British Industrial Growth, 1873-96: a Balanced View

Abstract

M r Coppock and I were originally in broad agreement in our interpretation of the so-called 'Great Depression', but in my short note on this subject in this Review I put forward various arguments suggesting that he (and also myself) had previously exaggerated the U.K.'s 'deceleration' in this period. Mr Coppock now accepts some of my arguments, and doubts whether the period 'has been correctly dated and named'. On the other hand, however, he still calls himself a 'pessimist' on this question, and puts forward arguments to support this point of view. Obviously there are still some substantial differences between us, but I think it should be made quite clear that we are agreed on the fact of 'deceleration' or 'retardation' in the U.K.'s rate of economic growth after about i870. We disagree as to the extent and significance of this deceleration, but we are not, I think, far apart in our views as to its timing, though Mr Coppock suggests we are. In my previous article I quoted Hoffmann's figures to show that there was some deceleration prior to i870, but Mr Coppock goes to some pains to point out inconsistencies in Hoffmann, and to emphasize that there was 'a significant decline in the growth-rate after i873'. I have never disputed this: deceleration was undoubtedly more marked from that date. At the same time, Mr Coppock does not deny that the deceleration began before i873 indeed, he admits that there was 'gentler retardation' in previous years which is the point I was making in my last article. Mr Coppock also agrees with me that there was 'no significant increase in the trend growth-rate of the index, excluding building, between I 896 and I 9 I 3'. I emphasized this fact referring to Lomax's figures to show that from the point of view of industrial growth there was nothing peculiar about the socalled 'Great Depression' that it was not a great trough, but part of a longerterm process of deceleration lasting up to the First World War. I think Mr Coppock would agree with me that a distinction can only be made between the periods before and after I 896 in terms of the trends in prices and profits (though whether or not, or to what extent, profits fell before i896 is debatable). Whether the falling prices of the period i873-96 warrant use of the term 'Great Depression' is doubtful; the effects were not uniformly depressive. Mr Coppock and I also seem to be in broad agreement as to the causes of the retardation during these years, but he is somewhat equivocal on this score. In one place (p. 39i), he admits that my earlier article 'throws a great deal of light' upon the causes of Britain's lower rate of growth; but in another (p. 39X) he tends to suggest that I (unlike Professor Lewis and himself) accept Britain's earlier start in the Industrial Revolution as 'a complete explanation'. On p. 392