meant in
practice was that, far from encouraging the shift of resources and new technological
developments, more rewarding albeit more risky, the institutional financial mech-
anism acted as a constra,int and thereby led to an ossification of the existing structure.
By affecting both the structure of capital supplies available domestically
to British firms and the level and structure of demand for the output of
British firms, foreign investment, perhaps more than any other single
factor, acted to freeze the structure of the British economy in the position
seen to be so precarious in the inter-war period. 13
Furthermore, the fact that the large proportion of British savings flowing into
foreign investment restricted the growth of the economy in turn conditioned
the behaviour of entrepreneurs.
There are many implications of this structural counter-factual which need to
be explored more fully before we can be completely satisfied with it. For example,
the gains on the domestic front from 'collapsing' foreign investment would in part
be offset by losses on the latter and, therefore, the net gains must be stated more
explicitly. In addition, there is the question of the relative rates of return on home
and foreign investments which remains to be settled. Further, it is by no means
certain that the institutional rigidity of the capital markets was as strong and
perverse as Kennedy (1978) implies since there is evidence that growth-orientated
firms (even in the newer more risky fields of endeavour) could raise the capital
required. Edelstein (1971), in particular, is doubtful about the alleged irrational
bias of the British capital market towards foreign investment. 14 Finally, the analysis
posits an ideal world, or an upper bound to growth through structural change, a
condition not likely to be achieved in practice though a second-best order might
be attainable. However, these reservations apart, the main point to emerge is that
we should be wary of adopting a complacent view about the Victorian economy.
As with the British economy today, everything was not alright with the Victorian

I7
Where did we go wrong?

economy; it could, and should, have grown faster and there was certainly room for
some structural change which would have helped to achieve a better result.

Innovational response and business enterprise

Victorian industrialists have long been berated for their lack of enterprise. They
have been criticised on three main counts: first, reluctance to adopt new technologies
and labour-saving methods; second, the weakness of their commercial methods,
especially in export markets; and third, the failure to appreciate the importance
of applied science and the value of technical education. The traditional view has
been set forth in a long list of writings. 15 More recently, it has been countered by a
vigorous attack seeking to show that some sectors of industry were dynamic and
that entrepreneurial response was rationally based. 16
There is no doubt that British industrialists appear to have been slow to adopt
new techniques and processes and improved methods of production when compared
with their counterparts in the United States and Germany. One can run through a
long list of industries and find something wrong with them on this score - iron
and steel, coal, cotton textiles, engineering, boots and shoes, chemicals, shipbuilding,
watchmaking and the railways, not to mention the newer sectors such as electrical
engineering and automobiles. 17 The details are now familiar enough and they need
not therefore be recounted again. However, the position was not one of unrelieved
gloom. First, some industries, or branches of industry, performed creditably enough.
For example, parts of the engineering industry - notably textile, steam and sewing
machinery - were technically very advanced 18 while, after the r 870s, British arms
manufacturers could fully match the Americans in a mass-producing export in-
dustry.19 Nor does there seem to have been very much wrong with machine tools
or the letter-press printing industry. 20 Second, one can point to a number of
enterprising and innovating firms in retailing, rubber, soap and fats, pottery, glass,
engineering, cotton thread, food manufacturing, clothing, furniture, tobacco and
pharmaceuticals. 21 -Third, from the r 890s onwards there are signs in some trades of
a definite improvement in competitive position and a greater willingness to adopt
new techniques. This was in part a reponse to the stimulus imparted by foreign
competition, as in the case of boots and shoes, bicycles and some branches of
engineering. 22 The railways too seem to have put up a better performance, at least
on the freight side, in the early twentieth century. 23
Notwithstanding these bright spots, there still remained large sectors of industry
which were technically backward compared with American and German practice.
In some cases, notably the electrical industry, chemicals and the Scottish cotton
industry, deficiencies of enterprise can be found. 24 Lindert and Trace ( r 97 r) in
their careful analysis of the chemical industry uncovered certain failures, particular! y
the reluctance of the Leblanc producers to switch over to the Solvay process of soda
making, from which they inferred that 'the Leblanc management exhibited early-
start mentality, with its profit-losing attachment to continuity and its reluctance to
admit a major mistake'. 25 The virtual demise of the Scottish cotton industry has also

I ,f
 The Economy, IVI.anagement
and Foreign Competition

been attributed to entrepreneurial shortcomings. The vulnerability of Scottish

production to changes in fashion, coupled with a difficult labour force, played a
part but, according to Robertson (1970), the crucial factor was a lack of enterprise
and initiative since the experience of the Glasgow cotton spinning company, J. and
P. Coats, and one or two other firms, demonstrated that given the will to succeed
Scottish cotton mills could compete successfully with Lancashire or anyone else
up to 1914. Scottish cotton manufacturers gave up too easily; they retired or drifted
into other pursuits. 26
\'(7hether these are representative examples is another matter. Indeed, the general
concensus of much recent work is that the British industrialist was not so bad after
all. 27 There may well have been technical lags but it does not necessarily follow
that entrepreneurs were inefficient or that they behaved irrationally. It is possible
to explain their behaviour as a rational response to costs, market and other conditions
peculiar to Britain. Thus, in the case of cotton textiles, Sandberg ( 1969) argues that
past criticisms of the industry's technical and productive performance have been
exaggerated. By not investing in ring spindles and automatic looms, as American
firms did, British millowners were not sacrificing a great deal in terms of profitable
investment opportunities. Given Britain's market and cost conditions with increas-
ing emphasis on quality and ready supplies of skilled labour, it was rational for
manufacturers to retain the old technology in contrast to the position in countries
where skilled labour was less abundant and concentration on coarser counts was
greater. 28 More generally, Harley (1974) attributes the neglect of new processes
and machine techniques in several industries~ iron and steel, textiles and engineering
to the abundance of skilled labour in Britain. 'So long as factor prices left "handi-
craft" methods the low cost technique in Britain there was little incentive to
specialize' and thereby adopt modern production techniques in engineering. 29
Market conditions may also have been partly responsible for slowing down the
rate of technical progress, especially in iron and steel and engineering. 30
The most spirited defence on behalf of the entrepreneur has come from Mc-
Closkey (1971), especially with respect to the coal and iron and steel industries,
which have been heavily criticized in the past for their failings. The difference in
labour productivity between the American and British coal industries he explains
largely in terms of the more favourable resource base which the Americans worked,
thicker seams, shallower pits and fewer faults. 31 But while geological factors were
important in terms of relative productivities they do not fully explain the continuing
decline in British productivity or the failure to mechanize as resources diminish or
become more difficult to work. Postwar experience certainly showed the gains to
be derived from mechanization as seams became thinner and less accessible. A
possible explanation is that relative factor prices did not justify the use of mechanical
cutters up to 1914, but that after the war, when labour became more costly and
disruptive, it paid to mechanize. 32 As for iron and steel, McCloskey (1973) can find
very little wrong with it. That productivity growth continued in America after the
r 88os when it stagnated in Britain should occasion no alarm since it simply reflected
the American industry's process of catching up from an initial position of inferiority.
'The eventual cessation of productivity growth in the early 1 8 Sos in Bessemer steel,

