ABSTRACT
Five of the papers at this conference were concerned directly with the question of the response of different sectors of the British economy to the opportunities and challenges offered by technological and institutional change in the second half of the nineteenth century. It may therefore be useful to comment briefly on the implications of these pieces of research for our interpretation of the performance of the British economy at and since that time. With the exception of Floud, none of the writers concerned himself with evaluating absolute levels of achievement. For the others, the question was: Given the objective conditions facing them, did British farmers, financiers and industrialists behave rationally in an economic sense, or could they have done better with more initiative, knowledge and capital? In general the answer was that they could not. The arguments are not entirely conclusive; it is possible that what McCloskey has proved is that, despite their use of the latest technical devices, the overall performance of the American steel industry never exceeded the mediocre level of the British before 1914. We need a similar comparison with the German steel industry, at least, before it can be said that the argument is convincing. As for coal, the conference did not come to grips with what seems to be one of Arthur Taylor’s most telling points. This is that the industry suffered from the existence of numerous small and inefficient enterprises, which moved into production during periods of high prices, shut down during less profitable periods, and effectively hindered rationalization of the industry, both as regards the optimum size of productive units and the most efficient coalfields.
