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³ Middlemas, K., Politics in industrial society: the experience of the British system since 1911 (London, 1979)Google Scholar; critical: Lowe, R., ‘The failure of consensus in Britain: the national industrial conference, 1919–1921’, Historical Journal (HJ), XXI (1978), 649–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Hall, P. A., Governing the economy: the politics of state intervention in Britain and France (Cambridge, 1986)Google Scholar; Winch, D., Economics and policy: a historical study (New York, 1969)Google Scholar; Clarke, P., The Keynesian revolution in the making, 1924–1936 (Oxford, 1988)Google Scholar; Furner, M. O. and Supple, B. (eds.), The state and economic knowledge: the American and British experiences (Cambridge, 1990).Google Scholar

⁴ Rempel, R. A., Unionists divided: Arthur Balfour, Joseph Chamberlain and the Unionist Free Traders (Newton Abbot and Hamden, Conn., 1972)Google Scholar; Sykes, A., Tariff reform in British politics, 1903–1913 (Oxford, 1979)Google Scholar; Self, R. C., Tories and tariffs: the Conservative party and the politics of tariff reform, 1922–1932 (London, 1986)Google Scholar. See also Coats, A. W., ‘Political economy and the tariff reform campaign of 1903’, Journal of Law and Economics, XI (04 1968), 181–229CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Mock, W., Imperiale Herrschaft und nationales Interesse: ‘constructive imperialism’ oder Freihandel in Grossbritannien vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg (Stuttgart, 1982)Google Scholar. A note on terminology for the general reader: ‘fiscal’ in the following does not refer narrowly to the technical meaning of the term, as pertaining only to public revenue, but to the broader historical one concerning the relationship between politics and economics that contemporaries associated with proposals for import duties and used in their discussions of ‘fiscal reform’, ‘the fiscal controversy’, etc.

⁵ From the large literature, see, Clarke, P. F., Lancashire and the New Liberalism (Cambridge, 1971)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Matthew, H. C. G., McKibbin, R. I. and Kay, J. A., ‘The franchise factor in the rise of the Labour party’, English Historical Review (EHR), XCI (1976), 723–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tanner, D., Political change and the Labour party, 1900–18 (Cambridge, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Freeden, M., The Mew Liberalism: an ideology of social reform (Oxford, 1978)Google Scholar; Clarke, P., Liberals and Social Democrats (Cambridge, 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Collini, S., Liberalism and sociology: L. T. Hobhouse and political argument in England, 1880–1914 (Cambridge, 1979)Google Scholar; Bernstein, G. L., Liberalism and liberal politics in Edwardian England (Boston, 1986)Google Scholar; Dawson, M., ‘Liberalism in Devon and Cornwall, 1910–1931: “the old-time religion”’, HJ XXXVIII (1995), 425–37Google Scholar; Koss, S., Asquith (London, 1976)Google Scholar; Wilson, T., The downfall of the Liberal party 1914–35 (London, 1966).Google Scholar

⁶ Attacks on the ‘selfish’ and ‘un-English’ mentality of cosmopolitan interests was a natural plank in the nationalist platform of Tariff Reform producers, such as Hugo, Hirst, Manufacturers and the state (1910)Google Scholar; authoritative statements of the academic orthodoxy are Schumpeter, J. A., Imperialism and social classes (Oxford, 1951 edn), ch. 5Google Scholar and Semmel, B., Imperialism and social reform: English social-imperial thought 1895–1914 (London, 1960)Google Scholar. It may be pointed out that the original complexity of Schumpeter's thesis has somewhat suffered in the literature on tariffs, e.g. Marrison, A. J., ‘Businessmen, industries and Tariff Reform in Great Britain, 1903–1930’, Business History, XXV, 2 (1983), 148–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Schumpeter's view that ‘the relation between capitalist and entrepreneurs is one of the typical and fundamental conflicts of the capitalist economy’ should be read as a historical comment, not a universalist one. It must not be separated from his awareness (in the same breath) that ‘monopoly capitalism has virtually fused the big banks and cartels into one’ (pp. 106f). What he saw as a protectionist, export-monopolistic orientation was not an inherent, universal phenomenon but a historical one – and, as such, included high finance. It was rooted not in manufacturers' economic interest but in the atavistic political competition amongst organized producers for state favours – ‘a type of action that by no means reflects the objective interests of all those concerned’ (p. 118, emphases in original, also pp. 120–6).

⁷ Clarke, P. F., ‘The end of laissez faire and politics of cotton’, HJ, XV, 3 (1972), 493–512CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kindleberger, C. P., ‘The rise of free trade in western Europe, 1820–1875’, Journal of Economic History, XXXV (1975), 20–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Marrison, ‘Businessmen’; Cassis, Y., Les banquiers de la City à l'époque Edouardienne (1890–1914) (Geneve, 1984)Google Scholar; Daunton, M.J., ‘“Gentlemanly capitalism” and British industry 1820–1914’, Past and Present, CXXII (1989), 119–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; on bimetallism see the exchange between Green, E. H. H. and Howe, A. C., EHR, CIII (1988), 588–612CrossRefGoogle Scholar, cv (1990), 377–91, 673–83; Howe, A. C., ‘Free Trade and the City of London, c. 1820–1870’, History, LXXVII, 251 (1992), 391–410CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Turner, M. J., ‘Before the Manchester School: economic theory in early nineteenth-century Manchester’, History, LXXIX (1994), 216–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cain, P.J., Hopkins, A.G., British imperialism: innovation and expansion 1688–1914 (London, 1993).Google Scholar

⁸ Marrison, , ‘Businessmen’, p. 170Google Scholar; at length for the diversity of interests of Commissioners, see his ‘British businessmen and the ‘scientific' tariff: a study of Joseph Chamberlain's Tariff Commission, 1903–1921, with special reference to the period 1903–1913’ (unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, University of Hull, 1980).Google Scholar

⁹ How to conceptualize this theoretically has of course been debated by sociologists. See, for instance, N. Luhmann's recent view of the economy as an autopoieitic system of society, Die Wirtschaft der Gesellschaft, (Frankfurt a.M., 1988)Google Scholar. For a more actor-oriented approach which treats actors as social theorists reproducing the frames of meaning of the social world, see Giddens', A. work, e.g., New rules of sociological method: a positive critique of interpretative sociologies (Stanford, 1993 2nd rev. edn)Google Scholar. For connections between economic theory and politics, see the interesting essays in Hall, P. A. (ed.), The political power of economic ideas: Keynesianism across nations (Princeton, 1989), esp. Hall's conclusion.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Marshall Library (Cambridge), Marshall papers, MiscI, 14 April 1911. His explanation invoked the outlook and power of regional media.