r9
Wheredid wego wrong?

in the late 1880s in pig iron, and in the early 1900s in open hearth steel was a reflex
of the exhaustion of available technology, not of slower growing demand. The
rate of productivity growth in America did finally come to exceed the rate in Britain,
but only because Britain had earlier achieved high levels of productivity'. 33 Britain
had a good record in the open hearth process, showed no failure in the use of basic
ores and, in general, the industry responded in a rational manner to the given
market conditions and economic incentives then prevailing.
While the notion qf entrepreneurial failure has clearly undergone some revision
in recent years one must be careful not to take too complacent a view of British
industry and enterprise in this period. Certainly, there were examples of technical
lags, productivity stagnation and deficient enterprise. Some of these failings can be
explained in terms of relative costs, factor supply conditions and market conditions,
in which case one could argue that entrepreneurial behaviour was in some way
rational. 34 On the other hand, much of the revisionist work is only partial in scope,
since it concentrates on one or two selected issues and then attempts to make broad
generalizations about the aggregate performance of the industries concerned.
For example, McCloskey's ( I 97 3) analysis of the iron and steel industry takes as
the basis of comparison the productivity gap between Britain and the United States.
Since Britain was superior initially, America would inevitably catch up and therefore
there was little need for worry even though British productivity was stagnating.
It is difficult to believe, however, that there was no scope for further productivity
growth unless, as McCloskey infers, technology was exhausted in Britain, a point
which is neither credible nor proven since he does not analyse all the-possible ways
of raising productivity. The analysis of the coal industry is even more restricted.
Again, the comparison with America is useful in that it demonstra:tes the greater
yields possible in a country endowed with richer resources. However, this is only
part of the story. We must also know why productivity stagnated in Britain, whether
there was scope for improving it by mechanization, and if so why this was not
accomplished. The thinner seams and more difficult geological conditions only
explain part of the problem since the record of the twentieth century shows that
productivity could be improved when mechaniz.ation was adopted. Finally, one
more example might be taken, that of cotton. Sandberg (1969) 35 reckons that at
the very worst British cotton firms ignored a marginally good investment in not
adopting ring spindles. Continued investment in mule spinning in Britain as
opposed to ring spinning in the United States could be attributed to relative labour
costs; mule spinning required skilled labour and the costs were nearly one third
higher in America than in Britain. Yet the labour c~st of ring spinning was similar
in both countries and decidedly cheaper than mule spinning in both cases, which
raises the question why it was not profitable for Britain to adopt the cheaper process.
On a more general level, one should emphasise again that the revisionist school
of thought would have us believe that there was very little wrong with the British
economy. However, while there may well have been a variety of conditioning
factors which partly explain the retardation in productivity and the behaviour of
industrialists in terms of innovational response, it would be mischievous to assume
that there was little that could have been done to improve efficiency and the per-

20
 The Economy,Managementand ForeignCompetition

formance of the economy in general. At the macro level, Kennedy (1976) 36 has
illustrated the possibilities in terms of a substantial structural shift in the allocation
of resources, while in the case of individual industries and firms there were oppor-
tunities for improved efficiency which were missed. Whether these were excusable
on economic or non-economic grounds is another matter, but the fact remains that
the British economy did not realise its full potential in late- Victorian and Edwardian
Britain.

Foreign competition and commercial response

There is no doubt that Britain found herself in a much more competitive world
in the later nineteenth century as other countries industrialized. Clearly therefore,
she could not hope to retain her semi-monopolistic trading position in manufactures
of the mid-Victorian period and, hence, it is not surprising to find that her share of
world trade in manufactured products fell steadily in the period 1870-1914. How-
ever, though some loss, of trade share was only to be expected, it has frequently
been suggested that her export growth could have been stronger had a better
commercial response been made to countering foreign competition in both home
and overseas markets. Thus, apart from unfavourable trends in prices 37 and in-
dustrial structure, 38 there was the additional problem that British industrialists
lost orders to foreign competitors simply because they would not adopt more
aggressive selling methods to counter the challenge. The string of complaints
listed by consular officials stationed abroad is all too familiar: too few and badly
trained salesmen; lack of direct selling agencies and a consequent heavy reliance on
the merchanting system; poorly produced catalogues; badly packaged goods; late
delivery of goods and so on. 39 While the consular reports no doubt somewhat
exaggerated the situation - and it should be noted that British consuls were strong
on criticism but weak on constructive assistance - it is evident from other sources
that there was more than a grain of truth in their allegations.
The weakness of British selling methods was especially noticeable in the late
1880s and 1890s, the time when American and German competition became really
acute in the British domestic market and in overseas markets. 40 In a wide range of
products - iron arid steel, bicycles, boots and shoes, chemicals, electrical products,
engineering manufactures, farm machinery, clocks, gloves and gas mantles -
American and German firms appeared to be invading world markets. The strength
of the invasion was exaggerated at the time but nevertheless it was significant.
Moreover, the success achieved by Britain's competitors was not simply due to their
superior products. Indeed, in many cases British wares were as good as, if not better
than, the equivalent foreign products, though quite often the British product
was not suited to the particular market in question. This was the case in the cycle
industry, for example, where British firms concentrated on producing high-price,
quality bicycles which could not compete with cheaper American cycles in the
lower end of the market. But at the same time, British firms could not in the 1890s
match the superior salesmanship of the Americans who employed technically

