Entrepreneurship in the Scottish Heavy Industries, 1870–4900

Between 1870 and 1900 the outstanding characteristic of the Scottish economy was the rise to a position of hegemony of the heavy industries. These industries became the basis of Scottish economic growth and to study them is to get at the nerve-centre of economic developments in Scotland. The Census occupational statistics reveal ⁽¹⁾ a significant decline in agriculture and textiles and an equally marked rise in heavy industry and chemicals. Agriculture dominated in 1871, employing 17 per cent of the total Scottish working population; textiles came second with 15 per cent; heavy industry ⁽²⁾ gave employment to 11 per cent; and chemicals to 1 per cent. In 1881 and 1891 the economy could be said to have assumed a more ‘balanced’ aspect (in the sense of having an even distribution of the working population among the different groupings); by 1901, however, ‘heaviness’ was the keynote. By then agriculture’s labour force had declined to 11 per cent of the total and textile’s to 10 per cent, while that of heavy industry had risen to 15 per cent and that of chemicals to just over 1 per cent.