Despite a continued growth of production and wealth in absolute terms, the economy of "the first industrial nation" began to decelerate after 1870, in comparison with that of her closest competitors. This so called "decline" was caused by a number of factors not merely one as the question suggests, indeed Supple` s foreword (1) asks, "Are we to be concerned with the rate of growth of total income or of manufacturing output? Above all, by what standards do we assess `failure` or `success`?"

Derek Aldcroft` s article, `The Entrepreneur and the British economy, 1870-1914 published in 1964 spearheaded the broad indictment of the British entrepreneur…(2)…….

A/ They failed to adopt the best available techniques of production in many industries, ranging from ring-spinning and automatic weaving in cotton to the mechanical cutter and electrification of mines in coal.

B/ They underestimated the growing importance of science, investing little in laboratories and technical personnel for research or for the effective exploitation of foreign research.

I intend to investigate these areas, in addition to labour relations, education and the class system, as I feel that they have a distinct bearing on the late Victorian economic climate.

McCloskey does conclude, however, that scattered cases of entrepreneurial success, Lever Brothers in soap and Courtaulds in rayon, for instance, do not break the hypothesis of general failure attributed to the entrepreneur, but further ponders the question of whether the `failures` were important to the performance of the economy as a whole, and whether the neglect of new techniques was of any consequence, given the paucity of quantitative evidence.

In view of this, Aldcroft, with reference to his 1964 piece, is substantially less sweeping in his later work in 1968 (13)

Some topics in this essay:
Industrial Spirit”, Entrepreneur British, Lever Brothers, Le Blanc, Britain Ensor, Jean-Pierre Dormois, British German, War Neither, United Germany, , iron steel, british economy, public school, decline british economy, labour costs, middle class, british business, britain `s, acid steel, production methods, production steel, saving labour costs, continued acid steel, late nineteenth century, british educational system,