2I
Where did JPego wrong?

competent salesmen and advertised widely. 41 A similar experience occurred in the

boot and shoe industry, 42 and again, the loss of British dominance in the market
for farm machinery in the state of Victoria, Australia between 1870 and 1900 can be
explained largely in terms of non-price competition. The Americans replaced the
British as the major suppliers not because the latter concentrated on traditional lines
but largely because American firms were prepared to market their goods more
vigorously through product adaptation, market testing and sales promotion
campaigns. 43
One of the main problems with regard to overseas sales was that British firms
still relied heavily on the traditional merchant system which had served its purpose
well in the early days of iron and cotton, but, as Lewis ( 19 57) has pointed out, was
less suited to selling sophisticated capital equipment to industrial countries in a
more competitive environment. 44 There were obvious drawbacks in a system in
which selling and production organizations were separated. Many merchant houses
acted as agents to a number of firms and this inevitably produced a certain conflict
of interests between competing firms. All too frequently the system of indirect
selling provided an inadequate reflection of the needs and requirements of customers,
both at home and abroad, partly because of the poor system of communication
between firm and agency. Moreover, many merchants were accustomed to selling
relatively simple consumer goods and were not equipped to promote sales of
technically complex products of the later nineteenth century and, even for fairly
simple consumer goods, the merchanting system was becoming increasingly un-
satisfactory. By the 1890s the footwear specialists, . and J. Clark, admitted that
they had lost a good deal of business by their reliance on agents and were slowly
coming to the conclusion that direct selling was the only alternative. 45
The obvious answer to the defects of the merchanting sytem was to switch to
direct _selling. Both the Americans and Germans found that, with widening markets,
increasing competition and more complex products, the agency or merchant system
was becoming something of an anachronism and that the only real solution was to
invest capital in establishing sales networks. Originally, up to the r 870s, the majority
of American industrial concerns had concentrated their activities on manufacturing
and they purchased their supplies, and sold their finished products, through
wholesale and commercial agents. This practice changed during the later nineteenth
century with the growth of large integrated concerns and, by 1900, many enterprises
did much more than simply manufacture. They handled their own purchasing and
controlled their own raw materials; they established their own nation-wide distribu-
tion networks, through which they carried on wholesaling and retailing, and they
set up selling agencies abroad. The building up of extensive sales organizations
sometimes required more in terms of capital, employment and entrepreneurial skills
than did the expansion of production facilities. 46 Advertising was also extensively
employed; in the marketing of breakfast cereals, for example, W.K. Kellog at times
spent nearly one third of the company's working capital on advertising. 47
German firms also went in for marketing in a big way with considerable emphasis
on the promotion of exports. The country's whole commercial policy was said to
be directed towards the enlargement and extension of foreign trade. To achieve

22
 The Economy, Management and Foreign Competition

their objectives all manner of expedients were tried. As Lewis (1978) reflects:

The world was flooded with German salesmen. All kinds of sales organiza-
tion were tried: wholesale export houses, manufacturers' representatives
selling directly to the foreign buyer, manufacturers' export co-operatives,
sales through foreign commission agents, and so on. Numerous consulates
were opened at strategic points, and consuls were expected to promote
sales of German goods, a decision which shocked British conceptions of
diplomatic behaviour. 48

The investigation of selling methods has been somewhat neglected by historians

and so our knowledge of the subject is far from complete. However, the record to
date still seems to indicate that British firms were weak in this field, especially on
the export side. There were important exceptions of course - firms such as Lever,
Beecham and J. and P. Coats were as advanced as any American firm in sales
techniques. Furthermore, there is some evidence to suggest that a number of
British firms made a spirited response to the American and German commercial
challenge of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century 49 but, generally speaking,
there was no revolution in sales techniques in industry taken as a whole and one hears
very little among British firms about the recmitment and training of manpower in
sales and distribution. One suspects that technical expertise in this field was thinner
on the ground than in the laboratory and that the occupation remained very much
the province of the amateur.
One can suggest reasons for the reluctance to alter or adapt selling methods. The
small scale of the typical firm, together with a marked lack of cooperation among
firms for marketing purposes, made it difficult to establish viable, direct selling
organizations or to maintain large staffs of qualified salesmen. It is possible, too,
that the innate satisfaction with existing arrangements and an apparent ignorance
regarding the deficiences of the merchant system go some way towards explaining
the situation. But perhaps more important were the consequences of the failure to
improve selling techniques. There is certainly plenty of evidence to suggest that
British firms lost export business through lack of sales drive, and, in turn, the
consequent slower growth in exports may have reduced the incentive to make
technical improvements. Moreover, reliance on the merchanting system may, as
Kindle berger' ( 1964) suggests, have inhibited technical progress. so The division of
functions between producing and selling agents interposed barriers of communica-
tion between producer and consumer and thereby rendered external to the firm the
benefits of technical change. He cites the case of cotton textiles where the merchant
was partly responsible for the large number of separate qualities of product because
he lacked the incentive or ability to induce customers to standardize their require-
ments. Similarly, in the case of machine tools, the lack of close liaison between
producer and customer, because of the interposition of the merchant, restricted
both the standardization of tool design and the development of new tools.
More generally, we know that the merchant system was geared to selling tradi-
tional goods in traditional markets and less suited to selling new and sophisticated
products in the rich and expanding markets of Europe and America. By 1914 nearly

23
Where did wego wrong?

70 per cent of Britain's exports went to primary or semi-primary producing countries

and the types of exports which were sold to these countries did not provide the
same kind of incentive to adopt modern production methods and advanced
technology as those to America and Europe. In effect therefore, the merchant system
may well have tended to intensify the relative over-commitment to traditional
products and traditional markets. Indirectly, this could have contributed to slowing
down the rate of technical progress and, in turn, productivity growth, though by
how much is anybody's guess.