¹¹ Cf. Saul, S. B., Studies in British overseas trade 1870–1914 (Liverpool, 1960)Google Scholar; Medick's, H. stimulating ‘Anfänge und Voraussetzungen des Organisierten Kapitalismus in Grossbritannien 1873–1914’, in Winkler, H. A. (ed.), Organisierter Kapitalismus: Voraussetzungen und Anfänge (Göttingen, 1974), pp. 58–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Britain's adherence to a pure Free Trade system appears here as an objective necessity for the City and export trades. Many cosmopolitan financiers and traders at the time (and before and since) disagreed and found their ‘rational’ interests in heterodox policies, see below. For a recent statistical application of a sectoral model, see Irwin, D. A., ‘The political economy of free trade: voting in the British general election of 1906’, Journal of Law and Economics, XXXVII (1994), 75–108CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which is, however, debatable on methodological grounds as well as for neglecting political culture and features of Britain's electoral constitution. See also the references in n. 7.

¹² Guildhall Library, London Chamber of Commerce Archive, MS 16,577–1, Cement Trade Section, Minutes 21 Jan. 1904; British Library of Political and Economic Science (B.L.P.E.S.), Tariff Commission MSS, TC3 1/169 evidence of Charles Charleton, chairman of that section, 30 Nov. 1904, esp. para. 20539, and TC3 1/149 evidence of F. A. White and Mr Stevens for the Associated Portland Cement Manufacturers, 24 Nov. 1904. For the many attempts to organize the trade in a combination, see O'Hagan, H. Osborne, Leaves from my life (London, 1929), II, 39–146Google Scholar. Lord Masham kept the ‘Fair Trade’ momentum alive in the silk industry, e.g. his speech at the annual meeting of Lister & Co, Ltd, Bradford Daily Argus, 29 Jan. 1901. For the earlier period, Brown, B. H., The Tariff Reform movement in Great Britain, 1881–1895 (New York, 1941)Google Scholar; Spain, J., ‘Free trade, protection and the “good of the people”: the Liberal opposition to the cattle diseases bill of 1878’, in Biagini, E. (ed.), Citizenship and community: Liberals, radicals and collective identities in the British Isles, 1865–1931 (Cambridge, 1996), ch. 7Google Scholar; Bairoch, P., Commerce extérieur et développement économique de l'europe au XIXe siècle (Paris, 1976).Google Scholar

¹³ Saul, Studies, ch. vi; cf. Bairoch, P., Economics and world history: myths and paradoxes (New York and London, 1993)Google Scholar; Stein, A., ‘The hegemon's dilemma: Great Britain, the United States, and the international economic order’, International Organization, XXXVIII (1984), 355–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In addition to reciprocity agreements in Latin America, the U.S.A., by the turn of the century, had incorporated Hawaii into its customs system, secured preferential treatment in Puerto Rico, and effected a new tariff for Cuba reserving its coastal trade for the U.S. The movement for a reform of the German tariff had begun in earnest in 1897; the 1902 tariff eventually became effective in 1906. For commercial policy, see the still useful, Ashley, P., Modern tariff history: Germany–United States–France (London, 1920 third edn)Google Scholar; Fuchs, C. J., The trade policy of Great Britain and her colonies since 1860 (London, 1905Google Scholar; first German edn 1893); Verein für Sozialpolitik (ed.), Beiträge zur neuesten Handelspolitik Deutschlands, III. From the large, more recent literature, see Wehler, H.-U., Deutsche Gesellschqftsgeschichte, III: Von der “Deutschen Doppelrevolution” bis zum Beginn des Ersten Weltkrieges, 1849–1914 (München, 1995), pp. 637–61, pp. 1406 ffGoogle Scholar. with further references; Smith, M. S., Tariff reform in France, 1860–1900: the politics of economic interest (Ithaca, 1980)Google Scholar; Lake, D. A., Power, protection, andfree trade: international sources of U.S. commercial strategy, 1887–1939 (Ithaca, 1988)Google Scholar; O'Brien, P. K., Pigman, G., ‘Free trade, British hegemony and the international economic order in the nineteenth century’, Review of International Studies, XVIII (1992), 89–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁴ See Bergne's long memorandum ‘Questions in the commercial department’, London, Public Record Office (P.R.O.), F.O. 881/7426, 12 Nov. 1900. See also the public criticism of most-favoured-nation arrangements by Edward Law in The Times, 16 June 1903, 14d; from 1887 Law had been financial and commercial secretary in the diplomatic service and later served on the Tariff Commission; for the financial debate within the state, see Friedberg, A. L., The wearytitan: Britain and the experience of relative decline, 1895–1905 (Princeton, 1988), pp. 89–134Google Scholar. Cf. B.L.P.E.S., TCI 8/2, MM43: ‘Most-favoured-nation arrangements and British trade’, 28 Nov. 1910. This selective analysis was designed to show that protectionist countries with powers of bargaining reaped the greatest benefits from most-favoured-nation arrangements not Free Trade Britain: of the U.K.'s trade (148.5 million pounds) with Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Japan, France, and the U.S.A., only 28 millions fell under the operation of the mfn clause. Cf. the Report of the Tariff Commission [hereafter cit. Tariff Commission], IV, The engineering industries: including structural, electrical, marine and shipbuilding, mechanical and general industrial engineering (London, 1909), para. 32.Google Scholar

¹⁵ P.R.O., B.T. 12/42, Bateman to Sec. A.C.C. II April 1900, and Bateman to F.O., 1 May 1900. Instead of creating a departmental committee to assist the renegotiation, as urged by the chambers, an advisory committee to the C.I.C. was appointed in 1900 representing trades and state departments. The C.I.C. had been established in 1897, replacing the Trade and Treaties committee of 1890. It also conducted inquiries into trade openings, see Smith, H. Llewellyn, The board of trade (London, 1928), pp. 73 ffGoogle Scholar. See P.R.O., CO. 323/475 for ‘Summary of the replies received from Chambers of Commerce to the application made to them on behalf of the committee for opinions as to the probable effect of the proposed new German customs tariff on British trade and industry.’ Nov. 1901 (‘Summary of replies’). Unfortunately, the board of trade records for the pre-war years are very incomplete. Space does not permit a discussion of the importance of the German-Canadian tariff war beginning in 1897 in fuelling fiscal criticism, e.g. Henry, Birchenough in The Nineteenth Century, XLI, XLII (1897).Google Scholar

¹⁶ P.R.O., F.O. 881/7937, Herbert Hughes (secretary of the Sheffield Chamber) 7 Feb. 1901, also Edwin P.Jones (secretary of the Swansea Chamber) 22 Jan. 1901.

