ECONOMIC SURVEY OF A CENTURY

Press, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23131, 21 September 1940, Page 5

ECONOMIC SURVEY OF A CENTURY

A Hundred Years of Economic Development in Great Britain. By G, P. Jones and A. G. Pool. Duckworth. 420 pp. (18/- net.)

Dr. Jones, lecturer in Economic History in the University of Sheffield, and his colleague, Dr. Pool, lecturer in Economics, have collaborated with admirable results in a consecutive narrative, tracing the course of persistent movements and the impact of new forces as they appear, and in the descriptive analysis of the situations which, from time to time, present a more or dess abstract stability. “Consecutive” is not quite an accurate word. The authors have chosen, with reason, to divide their century, from 1837 to the. present time, into three pel’iods: 1837-1875, 1875-1914, and 1914-1939. A reasonably well-in formed reader might sec in the chapter headings and sub-headings, as they are varied from section io section, a suggestive synopsis of the great story of continuity and change, of event and consequence, of theory and practice in evolution. Thus, in the three sections, successively, sub-headings of the chapters on agriculture are “Agriculture Unprotected,” “Agrarian Legislation,” and “The New Agricultural Policy.” In the first section, there is a chapter on “Credit and Business Organisation”; in the second, “Banking and the Money Market” appears; in the third, the theme is “Monetary Policy.” In the first section, the textile manufactures and the iron, coal, and engineering industries are treated in separate chapters. In the second, industrial and commercial organisation and foreign competition and industrial fluctuation are new subjects. In the third, under “Industry and Trade,” the sub-head-ings fix attention on the problems of industrial change-over and unemployment, and -“lndustrial Reconstruction,” dealing principally with the changing structure of industry and with commercial policy, is another chapter that divides the present from even the recent past. Throughout, the treatment of these themes, with others like transport and communication, unionism, and labour legislation, is orderly and clear. Statistical and documentary evidence is skilfully used. The bibliography runs to 13 pages; and the index, under such testing as the reviewer has given it, answers eveiy need.

Messrs Eyre and Spottiswoode have now issued the first cheap edition of Frances Parkinson Keyes s Lady Blanche Farm (247 pp. b/net). Her innumerable admirers will welcome this characteristic romance.