Science, education and trained manpower

Another area of weakness in British industry in the later nineteenth century was in
the application of science to industry and in the recruitment of a trained labour
force. It is true that there were plenty of traditional craftsmen trained in particular
skills through long plodding apprenticeships. But scientists, technicians and creative
workers were thin on the ground. British firms had a poor record in scientific
research; they employed relatively few scientists and technologists, and there was
a big gulf between academic science and industry. The implications for the more
science-based industries iron and steel, chemicals and electrical engineering for
example~ were serious and have been outlined in some detail elsewhere. 51 Moreover,
as Lewis (1978) has pointed out, the gap existed not only at the top but also at the
intermediate level of foremen, supervisors and technicians. 52 Though considerable
investigation still remains_to be done in this area it seems very likely that Britain's
workforce was less well-educated than those of Germany and America.
The failure of industry to recruit more trained personnel, both at the higher and
lower levels of educational attainment, can be attributed largely to two factors: lack
of interest on the part of employers and the defects of Britain's educational sytem.
Most industrialists had little faith in applied science and adhered to the cult _of the
practical man. Scientists were accorded a lowly status in the firm's hierarchy and
many employers regarded training on the job as preferable to formal technical
education. Technical schools were regarded more as places of correction than as
centres of skilled instruction. As Robertson (1974) has noted in his study of ship-
building ' ... technical education for skilled workmen was deemed beneficial
because it discouraged vandalism, promoted moral strength, and broadened a
man's outlook as well as giving him a better grasp of the job. It was important not
so much because it imparted a better knowledge of the principles of shipbuilding
and engineering, but because it helped to inculcate habits of good conduct'. 53
Such attitudes were by no means uncommon among employers though, of
course, there were enlightened firms who did take advantage of the educational
facilities available. These facilities were, however, somewhat limited since Britain's
educational system was not very well adapted to a modern industrial society. Britain
had little to compare with the scale and provision of university, technical and
elementary education in Germany, which ultimately provided that country with an
army of trained scientists and technicians for its science-based industries such as
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
softly-opened body, and that would be death. She clung in a sudden
anguish of terror. But it came with a strange slow thrust of peace, the
dark thrust of peace and a ponderous, primordial tenderness, such
as made the world in the beginning. And her terror subsided in her
breast, her breast dared to be gone in peace, she held nothing. She
dared to let go everything, all herself, and be gone in the flood.
And it seemed she was like the sea, nothing but dark waves rising
and heaving, heaving with a great swell, so that slowly her whole
darkness was in motion, and she was ocean rolling its dark, dumb
mass. Oh, and far down inside her the deeps parted and rolled
asunder, in long, far-travelling billows, and ever, at the quick of her,
the depths parted and rolled asunder, from the centre of soft
plunging, as the plunger went deeper and deeper, touching lower,
and she was deeper and deeper and deeper disclosed, and heavier
the billows of her rolled away to some shore, uncovering her, and
closer and closer plunged the palpable unknown, and further and
further rolled the waves of herself away from herself, leaving her, till
suddenly, in a soft, shuddering convulsion, the quick of all her plasm
was touched, she knew herself touched, the consummation was
upon her, and she was gone. She was gone, she was not, and she
was born: a woman.
Ah, too lovely, too lovely! In the ebbing she realised all the
loveliness. Now all her body clung with tender love to the unknown
man, and blinding to the wilting penis, as it so tenderly, frailly,
unknowingly withdrew, after the fierce thrust of its potency. As it drew
out and left her body, the secret, sensitive thing, she gave an
unconscious cry of pure loss, and she tried to put it back. It had been
so perfect! And she loved it so!
And only now she became aware of the small, bud-like reticence and
tenderness of the penis, and a little cry of wonder and poignancy
escaped her again, her woman's heart crying out over the tender
frailty of that which had been the power.
"It was so lovely!" she moaned. "It was so lovely!" But he said
nothing, only softly kissed her, lying still above her. And she moaned
with a sort of bliss, as a sacrifice, and a new-born thing.
And now in her heart the queer wonder of him was awakened. A
man! the strange potency of manhood upon her! Her hands strayed
over him, still a little afraid. Afraid of that strange, hostile, slightly
repulsive thing that he had been to her, a man. And now she touched
him, and it was the sons of god with the daughters of men. How
beautiful he felt, how pure in tissue! How lovely, how lovely, strong,
and yet pure and delicate, such stillness of the sensitive body! Such
utter stillness of potency and delicate flesh! How beautiful! How
beautiful! Her hands came timorously down his back, to the soft,
smallish globes of the buttocks. Beauty! What beauty! a sudden little
flame of new awareness went through her. How was it possible, this
beauty here, where she had previously only been repelled? The
unspeakable beauty to the touch, of the warm, living buttocks! The
life within life, the sheer warm, potent loveliness. And the strange
weight of the balls between his legs! What a mystery! What a
strange heavy weight of mystery, that could lie soft and heavy in
one's hand! The roots, root of all that is lovely, the primeval root of all
full beauty.
She clung to him, with a hiss of wonder that was almost awe, terror.
