ABSTRACT
T HE manifold changes in technical knowledge and in marketconditions in the world as a whole in the late nineteenthcentury, together with the dwindling demands which home agriculture was making on available productive resources, could hardly fail to induce considerable changes in British industry. On the face of it, they might have been expected to encourage not only a large absolute increase in industrial activity but also a further relative rise in the contribution of industrial pursuits to the country's economic life, a rise partly dependent on the development of virtually new branches of industry. Only, perhaps, a doubt as to how much more industrialized a country could become than Britain already was in 1870might modify these expectations a little,
To questions about the extent to which such expectations were, in fact, fulfilled only approximate answers can be given. Part of the difficulty in trying to be more exact lies in the imprecision of the categories that have to be used. Any measure of change in-output or income as a whole must be to some extent arbitrary when the nature and quality of its individual components are also changing; and the line between industrial and non-industrial activities cannot be drawn with complete certainty and sharpness. Even with the most abundant and exactly compiled statistics, quantitative statements about the absolute or relative growth of industrialization would have to be in terms of a range of possible variation, though the range might be fairly narrow. But the difficulty is enhanced by the deficiencies of the statistics. No census of production was taken in the United Kingdom until 1907, though the annual production of a number of important commodities was regularly recorded in the late nineteenth century; and direct information about the amount of capital used for industrial activities is very scanty. Thus many reservations have to be borne in mind when attempts are made to present a quantitative account of industrial growth. But, provided the reservations are not forgotten, there is enough reliable material to make possible conclusions of some significance.
