NOTES & INDEX
NOTE ON AUTHORITIES FOR INDUSTRIAL HISTORY
For the earlier periods of English industrial history the ordinary student will find Cunningham’s Growth of Industry and Ashley’s Introduction to English Economic History and Theory useful. Besides these he should endeavour by all means to read the Domesday Book, a translation or copy of which may be found in most public libraries. The well-known histories of Stubbs and Freeman are also a great help. Then, for the whole of the period from Henry III. to the eighteenth century, the large work, The History of English Agriculture and Prices (in six volumes) by Professor Thorold Rogers affords a perfect mine of information. The same author’s Six Centuries of Work and Wages and Economic Interpretation of History are absolutely indispensable for anyone who wants to understand, not only our industrial, but our general history. Time spent over these two books is amply repaid. For the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries especially, Toynbee’s Industrial Revolution and Leone Levi’s History of Commerce must be read, and the Blue-books of the period should also be consulted.
Besides these works by modern authors, Arthur Young’s Northern and Southern Tours in England, and Defoe’s Tour afford a valuable picture of English industries in the last century, as also does the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. There is likewise a useful little History of British Commerce, from the earliest times, by G. L. Craik (published in 1844 by Charles Knight, but now long since out of print), which I have found very helpful and fairly complete.
For the political portion of our history Green’s History of the English People will probably be sufficient for general readers; and it contains occasionally a reference to industrial events. Mr George Howell’s Conflict of Capital and Labour should be read, as affording a clear view of the old gilds and their modern descendants, the Trade Unions; and no student of modern industrial questions should omit to familiarize himself with the {242} History of Co-operation, by Mr Holyoake. A little book called The Romance of Trade gives a number of interesting industrial facts in a disconnected sort of way, and may be read with advantage when the student knows the general outlines of industrial history. Harrison’s Elizabethan England (now published in the Camelot Classics Series) might be read in a similar way, as giving a picture of sixteenth century life.
I must acknowledge my indebtedness to all the above works, which I have freely used in this little history, and especially to the works of Professor Thorold Rogers, without which no complete industrial history could have been written. I have also utilized in some places the material already existing in my own Short Account of the Growth of English Industry in the Co-operative Annual of 1890, and in my article on English Agriculture in the Westminster Review of December 1888. I have preferred to state in this note the more accessible works that I have consulted, omitting others which are not immediately necessary for ordinary readers, rather than to burden my pages with continual footnotes and references. I trust that the works here indicated may help to guide students of economic history in reading far beyond the limits within which this short outline is necessarily confined.
I have also dealt with this subject more fully in a larger work entitled Industry in England (Methuen: London, 1896).
H. de B. G.
Of recent years some standard works on Domesday have been published, including Round’s Feudal England, F. W. Maitland’s Domesday Book and Beyond, Vinogradoff’s Villeinage in England and Ballard’s Domesday Inquest—the last being an excellent summary. Webb’s Industrial Democracy and History of Trade Unionism, Hobson’s Evolution of Modern Capitalism and Booth’s monumental Life and Labour of the People of London, all deal with the modern period. No serious student should fail to consult the publications of Government departments and Royal Commissions concerning questions of trade, industry, and social progress. The census returns and the current Statistical Abstracts are also useful. Bowley’s Elementary Manual of Statistics affords valuable help in the interpretation of these publications.
M. E. H