He held her close, but he said nothing. He would never say anything.
She crept nearer to him, nearer, only to be near to the sensual
wonder of him. And out of his utter, incomprehensible stillness, she
felt again the slow, momentous, surging rise of the phallus again, the
other power. And her heart melted out with a kind of awe.
And this time his being within her was all soft and iridescent, purely
soft and iridescent, such as no consciousness could seize. Her
whole self quivered unconscious and alive, like plasm. She could not
know what it was. She could not remember what it had been. Only
that it had been more lovely than anything ever could be. Only that.
And afterwards she was utterly still, utterly unknowing, she was not
aware for how long. And he was still with her, in an unfathomable
silence along with her. And of this, they would never speak.
When awareness of the outside began to come back, she clung to
his breast, murmuring: "My love! my love!" And he held her silently.
And she curled on his breast, perfect.
But his silence was fathomless. His hands held her like flowers, so
still and strange. "Where are you?" she whispered to him. "Where
are you? Speak to me! Say something to me!"
He kissed her softly, murmuring: "Ay, my lass!"
But she did not know what he meant, she did not know where he
was. In his silence he seemed lost to her.
"You love me, don't you?" she murmured.
"Ay, tha knows!" he said.
"But tell me!" she pleaded.
"Ay! Ay! 'asn't ter felt it?" he said dimly, but softly and surely. And she
clung close to him, closer. He was so much more peaceful in love
than she was, and she wanted him to reassure her.
"You do love me!" she whispered, assertive. And his hands stroked
her softly, as if she were a flower, without the quiver of desire, but
with delicate nearness. And still there haunted her a restless
necessity to get a grip on love.
"Say you'll always love me!" she pleaded.
"Ay!" he said, abstractedly. And she felt her questions driving him
away from her.
"Mustn't we get up?" he said at last.
"No!" she said.
But she could feel his consciousness straying, listening to the noises
outside.
"It'll be nearly dark," he said. And she heard the pressure of
circumstance in his voice. She kissed him, with a woman's grief at
yielding up her hour.
He rose, and turned up the lantern, then began to pull on his clothes,
quickly disappearing inside them. Then he stood there, above her,
fastening his breeches and looking down at her with dark, wide eyes,
his face a little flushed and his hair ruffled, curiously warm and still
and beautiful in the dim light of the lantern, so beautiful, she would
never tell him how beautiful. It made her want to cling fast to him, to
hold him, for there was a warm, half-sleepy remoteness in his beauty
that made her want to cry out and clutch him, to have him. She
would never have him. So she lay on the blanket with curved, soft
naked haunches, and he had no idea what she was thinking, but to
him too she was beautiful, the soft, marvellous thing he could go
into, beyond everything.
"I love thee that I can go into thee," he said.
"Do you like me?" she said, her heart beating.
"It heals it all up, that I can go into thee. I love thee that tha opened
to me. I love thee that I came into thee like that."
He bent down and kissed her soft flank, rubbed his cheek against it,
then covered it up.
"And will you never leave me?" she said.
"Dunna ask them things," he said.
"But you do believe I love you?" she said.
"Tha loved me just now, wider than iver tha thout tha would. But who
knows what'll 'appen, once tha starts thinkin' about it!"
"No, don't say those things!—And you don't really think that I wanted
to make use of you, do you?"
"How?"
"To have a child—?"
"Now anybody can 'ave any childt i' th'world," he said, as he sat
down fastening on his leggings.
"Ah no!" she cried. "You don't mean it?"
"Eh well!" he said, looking at her under his brows. "This wor t' best."
She lay still. He softly opened the door. The sky was dark blue, with
crystalline, turquoise rim. He went out, to shut up the hens, speaking
softly to his dog. And she lay and wondered at the wonder of life,
and of being.
When he came back she was still lying there, glowing like a gypsy.
He sat on the stool by her.
"Tha mun come one naight ter th' cottage, afore tha goos; sholl ter?"
he asked, lifting his eyebrows as he looked at her, his hands
dangling between his knees.
"Sholl ter?" she echoed, teasing.
He smiled.
"Ay, sholl ter?" he repeated.
"Ay!" she said, imitating the dialect sound.
"Yi!" he said.
"Yi!" she repeated.
"An' slaip wi' me," he said. "It needs that. When sholt come?"
"When sholl I?" she said.
"Nay," he said, "tha canna do't. When sholt come then?"
"'Appen Sunday," she said.
"'Appen a' Sunday! Ay!"
He laughed at her quickly.
"Nay, tha canna," he protested.
"Why canna I?" she said.
He laughed. Her attempts at the dialect were so ludicrous, somehow.
"Coom then, tha mun goo!" he said.
"Mun I?" she said.
"Maun Ah!" he corrected.
"Why should I say maun when you said mun," she protested. "You're
not playing fair."
"Arena Ah!" he said, leaning forward and softly stroking her face.
"Tha'rt good cunt, though, aren't ter? Best bit o' cunt left on earth.
When ter likes! When tha'rt willin'!"
"What is cunt?" she said.
"An' doesn't ter know? Cunt! It's thee down theer; an' what I get
when I'm i'side thee, and what tha gets when I'm i'side thee; it's a' as
it is, all on't."
"All on't," she teased. "Cunt! It's like fuck then."
"Nay nay! Fuck's only what you do. Animals fuck. But cunt's a lot
more than that. It's thee, dost see: an' tha'rt a lot beside an animal,
aren't ter? even ter fuck! Cunt! Eh, that's the beauty o' thee, lass!"
She got up and kissed him between the eyes, that looked at her so
dark and soft and unspeakably warm, so unbearably beautiful.
"Is it?" she said. "And do you care for me?"
He kissed her without answering.
"Tha mun goo, let me dust thee," he said.
His hand passed over the curves of her body, firmly, without desire,
but with soft, intimate knowledge.
As she ran home in the twilight the world seemed a dream; the trees
in the park seemed bulging and surging at anchor on a tide, and the
heave of the slope to the house was alive.

