CHAPTER II - ECONOMIC CHANGE AND GROWTH

Summary

Even in Britain the Industrial Revolution was not all over by 1830; nor were the agricultural and transport revolutions. Some ways of growing, making, and moving commodities had undergone changes worthy of being deemed revolutionary, especially by Frenchmen. The problems of capital accumulation, of assembling and managing a labour force, of marketing an expanding output, of banking and business practice, and of coping with such phenomena of the business cycle as had been revealed by the boom and collapse of the mid-'twenties were all calling for changes in organisation, methods, voluntary association, and state policies. Thus the economic shape of things to come was clearly visible, provided one looked in the right places, especially in Great Britain. Yet even there nothing was finished, and over the rest of the panorama the picture was one of slow motion or still life.

Apart from the railway, 1830 was no great divide. During the next forty years the methods and organisation already developed were improved, supplemented, or supplanted by important innovations, and spread more widely over western Europe and North America. During the first two decades the pace of expansion and change was at times too fast to be maintained, the consequent depression deep and prolonged, and the transition disastrous to those whose skill was being rendered obsolete. After 1850, however, the new or remodelled institutions worked somewhat better, great new areas of natural resources and of new technology were opened up, while political and social tensions eased after the tumults of 1848.