¹⁷ Ibid. Oppenheimer to Lansdowne, 2 March 1901.

¹⁸ Ibid. Report of the committee, 17 May 1901 communicated in no. 35 B. of T. to F.O., 25 May 1901.

¹⁹ P.R.O., CO. 323/475, for a surviving copy of the C.I.C. report containing the A.C.C. memorial, 4 Oct. 1901, Avebury to Lansdowne.

²⁰ Ibid. C.I.C. report, ‘Summary of replies’, pp. 3 f., 12. Also F.O. 881/7937 B. of T. to F.O., 8 July 1901 and Gastrell's memorandum in Lascelles to Lansdowne, 9 June 1901. Proposals for retaliation centred on the imposition of countervailing corresponding duties on woollen articles (South of Scotland Chamber) and increased duties on German wine, e.g. F.O. 881/8132 Edwin H. Middlebrook (secretary of the Morley Chamber) to Lansdowne 30 Jan. 1902. Tariff Commission, II, Woollen industry, para. 1650, J. Peate, Leeds woollen cloth manufacturer, and para. 1749, J. H. Kaye, Huddersfield worsted manufacturer. For an argument in favour of tariff bargaining by an export merchant, see Tariff Commission, II, Woollen industry, no. 41 B. Nathan of Ferdinand Heilborn … Co, Bradford. Some witnesses reiterated their earlier call for retaliation first made during the Great Depression, e.g., ibid, the Scotch woollen merchant William Schulze, para. 1851, and B.L.P.E.S., TC3 1/82 evidence by the lace manufacturer F. Carver of Thomas Adams Ltd, 21 Sept. 1904. The Stroud Chamber of Commerce also favoured tariffs, see Daily News, 11 Dec. 1903.

²¹ P.R.O., T.1/9838B/11381, Graham (CO.) to Treasury, 11 July 1902 encl. resolution by Iron and Steel Wire Manufacturers Ass., Peter Rylands to J. Chamberlain, 30 June 1902. The resolution had some signatures from workmen representatives. As the Treasury was quick to point out, the export wire trade's loss of the U.S. market had been accompanied by doubled sales in Germany in the 1890s, ibid. E. W. Hamilton to C.O., 7 Aug. 1902. Another trade affected by the loss of the U.S. market, the tinplate industry, was divided between larger protectionist firms and smaller firms associating their independence with free supply, see Minchinton, W. E., The British tinplate industry (Oxford, 1957), pp. 74, 85, 89 f.Google Scholar

²² Considerable division existed amongst liberal Free Traders about political strategy. It resulted partly from differing assessments of the feasibility as well as the desirability of tariff bargaining. The prominent London banker and Liberal Unionist Avebury, for instance, was not principally opposed to retaliation as a last resort. Trying to unite the council of the London Chamber by isolating extremists, he moved a soft retaliationist resolution that ‘[a]lthough many of them were Free Traders, there were cases in which they had grave reasons for complaint of the action of Foreign Governments and in which retaliation would be perfectly justified, provided it would be effective’, Guildhall Library, London Chamber of Commerce Archive, MS 16,459, III, 1, 10 Dec. 1903.

²³ The Times, 17 June 1903, 13c. He did not deny that this might result in temporary price increases, Tariff Commission, II, 2, Woollen industry (London, 1905)Google Scholar, paras. 2187 f.

²⁴ In their minority report the ‘Fair Traders’ (N. Lubbock, Lord Dunraven, Farrer Ecroyd, P. A. Muntz) recommended not only a countervailing duty on sugar, but a 10–15% ad valorem tariff on manufactures from protectionist countries, and 10% specific duties on foreign foodstuffs with imperial preference, 22 Dec. 1886, Final report of the royal commission appointed to inquire into the depression of trade and industry (London, 1886)Google Scholar, paras. 129, 137–9; P.P. 1886 [C.-4893.], XXIII, 571 f. In the light of this and the Edwardian Tariff Reform advocacy of a general 10% ‘scientific tariff’ on manufactured goods fixed with reference to a labour/capital ratio, it is difficult to understand Platt's, D. C. M. contention in his seminal Finance, trade, and politics in British foreign policy, 1815–1919 (Oxford, 1968)Google Scholar that ‘[g]enuine Protectionism in the Continental tradition was uncommon in Britain before 1914’, p. 84.

²⁵ The Chamber of Commerce Journal (the official organ of the London Chamber of Commerce), xxii, 108 (April 1903), 86 my emphasis; note also the speech by W. P. Viccars representing Leicester demanding, ‘free traders as they were’, retaliatory duties on German toys.

²⁶ P.R.O., B.T.I2/45 John Brennan, John Kinning, general managers of the Bleachers’ Association Ltd. to Llewellyn Smith, 2 Feb. 1904. This amalgamation had been formed by fifty-three firms in July 1900; with a capital of 68 million pounds it was one of the four largest textile amalgamations in Britain; Macrosty, Henry W., The trust movement in British industry: a study of business organisation (London, 1907), pp. 124, 141Google Scholar. ‘Fair Trade’ relied on some support in Lancashire. Interestingly, one of the few representative of Manchester shippers and cotton spinners, M. S. Bles of S. D. Bles & Sons, only joined the Tariff Commission's textile committee because of the proposed increases in Dutch duties, see Levinstein to Hewins, 11 March 1904, B.L.P.E.S., TC6 1/21. See also TC3 1/51, evidence by Oscar Behrens (Louis Behrens & Sons, Manchester), 2 June 1904 on tariff subdivision and Swiss discrimination and TC6 5/28, Behrens to E. Ashton Bagley (secretary of the Tariff Reform League's Manchester division) 19 July 1909, complaining about U.S. discrimination against British cotton in the Phillipines and ‘the inability of the Government to grasp the fact that we have nothing to offer in return for concessions that foreign Governments might be induced to make us when compiling hostile tariffs’; Behrens's uncle, Jacob, had accompanied Cobden to negotiate the commercial treaty with France in 1860. See also Clarke, ‘End of laissez faire’, pp. 501, 510.Google Scholar

