ABSTRACT
After coal, steel was the industry whose organizational efficiency came in for most criticism between the wars. Steel did not suffer in quite the same way as other major staple trades between the wars. Commercial reconstruction was explicitly linked to technical reform. Although the interwar period saw no spectacular breakthroughs in steel making methods economic production increasingly favoured large plants and the integration of processes. For most of the 1920s consideration of the steel industry's organization went hand in hand with the question of protection from foreign competition. The Conservative government in power at the time was not short on protectionist sentiment and had expressed a willingness to use the Safeguarding procedure where appropriate. Labour's victory at the 1929 election saw a change of priorities. In the second half of 1929 the only significant move by the new government was to establish a fresh committee of enquiry using the machinery of the Committee of Civil Research.
