1 - Quantitative analysis of the Victorian economy

Summary

Long after all participants have passed on, the Victorian economy continues to exercise powerful influences, both open and concealed, over economic policy and attitudes, as well as through the legacy of economic structure. Perceptions of how the economy worked and how well, form the background to a number of present-day concerns. Economists allude to the Victorian economy as a period of competition in opposition to today's oligopolistic industry, social commentators contrast the provisions of the modern welfare state with the inequalities generated by Victorian laissez-faire, and Mrs Thatcher appeals to Victorian values to provide the social cement necessary to bind society together.

The later Victorians were more prone to question their society than their mid-century forebears. British industry was more often described as uncompetitive (Williams 1896, Stead 1901) and social reformers (Mearns 1883, Booth 1902, Rowntree 1902) provided evidence for criticising the distribution of the gains from their expanding industrial society. Criticism has continued ever since. On the side of production, the Victorians have been blamed for dissipating the head start of the industrial revolution, and neglecting opportunities to lay the foundation for an advanced, technological, competitive British economy in the twentieth century. Inadequate attention to education and industry and too much concern with class, leisure and empire slowed economic progress, while the more vigorous Germany and the United States overtook Britain (Wiener 1981, Barnett 1986). Victorian and Edwardian economic structure was a poor inheritance for the later twentieth century (Crafts 1985). An increasing commitment to the world economy concentrated the British economy on the production of goods from a few sectors, the market and technological prospects for which were not bright.