²⁷ P.R.O., F.O.192/167, ‘Report of the commercial intelligence committee: report to the board of trade on the new Swiss and Roumanian, and the proposed new Dutch customs tariffs’, 28 July 1904, encl. in no. 20 commercial F.O. to Lord Acton, 29 Aug. 1904. The Swiss and Romanian tariffs were recognized as a direct product of the second fiscal revolution and a reaction to the tariff policy of the great powers. British exports to Switzerland at the time were worth about 21 million pounds; almost all classes of cotton, wool, and iron and steel products faced a 100% increase, ibid. pp. 9–26. Exports to Romania were estimated at 1–1·5 million pounds. Tariff increases hit especially principal exports, coal and cotton, ranging from 8% to 1,900%, ibid. 27–36. The C.I.C. recorded the feeling that these increases were directed specifically at British exports and the belief that as a Free Trade country they ought to be entitled to ‘preferential treatment’. In the eyes of the London Free Trade members, Rollit and Avebury, even this moderate resolution exceeded the powers of the C.I.C, encl. in Herbert Jekyll (B. of T.) to F.O., 13 Sept. 1904 in F.O. to Acton, 21 Sept. 1904.

²⁸ P.R.O., CO 323/475, ‘Summary of Replies’ 3, 22. This was also the furthest the Manchester Chamber was willing to go concerning foreign sugar bounties, see speeches at the A.C.C., Supplement of the Chamber of Commerce Journal, April 1900, p. 19.Google Scholar

²⁹ ‘Memorandum on the fiscal policy of international trade’ (1903), repr. Official papers by Alfred Marshall (London, 1926)Google Scholar; Saul, Studies, ch. VI.

³⁰ P.R.O., CO. 323/475 ‘Summary of replies’, Sheffield Chamber, p. 20; Innes Rogers in The Times, 7 March 1903.

³¹ These gains were achieved “without abandoning the formal adherence to most-favoured-nation agreements. Indeed, the leverage for tariff bargaining might have been even greater since most European countries ran a favourable balance of trade with Britain and were, hence, more vulnerable to retaliation. This was the view of the F.O. after the introduction of the general tariff, P.R.O., Cab27/475: committee on the imperial economic conference at Ottawa, O.C.(31), III: O.(b)(32) 113, ‘United Kingdom and British empire tariffs in relation to foreign countries’, 24 March 1932. Britain was, however, particularly vulnerable in one export commodity: coal. A good assessment of Britain's trade agreements is Rooth, British protectionism.

³² Bundesarchiv Potsdam, 09.01.AA/9350, Metternich memorandum to Bulow, 24 Nov. 1903, Bülow noted in the margin ‘stimmt’; my translation. The rising tide of reciprocity prior to Chamberlain's speech of 15 May 1903 had not been lost on the ambassador, see esp. 09.01.AA/9349 Metternich to AA, 7 March 1903, commenting on Innes Rogers and the London Chamber's resolution in favour of bilateralism. Landsdowne hoped to take advantage of this uncertainty and negotiate a new Anglo-German commercial treaty, an abortive initiative I hope to discuss elsewhere. See also Kennedy, P. M., The rise of Anglo-German antangonism, 1860–1914 (London, 1980), pp. 261 ff.Google Scholar

³³ Milne, A. H., Sir Alfred Lewis Jones, K.C.M.G.: a story of energy and success (Liverpool, 1914)Google Scholar. For the contemporary debate see the joint publication of J. H. Welsford, The great shipping problem and the reply by Booth, Charles Jr., Fiscal policy and British shipping from the Free Trade point of view (Liverpool, 1909).Google Scholar

³⁴ Manchester, more than any other city, continued to act as the defender of the Cobdenite faith in this strict sense; see, e.g., its secretary, E. Helm, defending the free import of bounty-fed sugar at the A.C.C., Supplement of the Chamber of Commerce Journal, Oct. 1899, p. 9.

³⁵ P.R.O., C.O.323/477, W. H. Cooke (Chamber of Shipping) to F.O., 31 May igo2. The demand was endorsed by the Liverpool Shipowners’ Association, see the accompanying F.O. memorandum by Bergne. Significantly, Bergne, a leading critic of Cobdenism at the F.O., acknowledged that the proposed reservation of coastal and inter-imperial trade to imperial shipping would constitute ‘a departure from purely free-trade policy, and might lead to reprisals, unless coupled with some further power of retaliation on our own part in connection with Tariff or otherwise.’ Tariff reformers who picked up this issue had no reservations, claiming that the maximum damage had already been done, see John Hills, W. in Compatriots’ Club Lectures (London, 1905), p. 294Google Scholar. The Liverpool shipping interest had been a prominent member of deputations to the foreign office in 1902–3 protesting against the US-Cuban reciprocity treaty. The Liverpool Indian rice trade to Cuba was the ‘backbone of the whole rice trade’ and any diversion to the U.S.A. was feared also to ‘throw back Burmah for years’, Lansdowne memorandum for the Cab., 6 March 1903, cit. from G. Balfour's copy in P.R.O.30/60/36, cf. P.R.O., CAB 37/64. Alternative demands by Liverpool ship-owners included a monopoly of coastal trade, countervailing duties, and a government bounty for British sailing ships; University of Birmingham, J. Chamberlain papers, JC 18/18/80, R. W. Leyland to J. Chamberlain, 16 July 1903 and Shipping Gazette, 3 June 1902.