CHAPTER XIII
On Sunday Clifford wanted to go into the wood. It was a lovely
morning, the pear blossom and plum had suddenly appeared in the
world, in a wonder of white here and there.
It was cruel for Clifford, while the world bloomed, to have to be
helped from chair to bath-chair. But he had forgotten, and even
seemed to have a certain conceit of himself in his lameness. Connie
still suffered, having to lift his inert legs into place. Mrs. Bolton did it
now, or Field.
She waited for him at the top of the drive, at the edge of the screen
of beeches. His chair came puffing along with a sort of valetudinarian
slow importance. As he joined his wife he said:
"Sir Clifford on his foaming steed!"
"Snorting, at least!" she laughed.
He stopped and looked round at the façade of the long, low old
brown house.
"Wragby doesn't wink an eyelid!" he said. "But then why should it! I
ride upon the achievements of the mind of man, and that beats a
horse."
"I suppose it does. And the souls in Plato riding up to heaven in a
two-horse chariot would go in a Ford car now," she said.
"Or a Rolls-Royce: Plato was an aristocrat!"
"Quite! No more black horse to thrash and maltreat. Plato never
thought we'd go one better than his black steed and his white steed,
and have no steeds at all, only an engine!"
"Only an engine and gas!" said Clifford.
"I hope I can have some repairs done to the old place next year. I
think I shall have about a thousand to spare for that: but work costs
so much!" he added.
"Oh, good!" said Connie. "If only there aren't more strikes!"
"What would be the use of their striking again! Merely ruin the
industry, what's left of it: and surely the owls are beginning to see it!"
"Perhaps they don't mind ruining the industry," said Connie.
"Ah, don't talk like a woman! The industry fills their bellies, even if it
can't keep their pockets quite so flush," he said, using turns of
speech that oddly had a twang of Mrs. Bolton.
"But didn't you say the other day that you were a conservative-
anarchist," she asked innocently.
"And did you understand what I meant?" he retorted. "All I meant is,
people can be what they like and feel what they like and do what
they like, strictly privately, so long as they keep the form of life intact,
and the apparatus."
Connie walked on in silence a few paces. Then she said, obstinately:
"It sounds like saying an egg may go as addled as it likes, so long as
it keeps its shell on whole. But addled eggs do break of themselves."
"I don't think people are eggs," he said. "Not even angels' eggs, my
dear little evangelist."
He was in rather high feather this bright morning. The larks were
trilling away over the park, the distant pit in the hollow was fuming
silent steam. It was almost like old days, before the war. Connie
didn't really want to argue. But then she did not really want to go to
the wood with Clifford either. So she walked beside his chair in a
certain obstinacy of spirit.
"No," he said. "There will be no more strikes, if the thing is properly
managed."
"Why not?"
"Because strikes will be made as good as impossible."
"But will the men let you?" she asked.
"We shan't ask them. We shall do it while they aren't looking: for their
own good, to save the industry."
"For your own good too," she said.
"Naturally! For the good of everybody. But for their good even more
than mine. I can live without the pits. They can't. They'll starve if
there are no pits. I've got other provision."
They looked up the shallow valley at the mine, and beyond it, at the
black-lidded houses of Tevershall crawling like some serpent up the
hill. From the old brown church the bells were ringing: Sunday,
Sunday, Sunday!
"But will the men let you dictate terms?" she said.
"My dear, they will have to: if one does it gently."
"But mightn't there be a mutual understanding?"
"Absolutely: when they realize that the industry comes before the
individual."
"But must you own the industry?" she said.
"I don't. But to the extent I do own it, yes, most decidedly. The
ownership of property has now become a religious question: as it
has been since Jesus and St. Francis. The point is not: take all thou
hast and give to the poor, but use all thou hast to encourage the
industry and give work to the poor. It's the only way to feed all the
mouths and clothe all the bodies. Giving away all we have to the
poor spells starvation for the poor just as much as for us. And
universal starvation is no high aim. Even general poverty is no lovely
thing. Poverty is ugly."
"But the disparity?"
"That is fate. Why is the star Jupiter bigger than the star Neptune?
You can't start altering the makeup of things!"
"But when this envy and jealousy and discontent has once started,"
she began.
"Do your best to stop it. Somebody's got to be boss of the show."
"But who is boss of the show?" she asked.
"The men who own and run the industries."
There was a long silence.
"It seems to me they're a bad boss," she said.
"Then you suggest what they should do."
"They don't take their boss-ship seriously enough," she said.
"They take it far more seriously than you take your ladyship," he
said.
"That's thrust upon me. I don't really want it," she blurted out. He
stopped the chair and looked at her.
"Who's shirking their responsibility now!" he said. "Who is trying to
get away now from the responsibility of their own boss-ship, as you
call it?"
"But I don't want any boss-ship," she protested.
"Ah! But that is funk. You've got it: fated to it. And you should live up
to it. Who has given the colliers all they have that's worth having: all
their political liberty, and their education, such as it is, their
sanitation, their health conditions, their books, their music,
everything. Who has given it them? Have colliers given it to colliers?
No! All the Wragbys and Shipleys in England have given their part,
and must go on giving. There's your responsibility."
Connie listened, and flushed very red.
"I'd like to give something," she said. "But I'm not allowed. Everything
is to be sold and paid for now; and all the things you mention now,
Wragby and Shipley sells them to the people, at a good profit.
Everything is sold. You don't give one heartbeat of real sympathy.
And besides, who has taken away from the people their natural life
and manhood, and given them this industrial horror? Who has done
that?"
"And what must I do?" he asked, green. "Ask them to come and
pillage me?"
"Why is Tevershall so ugly, so hideous? Why are their lives so
hopeless?"
"They built their own Tevershall, that's part of their display of
freedom. They built themselves their pretty Tevershall, and they live
their own pretty lives. I can't live their lives for them. Every beetle
must live its own life."
"But you make them work for you. They live the life of your coal
mine."
"Not at all. Every beetle finds its own food. Not one man is forced to
work for me."
"Their lives are industrialised and hopeless, and so are ours," she
cried.
"I don't think they are. That's just a romantic figure of speech, a relic
of the swooning and die-away romanticism. You don't look at all a
hopeless figure standing there, Connie my dear."
Which was true. For her dark-blue eyes were flashing, her colour
was hot in her cheeks, she looked full of a rebellious passion far
from the dejection of hopelessness. She noticed, in the tussocky
places of the grass, cottony young cowslips standing up still bleared
in their down. And she wondered with rage, why it was she felt
Clifford was so wrong, yet she couldn't say it to him, she could not
say exactly where he was wrong.
"No wonder the men hate you," she said.
"They don't!" he replied. "And don't fall into errors: in your sense of
