. 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