³⁶ This was also part of the debate on the left, see Trentmann, F., ‘Wealth versus welfare: the British left between Free Trade and national political economy’, Historical Research (forthcoming).Google Scholar

³⁷ George, Martineau, Both sides of the sugar convention (London, 1907)Google Scholar; Martineau represented the London Sugar Refiners' Association. Other Chambers joined London in attacking bounties as violations of Free Trade and in pressing the government to participate in international action, e.g. see on the eve of the 1898 sugar conference, Liverpool Chamber to Salisbury, 28 Feb. 1898 in P.R.O., F.O. 881/7089, 112. N. Lubbock was chairman of the Anti-bounty League's executive. For the activities of the West India committee, see Smith, S., ‘British nationalism, imperialism and the City of London, 1880–1900’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1985)Google Scholar; Beachey, R. W., The British West Indies sugar industry in the late 19th century (Oxford, 1957), ch. VIII.Google Scholar

³⁸ Speech reported in The Chamber of Commerce Journal, XX, 70 (Feb. 1900), 6Google Scholar. Innes Rogers was chairman of Joseph Travers & Sons Ltd, wholesale dealers in produce, wine, and cigars. Significantly, industrial users of sugar were divided on the issue of countervailing duties. Some looked towards a tariff on cheap foreign sweets, such as American ‘A.B.Gums’, B.L.P.E.S., TC3 1/244: G. E. Davies of Champions, Davies & Co, confectionery manufacturers, 2 March 1905, paras. 28589 ff. For a rival view, ibid. TC3 1/245 J. Boyd of James Keiller & Son, Dundee, jam manufacturer, 2 Feb. 1905.

³⁹ Guildhall Library, London Chamber of Commerce archive, MS 16,459, III, 1, council minutes, 8 Oct. 1903.

⁴⁰ This reasoning was developed further during the war, see F. Trentmann, ‘The strange death of free trade: the erosion of ‘liberal consensus’ in Great Britain, c. 1903–1932’, in E. Biagini (ed.), Citizenship pp. 235ff. See also the Macrosty, Fabian Henry W., Trusts and the state: a sketch of competition (London, 1901), p. 118.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Rempel, Unionists Divided. Nor is it helpful to explain the evolution of the Tariff Reform programme as an immediate, direct response to the political debate following Chamberlain's vague suggestions in May 1903, Marrison, ‘Scientific tariff’, chs. 1, 5. The movement for reciprocity was soaring prior to Chamberlain's departure and emphasis on it afterwards cannot be understood as an autonomous function of party dynamics or the Commission's work.

⁴² Guildhall Library, London Chamber of Commerce archive, MS 16,459, III, I, special meeting of the council, 17 Dec. 1903. For reports from Chambers see The Chamber of Commerce Journal, XXII, 112 (08 1903), 200, 116 (Dec. 1903), 299; XXIII, 117 (Jan. 1904), 21–4, 118 (Feb. 1904), 49 f, 119 (March 1904), 55, 120 (April 1904), 99 fGoogle Scholar. For Walsall, see Clark, H. D., cit. The Chamber of Commerce Journal, XXIII, 118 (02 1904), 50.Google Scholar

⁴³ Ibid, XXII, 116 (Dec. 1903), 300.

⁴⁴ Although it should be noted that resolutions supporting further inquiry were not necessarily the result of Free Trade rhetoric or tactics, viz. Sheffield. Compare the reports in ibid, XXII, 112 (Aug. 1903), 199 and XXIII, 120 (April 1904), 99.

⁴⁵ Special Supplement to the Chamber of Commerce Journal (April 1904)Google Scholar: report of the proceedings at the 44th annual meeting of the A.C.C, pp. 7–17. Many firms refused to take sides in the fiscal battle for the simple fear of losing customers with different political persuasions, e.g. H. Bell in advocating a royal commission: ‘[i]t is a difficult thing for bankers to take sides in this matter. We may offend one customer and please another, and we do not want to do that. We want to be fair; at all events, we do not want to take sides’, Journal of the Institute of Bankers, xxv (1904), 113.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Special Supplement to the Chamber of Commerce Journal (April 1904)Google Scholar: report A.C.C., p. 12. More generally, see Ilersic, A. R., Liddle, P. F. B., Parliament of commerce: the story of the Association of British Chambers of Commerce (London, 1960), pp. 154 f.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ This, of course, does not mean that Chamberlainites did not try to incorporate retaliation into their programme, merely that it played a different function. Many supporters of fiscal diplomacy were opposed to Tariff Reform. The proposed corn tax, in particular, was perceived as an insuperable political liability by retaliationists. Hickman even resigned on this ground from the Tariff Commission. Tariff Reformers, on the other hand, expressed grave doubts about the likely success of tariff bargaining with countries committed to building up industries behind tariff walls. The worsted spinner and manufacturer H. W. Mitchell (Fison & Co) told his fellow commissioners ‘I am afraid that no retaliatory tariff we might adopt will at this stage do very much to improve our conditions of entering into the markets of the great protectionist Nations. They have built up their industries under protection, and do what you will, you are certainly not going to persuade them to break down the industries they have built up’, B.L.P.E.S., TC2 1/8, minutes of general sessions, discussion on iron and steel.

⁴⁸ The Chamber of Commerce Journal, XXII, 111 (July 1903), 173 f.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Ibid, XXII, 112 (Aug. 1903), 199 f. For Newcastle see also P.R.O., F.0.192/167, C.I.C. Report, 1904.

⁵⁰ The Times, 6 Nov. 1901, 6(c).

⁵¹ The Times, 24 June 1903, 4(d).

⁵² B.L.P.E.S., TC6 1/31, Sanderson to Hurd, 20 Aug. 1921: ‘[w]hat particularly appealed to me in Mr. Chamberlain's proposals for preferential Tariffs with the Colonies, was the possibility and hope I had, that they might lead up to and simplify a closer political union with them and I think the commission's work may have assisted materially in that direction, but I have always been jealous, perhaps through being intimately connected with a business practically dependent on its export trade, of any too pronounced policy of protection.’ Sanderson was a worsted and flannels manufacturer and had been a member of the textile committee.

⁵³ See, for instance, Felix Schuster's defence of fiscal orthodoxy which fused economic, social, and ideological reasoning, Journal of the Institute of Bankers, xxv (1904), 58–80, 216–21Google Scholar, and the no less ideological flair of Avebury's interventions on behalf of Free Trade, e.g., ‘Our fiscal policy’, repr. in Essays & addresses, 1900–1903 (London, 1903), pp. 166–205.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ The stockbroker Faithfull Begg gave a typical expression of such neo-mercantilist anxieties at the fifth monthly dinner of the London Chamber on 5 March 1903, two months prior to Chamberlain's speech: ‘[j]ust in proportion as Great Britain built up the prosperity of foreign nations under a system which gave equal advantages in her markets, so she was creating a race of commercial rivals, who, when the time came, would be attacking her with their ships and destroying her commerce’, The Chamber of Commerce Journal, XXII, 108 (April 1903), 80.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Brassey, T. A. in The Times, 12 June 1903, 14abGoogle Scholar. His emphasis on agricultural decline as ‘the greatest danger to our permanence as a race’ shows that Tariff Reform managed to combine contradictory reasoning amongst its supporters, that is, for restoring British agriculture and for the preferential treatment and expansion of imperial agriculture.