the word, they are not men. They are animals you don't understand,
and never could. Don't thrust your illusions on other people. The
masses were always the same, and will always be the same. Nero's
slaves were extremely little different from our colliers or the Ford
motorcar workmen. I mean Nero's mine slaves and his field slaves. It
is the masses: they are the unchangeable. An individual may
emerge from the masses. But the emergence doesn't alter the mass.
The masses are unalterable. It is one of the most momentous facts
of social science. Panem et circenses! Only today education is one
of the bad substitutes for a circus. What is wrong today, is that we've
made a profound hash of the circuses part of the programme, and
poisoned our masses with a little education."
When Clifford became really roused in his feelings about the
common people, Connie was frightened. There was something
devastatingly true in what he said. But it was a truth that killed.
Seeing her pale and silent, Clifford started the chair again, and no
more was said till he halted again at the wood gate, which she
opened.
"And what we need to take up now," he said, "is whips, not swords.
The masses have been ruled since time began, and till time ends,
ruled they will have to be. It is sheer hypocrisy and farce to say they
can rule themselves."
"But can you rule them?" she asked.
"I? Oh yes! Neither my mind nor my will is crippled, and I don't rule
with my legs. I can do my share of ruling: absolutely, my share; and
give me a son, and he will be able to rule his portion after me."
"But he wouldn't be your own son, of your own ruling class; or
perhaps not," she stammered.
"I don't care who his father may be, so long as he is a healthy man
not below normal intelligence. Give me the child of any healthy,
normally intelligent man, and I will make a perfectly competent
Chatterley of him. It is not who begets us, that matters, but where
fate places us. Place any child among the ruling classes, and he will
grow up, to his own extent, a ruler. Put kings' and dukes' children
among the masses, and they'll be little plebians, mass products. It is
the overwhelming pressure of environment."
"Then the common people aren't a race, and the aristocrats aren't
blood," she said.
"No, my child! All that is romantic illusion. Aristocracy is a function, a
part of fate. And the masses are a functioning of another part of fate.
The individual hardly matters. It is a question of which function you
are brought up to and adapted to. It is not the individuals that make
an aristocracy: it is the functioning of the aristocratic whole. And it is
the functioning of the whole mass that makes the common man what
he is."
"Then there is no common humanity between us all!"
"Just as you like. We all need to fill our bellies. But when it comes to
expressive or executive functioning, I believe there is a gulf and an
absolute one, between the ruling and the serving classes. The two
functions are opposed. And the function determines the individual."
Connie looked at him with dazed eyes.
"Won't you come on?" she said.
And he started his chair. He had said his say. Now he lapsed into his
peculiar and rather vacant apathy, that Connie found so trying. In the
wood, anyhow, she was determined not to argue.
In front of them ran the open cleft of the riding, between the hazel
walls and the gay grey trees. The chair puffed slowly on, slowly
surging into the forget-me-nots that rose up in the drive like milk
froth, beyond the hazel shadows. Clifford steered the middle course,
where feet passing had kept a channel through the flowers. But
Connie, walking behind, had watched the wheels jolt over the
woodruff and the bugle, and squash the little yellow cups of the
creeping-jenny. Now they made a wake through the forget-me-nots.
All the flowers were there, the first bluebells in blue pools, like
standing water.
"You are quite right about its being beautiful," said Clifford. "It is so
amazingly. What is quite so lovely as an English spring!"
Connie thought it sounded as if even the spring bloomed by act of
Parliament. An English spring! Why not an Irish one? or Jewish? The
chair moved slowly ahead, past tufts of sturdy bluebells that stood up
like wheat, and over grey burdock leaves. When they came to the
open place where the trees had been felled, the light flooded in
rather stark. And the bluebells made sheets of bright blue colour,
here and there, sheering off into lilac and purple. And between, the
bracken was lifting its brown curled heads, like legions of young
snakes with a new secret to whisper to Eve.
Clifford kept the chair going till he came to the brow of the hill;
Connie followed slowly behind. The oak buds were opening soft and
brown. Everything came tenderly out of the old hardness. Even the
snaggy craggy oak trees put out the softest young leaves, spreading
thin, brown little wings like young bat wings in the light. Why had
men never any newness in them, any freshness to come forth with?
Stale men!
Clifford stopped the chair at the top of the rise and looked down. The
bluebells washed blue like floodwater over the broad riding, and lit
up the downhill with a warm blueness.
"It's a very fine colour in itself," said Clifford, "but useless for making
a painting."
"Quite!" said Connie, completely uninterested.
"Shall I venture as far as the spring?" said Clifford.
"Will the chair get up again?" she said.
"We'll try; nothing venture, nothing win!"
And the chair began to advance slowly, jolting down the beautiful
broad riding washed over with blue encroaching hyacinths. Oh last of
all ships, through the hyacinthian shallows! Oh pinnace on the last
wild waters, sailing on the last voyage of our civilisation! Whither, Oh
weird wheeled ship, your slow course steering! Quiet and
complacent, Clifford sat at the wheel of adventure: in his old black
hat and tweed jacket, motionless and cautious. Oh Captain, my
Captain, our splendid trip is done! Not yet though! Downhill in the
wake, came Constance in her grey dress, watching the chair jolt
downwards.
They passed the narrow track to the hut. Thank heaven it was not
wide enough for the chair: hardly wide enough for one person. The
chair reached the bottom of the slope, and swerved round, to
disappear. And Connie heard a low whistle behind her. She glanced
sharply round: the keeper was striding downhill towards her, his dog
keeping behind him.
"Is Sir Clifford going to the cottage?" he asked, looking into her eyes.
"No, only to the well."
"Ah! Good! Then I can keep out of sight. But I shall see you tonight. I
shall wait for you at the park gate about ten."
He looked again direct into her eyes.
"Yes," she faltered.
They heard the Papp! Papp! of Clifford's horn, tooting for Connie.
She "Coo-eed!" in reply. The keeper's face flickered with a little
grimace, and with his hand he softly brushed her breast upwards,
from underneath. She looked at him, frightened, and started running
down the hill, calling Coo-ee! again to Clifford. The man above
watched her, then turned, grinning faintly, back into his path.
She found Clifford slowly mounting to the spring, which was halfway
up the slope of the dark larch wood. He was there by the time she
caught him up.
"She did that all right," he said, referring to the chair.
Connie looked at the great grey leaves of burdock that grew out
ghostly from the edge of the larch wood. The people call it Robin
Hood's Rhubarb. How silent and gloomy it seemed by the well! Yet
the water bubbled so bright, wonderful! And there were bits of eye-
bright and strong blue bugle. And there, under the bank, the yellow
earth was moving. A mole! It emerged, rowing its pink hands, and
