Treasury Control and Labour Intelligence in Late Victorian and Edwardian Britain

Abstract

In recent years, the role of Treasury control in the process of late-nineteenthand early-twentieth-century economic and social policy-making has attracted considerable attention.' Yet its impact upon the database of the machinery of government has been largely neglected. This is the more surprising in that social scientists and historians have long stressed the linkages between statistics and policy formation. Organizational theorists such as Cherns and Rein have argued that statistics exercise a significant influence upon policy, although not necessarily an overt, direct, prescriptive influence. They have maintained that government data perform a leading part in 'the complex process by which society constructs its perceptions of reality, defines what its problems are and determines what goals and strategies it should adopt '.2 Economists have also located certain functions that statistical investigation fulfils in relation to policy. According to Carter and Roy, in summarizing in a popularly digestible form the extent of social and industrial dysfunctions, it serves to activate public opinion, faced with which governments are compelled to legislate. In addition, such data, in analysing past experience both at home and abroad, help to discriminate between a range of policy options. In monitoring the results of legislation, government statistics also provide a feedback for future decisions.3 Many welfare theorists and historians have subscribed to a similar viewpoint, normally within a contingency model of the relationship of 'intelligence' to policy formation. Certain conditions have been identified as particularly conducive to the influence of social statistics upon policy; when, for example, they reveal a clear