⁵⁶ Benjamin Kidd told the Royal Colonial Institute in April 1903 that an imperial state was the ‘only basis from which the great war against the present monopoly tendencies in production will be successfully waged’ and called for ‘a Council of Imperial Trade able to meet the Pierpont Morgans of the world on something like an equal footing’, ‘The British Commonwealth’, Mew Liberal Review, 28, V (May 1903), 473–88Google Scholar, cit. at 487. For the turn to ‘the state’ amongst tariff reform intellectuals, see Mock, , Imperiale Herrschaft, ch. iv.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Wagner, A., Agrar- und Industriestaat: die Kehrseite des Industriestaats und die Rechtfertigung agrarischen Zollschutzes mit besonderer Riicksicht auf die Bevölkerungsfrage (Jena, 1902, 2nd edn)Google Scholar, Dietzel, H., Die Theorie von den drei Weltreichen (Berlin, 1900)Google Scholar. Cf. the discussion in Böhme, H., Deutschlands Weg zur Grossmacht: Studien zum Verhältnis von Wirtschaft und Stoat während der Reichsgrändungszeit 1848–1881 (Berlin, 1966)Google Scholar and Barkin, K. D., The controversy over German industrialization 1890–1902 (Chicago, 1970).Google Scholar

⁵⁸ House of Lords Record Office, London, Strachey papers, MS S/7/4/3, Goschen to Strachey, 18 June 1903. For shifting the tax burden as the top priority of a fiscal reform programme for the City, see B.L., Balfour MS 49791, Herbert Gibbs to Alban Gibbs, 2 Feb. 1906. For Rothschild and the Governor, see B. L., E. W. Hamilton MSS, MS 48, 681, diary 3 July 1903; Almeric, Fitzroy, Memoirs (London, 1925), 1, 168Google Scholar, diary 19 Nov. 1903. See also Amery, J., The life of Joseph Chamberlain: Joseph Chamberlain and the tariff reform campaign, 1903–1968, VI (London, 1969), 467.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Guildhall Library, Gibbs papers, MS 11,021, XXX, Vicary Gibb's correspondence with J. Chamberlain, 25 Sept., 30 Dec. 1903, 8 Jan. 1904. Hambro's City supporters in the 1906 general election (Wimbledon division) included Cosmo Bonsor, a Bank of England director, see B.L., Balfour MS 49791, Lawrence to J. Chamberlain, 22 Jan. 1906, encl. in Lawrence to Balfour, 23 Jan. 1906. The ‘managers’ represented shareholders at the stock exchange and had briefly considered the idea of inviting Chamberlain, see Guildhall Library, MS 14,600, LXXV, Stock Exchange: General Purpose Committee, 14 Dec. 1903. Stockbrokers were impressed by Joe's Guildhall speech, see Loulou Harcourt to his father, William, 20 Jan. 1904, Bodleian Library, Harcourt papers, MS 668. See also the list of bankers in B.L.P.E.S., TC8 2/17-B.274 and the reference to Spencer Phillips, chairman of Lloyds Bank as sympathetic in TC6 1/26, Pearson to Hewins, 26 Dec. 1903. Spencer Phillips, contrary to protectionists' hopes, did not serve on the Commission. In fact, he took the first opportunity, in Jan. 1904, to stress the wealth created by Free Trade and to warn of hasty reforms, Lloyds Bank Limited: annual meeting of shareholders (1904), p. 1Google Scholar. S. S. Lloyd, chairman 1868–86, had been a prominent advocate of reciprocity during the Fair Trade campaign; Samuel, Lloyd, The Lloyds of Birmingham: with some account of the founding of Lloyds Bank (Birmingham, 1907), pp. 91 fGoogle Scholar. Note, the fiscal reformer and iron and coal magnate Alfred Hickman was a leading Lloyds’ shareholder.

⁶⁰ B.L.P.E.S., TC2 1/13, minutes of general sessions, 31 May 1906, Alfred Mosely, 15; see also TC3 1/15 for John Strain, n May 1904, director of the Commercial Bank of Scotland and chairman of the Lanarkshire Steel Co., who blamed German ‘dumping’ for declining returns. In the City Free Trade opinion was rallied by J. H. Tritton, see Tritton to Avebury, 4–7 Dec. 1903, British Library (B.L.), Avebury MS 49671. For Conservative politics in the City, see Mock, , Imperiale Herrschaft, pp. 286 ffGoogle Scholar. and app. IV repr. H. A. Gwynne's memorandum for Chamberlain on City opinion, Dec. 1903; cf. Cain and Hopkins, , British Imperialism, pp. 214ffGoogle Scholar. Free Traders were not necessarily dogmatic proponents of laissez-faire – some supported non-discriminatory infra-structural assistance, such as for cotton growing schemes, E. H. Holden of London City and Midland Bank, cit. Daily Mews, 7 Dec. 1903, p. 6.

⁶¹ Guildhall Library, London Chamber of Commerce Archive, MS 16,459 council minutes, IV, 1, 28 Feb. 1907, 14 March 1907.

⁶² Journal of the Institute of Bankers, XXV (1904), 89Google Scholar. The feeling for retaliation was strong at Martin's Bank, ibid. 104 ff., Luke Hansard, general manager and director; for the bank, Chandler, G., Four centuries of banking: as illustrated by the bankers, customers and staff associated with the constituent banks of Martins Bank Ltd, 1 (London, 1964)Google Scholar. Space does not permit me to discuss here the wider issue of concern over the emigration of capital, e.g. Joseph, Lawrence, Some figures and facts on the depreciation in the value of securities and investment of British capital abroad in recent years with other economic data (London, 1907).Google Scholar

⁶³ Saul, , Studies, p. 136Google Scholar. More recently, Marrison has tried to absolve the Tariff Commission from charges of being a propagandistic body by stressing their belief in scientific method, ‘Scientific tariff’. There is some truth in this, but the fact that historical actors professed a belief in objective method does not overcome the dilemma of bias that needs to be subjected to critical analysis.

