Britain And Her Competitors
The same time that Britain was suffering from introversion and from lack of imagination,her main competitors,USA and Germany, were modernizing their techniques in order to correspond to the so called ''second industrial revolution''.Therefore,the number of major innovations from 1776 to 1926 is reversely proportional for Britain and USA. Whereas during the period of 1776-1825 43,6% of the major innovation originated from Britain,after that period the percentage of innovations shows an downward trend and eventually during the period 1876-1926 only 14% of the major innovations originated from Britain. The same time that innovations in Britain declined by almost 30%,USA's innovative spirit increased steadily by 32% and during the period 1876-1926 43,7% of all innovations originated from USA. Germany manages to catch up Britain in innovations during 1826-75 and to overtake her during1876-1926. Comparing to Germany,it is interesting to examine the composition of British patenting. British inventors and firms tended to patent in technologies associated with traditional industrial areas that some of them had already been developed during the industrial revolution and could not be developed much more. Some of these areas are textiles,detergents and fertilisers,ratio,coal and shipbuilding. On the other hand,Germany patented more on areas that are connected with the second industrial revolution like chemicals,and especially dyestuffs and paints,pharmaceuticals,radio receivers and electrical operating systems. It was clear that Britain stopped to be at the forefront of new technological changes at the end of 19th century. However,comparing the British and American production technologies there might be a rational explanation for the absence of innovation in Britain. According to Broadberry two factors could explain the different paths of British and American manufacturing since 1870.The first factor is the standardization of the demand and the second the relative abundance of shopfloor labour. America had a short supply of skilled craftsmen but it could offset it since it was blessed with a richness of resources. This combination of abundances and shortages,stimulated the branches of manufacturing that skilled workers were very important to them ,to develop labour saving technologies. The development of these technologies together with the standardization of demand,provided American manufacturers the conditions for massive production. On the other hand,in Britain there were plenty skilled workers from the era of industrial revolution and in comparison with America the natural resources were less. If also one considers the fact that,in Britain the pattern of demand was not standardized,he would find logical that British manufacturers did not replace workers with machines that apart from others they could also offer them mass production. Instead of this, they were orientated to a model with general purpose machinery and customised demand,to a model that suited better to the British conditions. Eventually,at the end of 19th century British firms realising the strategic significance of investing in new technologies,took it upon to establish their own research and development capability. As a result 0.5 millions were spent on research and development by the first decade of the 20th century a number that became four times bigger by the end of the next decade. However,although these levels of spending for research were an improvement for Britain,still were definitely lower than the amounts invested in both Germany and USA. Still nothing in Britain could not be compared with the laboratories that General Electric or Kodak and Bayer were using in Germany and USA respectively. At this point it seems that Britain may had underinvested in research and in higher level of scientific and technical training.
But was technical education to blame?
Education
In short,there was a lack of connection between education and manufacturing,which according to the public mind,led to the decline. But was this lack of linkages enough to explain the decline during the Victorian period?
Indeed,the connection between the British industry and tertiary institutions was relatively weak,in contrast to the situation that was already emerging in USA from the first decade of the 20th century. It is characteristic that the Royal Commission of the Great Depression devoted its third volume only to issues that concern education. The same time that Massachusetts Institution of Technology (MIT) was already involved in commercial funded research in electrical and chemical engineering,in 1870 only nineteen English students graduated with degrees in science,mathematics or technology. The following years, although the situation improved,still England was behind Germany in issues that concern graduates with degrees in science and technology. In 1900 a small minority of 677 graduates in England,had a degree in science and in technology when in 1908 German Universities gave 400 degrees only in chemistry. In 1872 there were fewer students studying a degree in science in England than in University of Munich alone. This lack of expertise and lack of education in organic chemistry caused the main problem of dyestuffs and led to a massive import of chemical products like pharmaceutical goods that were American or ''Made in Germany''.
Furthermore,contemporaries found further links between education and the choice between free or protected trade. On the one hand supporters of free trade like Lyon Playfair held the view that a free trade would be good choice for Britain only if British industries were more efficient than the countries from which Britain was importing. This would work as a stimulus for owners to encourage more advanced techniques in production, which could only happen efficiently via the help of scientists .On the other hand,supporters of the protected trade like Sir Philip Magnus of the City and Guilds argued that the state could encourage the creation of industries based on chemistry and electrical physics which in turn they would create the need for educable expertise rather than natural endowments. If these industries were <<covered>> behind tariffs like the German ones,in order to face competition they would have had to turn to scientists and that would increase the need for educated employees. England along with Netherlands and Denmark were the only countries in Europe that allowed the free trade of agricultural products during the Great Depression. These imports increased the unemployment and the wages fell. This in turn,influenced the behaviour towards technical training since it gave the opportunity to employers to hire labour with embodied and not technical skills.
However,if not ambiguous,it is not necessarily true that the lack of graduates with technical knowledge in industries was the main factor for economic decline during the Victorian period.
As it is mentioned in the first part of the essay,a climate of conservatism,an attitude towards standardisation and mass production and the actions of unions did not encourage the use of skilled employees with knowledge in sciences or in technology. The fact that from 1870 to 1914 the membership of British engineering Institution rose tenfold from 4,000 to 40,000 implies that the scientific skill was far from absent in Britain. However, only 14% of active partners or executive directors had formal technical training in steel firms between 1875-1895,a share that rose by only 2% between 1905-1925.Similarly,from 1870 to 1914 a study of businessmen in both German and Britain,concluded to the fact that 13% of businessmen in Britain had any form of higher education whereas in Germany the equivalent percentage was almost the double. It seems that many businessmen of that era had not received higher scientific education when they were young and thus they preferred for employees the ''practical man''.Whatever the achievements of the Scottish Universities and of the Dissenting academies in England,owners had the view that new methods had to develop more in order to be practical and this went on and on. Thus for the most of the business community,scientists and science were something remote for them. This gap between theory and practice made professor of Chemistry in the University of Edinburgh to complaint about the ''ignorance of managers in the iron industry'' and the headmaster of the Winchester School to state that ''a school which offers education in physical sciences was worthless''. The simple-minded empiricism along with the lack of imagination made Quoted Haber to say that ''those who had...control of the business had no appreciation of the fact that...chemistry could develop industries in a greater number of directions which were quite unforeseen....They looked upon all those discoveries as isolated...and thought were discovered by lucky flukes''. This attitude continued in the following years. Despite the activities of the ''science lobby'' and the new more technically orientated Universities a sceptical businessman believed that research is useless if it cannot produce results in a year and technical investment was believed to be ''a risky speculation by directors and an unnecessary expenditure by shareholders''.
Conclusion
Indeed,in the beginning of the Victorian period, British tertiary Institutions could not support the connection between education and industries and this widened further the economical gap between Britain and its competitors. However, when Universities evolved and supplied the market with skilled labour,businessmen for the reasons explained above preferred other types of employees. In my opinion,educational system was not a defining factor for the poor development of industries,something that happened because of the refusal of businessmen to take risks and to learn new methods of production.
Bibliography
- ''Attributes to New Techniques:British Businessmen, 1800-1950'' by D.C Coleman and Christine Macleod
- Education and Economic Decline in Britain,1870 to the 1990s,Michael Sanderson
- The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain,Volume 2,Roderick Floud and Paul Johnson
- Sarah's Horell lecture notes
- Public Schools and the Decline of the British Economy 1870-1914
''Attributes to New Techniques:British Businessmen, 1800-1950'' by D.C Coleman and Christine Macleod
Quoted Haber, Chemical industry during the Nineteenth Century,p.168
