ABSTRACT
Industry is frequently divided into primary, secondary and tertiary sectors. The primary sector is concerned with growing or extracting natural products and includes agriculture, forestry, fishing and mining. The secondary or manufacturing sector includes industries which process and change physical goods so that they acquire an added value. All other industries fall into the tertiary or service sector and are concerned with supplying some form of service. Mature industrial economies are sufficiently diversified so that failure in one industry will be offset by expansion in others, although individual people, firms and localities may suffer. Industrial leadership moved to Germany and the United States and Britain entered a long process of relative decline. The most dramatic sectoral decline took place in Britain’s leading export industry, cotton textiles. The motor vehicle industry in Britain lagged badly behind that of the United States and only limited progress had been made before 1914.