⁶⁴ For evolution, terminology, and further literature, see esp., Sombart, W., Der moderne Kapitalismus: historisch-systematische Darstellung des gesamteuropäischen Wirtschaftslebens von seinen Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, III, 2 (München, Leipzig, 1927)Google Scholar; Chandler, A. D. Jr., The visible hand: the managerial revolution in American business (Cambridge, Mass., 1977)Google Scholar; for rationalization in Britain, see Hannah, L., The rise of the corporate economy (London, 1983, 2nd edn)Google Scholar. ‘Modern’ here refers to such business structures and concepts in the contemporary discussion, not to a modernization theory of historical development.

⁶⁵ Fforde, M., Conservatism and collectivism 1886–1914 (Edinburgh 1990)Google Scholar; Greenleaf, W. H., The British political tradition, II: the ideological heritage (London, 1983), chs. 6–7Google Scholar. Green, E. H. H., ‘Radical conservatism: the electoral genesis of Tariff Reform’, HJ, XXVIII, 3 (1985), 667–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Scally, R. J., The origins of the Lloyd George coalition: the politics of social-imperialism 1900–1918 (Princeton, 1975) chs. 3–5Google Scholar. See now also Green, E. H. H., The crisis of conservatism (London, 1995)Google Scholar, which did not appear in time for discussion.

⁶⁶ Tariff Reformers’ definitions of ‘dumping’ varied profoundly – from the official interpretation of'selling below the normal cost of production in the country of origin’ (Hewins) to ‘goods sold at our cost price not under our cost price’ (Levinstein), and goods sold ‘in England at a less price than they sell in Germany’ (Kaye, Eckersley), B.L.P.E.S., TC2 3/1: textile committee minutes, 15 Dec. 1904, 42, 46.

⁶⁷ B.L.P.E.S., TC2 1/8, minutes of general sessions, 28 June 1904, Birchenough, 14 f. Tariff Commission, 1, The iron and steel trades (London, 1904), para. 62.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Macrosty, , Trust movementGoogle Scholar; Hannah, , Corporate economyGoogle Scholar. For an illuminating account of the obstacles by a ‘promoter-financier’, see O'Hagan, , Leaves from my life.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ See Macrosty, , Trusts and the state, chs. VIII–IXGoogle Scholar; Dennison, J. A. G., ‘The reaction to the growth of trusts and industrial combinations in Britain, 1888–1921’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1980)Google Scholar. Cf. continental analyses, e.g. Liefmann, R., Kartelle und Trusts und die Weiterbildung der volkswirtschaftlichen Organisation (Stuttgart, 1924 edn, 1905, 1st edn)Google Scholar; Vogelstein, T., ‘Die finanzielle Organisation der kapitalistischen Industrie und die Monopolbildungen’ in Grundriss der Sozialökonomik (Tubingen, 1914) III, 6, ch. 6Google Scholar; Sombart, Kapitalismus, III, 2, ch. 23. Note also Hilferding's early interpretation of the ‘new protectionism’ that linked the rise of concentration and organized competition for export markets to the rise of organized competition for state power, ‘Der Funktionswechsel des Schutzzolles: Tendenz der modernen Handelspolitik’, Die Neue Zeit, 12Jhg., II (1903), 274–81.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Tariff Commission, I, Iron and steel, para. 417, firm no. I, 171. Commissioners remained critical of the combination movement, see Hickman, B.L.P.E.S., TC3 1/5–1/2, 14 April 1904, paras. 433–41, 581. It is possible to reconstruct the identity of some firms, which chose to remain anonymous, from surviving forms in B.L.P.E.S., TC4; these are added here in parentheses [Hall & Rice Ltd, TC4 16/17]. References to similar views could be multiplied endlessly, e.g. Tariff Commission, IV, Engineering industries, para 1071 no. 1,317 [Parsons Marine Steam Turbine Co., TC4 34/3]; para. 1075 no. 1,128 [Davy Brothers, TC4 34/3]; for Free Trade criticism along these lines, B.L.P.E.S., TC3 1/147, evidence by J. F. Cay of the Patent Shaft and Axletree Co., 24 Nov. 1904, paras. 17,999 ff. Tariff Commission, II, 2, Woollen industry, para. 2173 no. 6,135 worsted spinners and no. 3,552 worsted yarn manufacturers, para. 2178 Anderson & Thomson, woollen merchants. For cotton, it might be noted that Eckersley, a late director of the Fine Cotton Spinners' & Doublers' Association, strongly emphasized the dangers of amalgamation in slackening initiative, Eckersley to Hewins, 9 June 1904, B.L.P.E.S., TC6 1/5 and Tariff Commission, II, 1, The cotton industry (London, 1905), para. 373.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Principles of economics (London, 1920 edn), V, xiii, §2Google Scholar. This was never purely an economic argument; on the issue of combination, his distinction between a ‘new’ and the ‘Old Country’ was also reinforced by the idea that protection had to damage the latter because it would be impossible to protect industries alone: ‘agriculturists won't stand that’, Cambridge, Marshall Library, Marshall MSS, MiscI, 24 April 1909. In 1891 he had explained the U.S. preference for combination with ‘the restless energy and the versatile enterprise of a comparatively few very rich and bale men who rejoice in that power of doing great things by great means that their wealth gives them’, Some aspects of competition, p. 14, cit. in Dennison, , ‘Trusts’, p. 61Google Scholar. For Marshall's trip to the U.S.A. in 1875 and his celebration of individual character and competition, cf. Butler, R. W., ‘“To firm notions about men and manners”: Marshall among the Americans’, Marshall studies bulletin, III (1993), 3–20Google Scholar. See also Wood, J. C., ‘Alfred Marshall and the Tariff Reform campaign of 1903’, Journal of Law and Economics, XXIII (1980), 481–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷² Chapman, S. J., The Lancashire cotton industry: a study in economic development (Manchester, 1904), pp. 177 f.Google Scholar

⁷³ Tariff Commission, IV, Engineering industries, paras. 412 ff. and the original evidence in TC3 1/103, 13 Oct 1904, p. 22. Note, Hirst emphasized spillovers from commercial state assistance rather than corporate structures: ‘ [t]he advantage of protection do not lie merely in the amount of the duty but in the fact that that system necessitates commercial treaties watched by a Government department such as a Ministry of Commerce…. The existence of a tariff makes it incumbent on the Government of a country to constantly watch the wants of the industry and legislate accordingly. In Germany old age pensions, hospital arrangements, characters and discipline of workmen are probably the outcome of this watchfulness. Special export arrangements have also been made in protected countries’, paras. 429, 451.