waving its blind gimlet of a face, with the tiny pink nose-tip uplifted.
"It seems to see with the end of its nose," said Connie.
"Better than with its eyes!" he said. "Will you drink?"
"Will you?"
She took an enamel mug from a twig on a tree, and stooped to fill it
for him. He drank in sips. Then she stooped again, and drank a little
herself.
"So icy!" she said gasping.
"Good, isn't it! Did you wish?"
"Did you?"
"Yes, I wished. But I won't tell."
She was aware of the rapping of a woodpecker, then of the wind,
soft and eerie through the larches. She looked up. White clouds
were crossing the blue.
"Clouds!" she said.
"White lambs only," he replied.
A shadow crossed the little clearing. The mole had swum out onto
the soft yellow earth.
"Unpleasant little beast, we ought to kill him," said Clifford.
"Look! he's like a parson in a pulpit," said she.
She gathered some sprigs of woodruff and brought them to him.
"New-mown hay!" he said. "Doesn't it smell like the romantic ladies
of the last century, who had their heads screwed on the right way
after all!"
She was looking at the white clouds.
"I wonder if it will rain," she said.
"Rain! Why! Do you want it to?"
They started on the return journey, Clifford jolting cautiously downhill.
They came to the dark bottom of the hollow, turned to the right, and
after a hundred yards swerved up the foot of the long slope, where
bluebells stood in the light.
"Now old girl!" said Clifford, putting the chair to it.
It was a steep and jolty climb. The chair plugged slowly, in a
struggling unwilling fashion. Still, she nosed her way up unevenly, till
she came to where the hyacinths were all around her, then she
balked, struggled, jerked a little way out of the flowers, then stopped.
"We'd better sound the horn and see if the keeper will come," said
Connie. "He could push her a bit. For that matter, I will push. It
helps."
"We'll let her breathe," said Clifford. "Do you mind putting a scotch
under the wheel?"
Connie found a stone, and they waited. After a while Clifford started
his motor again, then set the chair in motion. It struggled and faltered
like a sick thing, with curious noises.
"Let me push!" said Connie, coming up behind.
"No! Don't push!" he said angrily. "What's the good of the damned
thing, if it has to be pushed! Put the stone under!"
There was another pause, then another start; but more ineffectual
than before.
"You must let me push," she said. "Or sound the horn for the
keeper."
"Wait!"
She waited; and he had another try, doing more harm than good.
"Sound the horn then, if you won't let me push," she said.
"Hell! Be quiet a moment!"
She was quiet a moment: he made shattering efforts with the little
motor.
"You'll only break the thing down altogether, Clifford," she
remonstrated; "besides wasting your nervous energy."
"If I could only get out and look at the damned thing!" he said,
exasperated. And he sounded the horn stridently. "Perhaps Mellors
can see what's wrong."
They waited, among the mashed flowers under a sky softly curdling
with cloud. In the silence a wood-pigeon began to coo, roo-hoo hoo!
roo-hoo hoo! Clifford shut her up with a blast on the horn.
The keeper appeared directly, striding inquiringly round the corner.
He saluted.
"Do you know anything about motors?" asked Clifford sharply.
"I am afraid I don't. Has she gone wrong?"
"Apparently!" snapped Clifford.
The man crouched solicitously by the wheel, and peered at the little
engine.
"I'm afraid I know nothing at all about these mechanical things, Sir
Clifford," he said calmly. "If she has enough petrol and oil—"
"Just look carefully and see if you can see anything broken,"
snapped Clifford.
The man laid his gun against a tree, took off his coat and threw it
beside it. The brown dog sat guard. Then he sat down on his heels
and peered under the chair, poking with his finger at the greasy little
engine, and resenting the grease-marks on his clean Sunday shirt.
"Doesn't seem anything broken," he said. And he stood up, pushing
back his hat from his forehead, rubbing his brow and apparently
studying.
"Have you looked at the rods underneath?" asked Clifford. "See if
they are all right!"
The man lay flat on his stomach on the floor, his neck pressed back,
wriggling under the engine and poking with his finger. Connie
thought what a pathetic sort of thing a man was, feeble and small-
looking, when he was lying on his belly on the big earth.
"Seems all right as far as I can see," came his muffled voice.
"I don't suppose you can do anything," said Clifford.
"Seems as if I can't!" And he scrambled up and sat on his heels
again, collier fashion. "There's certainly nothing obviously broken."
Clifford started his engine, then put her in gear. She would not move.
"Run her a bit hard, like," suggested the keeper.
Clifford resented the interference: but he made his engine buzz like a
blue-bottle. Then she coughed and snarled and seemed to go better.
"Sounds as if she'd come clear," said Mellors.
But Clifford had already jerked her into gear. She gave a sick lurch
and ebbed weakly forwards.
"If I give her a push, she'll do it," said the keeper, going behind.
"Keep off!" snapped Clifford. "She'll do it by herself."
"But Clifford!" put in Connie from the bank, "you know it's too much
for her. Why are you so obstinate!"
Clifford was pale with anger. He jabbed at his levers. The chair gave
a sort of scurry, reeled on a few more yards, and came to her end
amid a particularly promising patch of bluebells.
"She's done!" said the keeper. "Not power enough."
"She's been up here before," said Clifford coldly.
"She won't do it this time," said the keeper.
Clifford did not reply. He began doing things with his engine, running
her fast and slow as if to get some sort of tune out of her. The wood
re-echoed with weird noises. Then he put her in gear with a jerk,
having jerked off his brake.
"You'll rip her inside out," murmured the keeper.
The chair charged in a sick lurch sideways at the ditch.
"Clifford!" cried Connie, rushing forward.
But the keeper had got the chair by the rail. Clifford, however, putting
on all his pressure, managed to steer into the riding, and with a
strange noise the chair was fighting the hill. Mellors pushed steadily
behind, and up she went, as if to retrieve herself.
"You see she's doing it!" said Clifford victorious, glancing over his
shoulder. There he saw the keeper's face.
"Are you pushing her?"
"She won't do it without."
"Leave her alone. I asked you not."
"She won't do it."
"Let her try!" snarled Clifford, with all his emphasis.
The keeper stood back: then turned to fetch his coat and gun. The
chair seemed to strangle immediately. She stood inert. Clifford,
seated a prisoner, was white with vexation. He jerked at the levers
with his hand, his feet were no good. He got queer noises out of her.
In savage impatience he moved little handles and got more noises
out of her. But she would not budge. No, she would not budge. He
stopped the engine and sat rigid with anger.
Constance sat on the bank and looked at the wretched and trampled
bluebells. "Nothing quite so lovely as an English spring." "I can do
my share of ruling." "What we need to take up now is whips, not
swords." "The ruling classes!"
The keeper strode up with his coat and gun, Flossie cautiously at his
heels. Clifford asked the man to do something or other to the engine.
Connie, who understood nothing at all of the technicalities of motors,
and who had had experience of breakdowns, sat patiently on the
bank as if she were a cipher. The keeper lay on his stomach again.
The ruling classes and the serving classes!
He got to his feet and said patiently: