. PREFACE 
Merchant Adventurers who created our Oversea Dominions 
and our Eastern trade. But for a work of this kind 
these names would in a few generations be forgotten. 
It is well that the origin and development of our great 
industries should be examined and their traditions pre- 
served. Every great city ought to have its industrial 
history written around the names of those who have been 
instrumental in creating it. 
During the development of the industries of the early 
nineteenth century, capital freely poured in; but the 
operation of the Joint Stock Companies Acts enormously 
extended the ownership of our manufacturing establish- 
ments, and has been the means of encouraging the financial 
aggregation of separate, though similar, undertakings into 
powerful and comprehensive unities. Many of our greatest 
manufacturing organisations remain, however, under the 
management of their founders’ descendants who, having 
vast interests at stake, are keenly interested in the success of 
their undertakings. 
The Great War made a chasm in the continuity of the 
industries under review, and produced changes in the in- 
dustrial world which threaten the supremacy, if not the 
existence, of some of our chief trades. The impoverish- 
ment of populations among whom we formerly found 
profitable markets ; the depreciation of foreign currencies; 
the return at home to the gold standard, which has brought 
to the rich a heavy burden of taxation, and to the working 
classes widespread unemployment; the high costs in Great 
Britain of production, as against the relatively low wages 
and very efficient plant of our foreign rivals—all these have 
crippled our exports, and, in the case of our metallurgical 
and allied industries, have struck us a blow from which it 
will require all the energy of our great British race to re- 
cover. In the end, our policy of strict financial integrity 
must, no doubt, lead us towards the top. In the meantime, 
J1