⁷⁴ For such exceptions, see ibid. para. 556, A. Bornemann of Ruston, Proctor and Co, engine manufacturer, and para. 1078, John Rogerson & Co, manufacturers of castings and forgings for ships and electric dynamos; Tariff Commission, I, Iron and steel, paras. 839 ff. witness no. 13 (tube trade), and for steel acknowledging the advantages of foreign corporations from integrating wire works para. 923, no. 15 [Rylands TC3 I/26]. See also Tariff Commission, II, 2, Woollen industry, para. 1837, American Wool Company.

⁷⁵ Tariff Commission, I, Iron and steel, para. 407 [Per Pro The Bromford Iron Co, TC4 16/3]. Other witnesses did not even share this limited view of the advantages of price-fixing and saw cartels' only usefulness in controlling the workforce, B.L.P.E.S., TC7 22/2, E2018, Kayser & Ellinson & Co.

⁷⁶ In Britain this argument was made early on by Hobson, who observed ‘that where keen competition is operative in modern machine industries the average rate of profits obtained for capital is generally below that which would suffice to induce new capital invested with full knowledge to come into the trade’, The evolution of modem capitalism: a study of machine production (London, 1894), p. 122Google Scholar. His fellow Free Traders, however, remained immune to the autonomous economic forces behind concentration and continued to reduce combines and trusts to political creations of tariffs. For the heterodoxy of Hobson's Free Trade views, see Trentmann, , ‘Strange death of Free Trade’, pp. 224ff.Google Scholar; Pheby, J. (ed.), J. A. Hobson after Fifty Years: freethinker of the social sciences (London, 1994).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷⁷ Tariff Commission, II, 2, Woollen industry, no. 31 W. H. Mitchell, para. 1609, and, I, Iron and steel, para. 57. Many witnesses denied that room for economies existed or that economies from running full time would be significant, e.g., II, 2, Woollen industry, para. 1679, Herbert A. Foster, spinner and manufacturer, also paras. 2187 f. for T. Craig Brown, spinner, para. 2215, firm no. 4,220 [Starkey Brothers Ltd, manufacturers, TC4 34/7], and para. 2222 James Thornton & Son, manufacturer.

⁷⁸ This verdict holds for the leader as well as the movement. Chamberlain's mid-Victorian career in the Birmingham family firm left him with a conservative, industrial vision of the economy in which there was no room for modern structures, growth from services, or financial-industrial conglomeration in the continental style. For the influence of his industrial background on his political thinking, see now the excellent biography by Marsh, P. T., Joseph Chamberlain: entrepreneur in politics (New Haven, London, 1994)Google Scholar; it is difficult, however, to understand the conclusion that ‘[h]e presented the country with a choice between the only two policies which came seriously to grips with its socio-economic needs: tariff reform… [and] socialism’, p. 630.

⁷⁹ Tariff Commission, I, Iron and steel, para. 80. See also n. 70.

⁸⁰ For instance, by ‘Fair Traders’ during the Great Depression: ‘the fuller and more regular out-put[sic] – upon a given basis of investments and fixed expenses – secured by the exclusion of that surplus production of protected foreign industries which periodically floods this, the only duty-free market, would reduce the cost of our manufactures in the most healthful manner by the distribution of fixed charges over a larger annual production’, minority report by Lord Dunraven, W. Farrer Ecroyd, P. Albert Muntz, N. Lubbock, 22 Dec. 1886, Royal commission depression trade and industry, para 131.

⁸¹ ‘We are doubtful if combinations are of any assistance in promoting export. We believe the true cause of the severe German competition is that protection has so stimulated production that this now exceeds consumption, and this excess must necessarily be exported at any price’, Tariff Commission, I, Iron and steel, para. 413 [Smith & McLean, TC4/34/2]. For earlier over-productionist ideas, see Kadish, A., ‘The non-canonical context of The physiology of industry’, in Pheby, J. (ed.), Hobson, pp. 53–77.Google Scholar

⁸² Ashley, W. J., Surveys historic and economic (London, New York, 1900)Google Scholar – dedicated to Schmoller–, esp. pp. 361–98. The strength of the anti-combination consensus was well brought out in the impassioned reactions to Ashley's balanced and guarded defence of the Canadian Sugar Combine. It ‘gave rise’, he recalled, ‘in some quarters to the assertion that I had been “bought by the Combine”, in others to the conviction that I wrote under direct inspiration of the Devil!’, p. 362. Interestingly, in his The tariff problem (London, 1903), p. 128Google Scholar ‘trusts’ in other countries were defended for improving labour conditions. See also his Hamburg lectures, The economic organisation of England: an outline history (London, 1914), ch. viii.Google Scholar

⁸³ The title of ch. V of Ashley's Tariff problem.

⁸⁴ In Britain, before the war, more positive assessments of non-competitive practices and organized capitalism were limited to heretical economists, not least because of the institutional triumph of neo-classical economics. Hobson, Modern capitalism, chs. V, VI. See also Jeans, J. Stephen, Trusts, pools and comers: as affecting commerce and industry, an inquiry into the principles and recent operation of combinations and syndicates to limit production and increase prices (London, 1894)Google Scholar. Assisted by his personal observation of American capitalism, W. J. Ashley recognized ‘dumping’ as an inevitable aspect of the growing share of fixed capital (already stressed by Hobson), but his general interest never went much beyond its impact on export-pricing, Tariff problem, pp. 87 ff. Cf. also the works by Macrosty and Ashley, cit. nn. 26, 82.

⁸⁵ Lancashire and the new liberalism (Cambridge, 1971), p. 274Google Scholar; retaliation had received some support from cotton masters prior to Tariff Reform. Clarke even suggests that Free Trade might have relied on no more than 60% of the millowners after the 1906 election. The evidence is inconclusive. The main Tariff Reform manifesto organized by Nelson manufacturers for the Jan. 1910 election represented 50,000 looms. However, this represented a capital of only 1·5 million pounds compared with a Lancashire total of 730,000 looms worth 22 million pounds, Manchester Guardian, 21 Jan. 1910. Clarke's estimate also appears too high in the light of the figures given for the war in the appendix, below (unless it were reasoned that Tariff Reformers were disproportionately converted to Free Trade by war). Earlier, Chamberlain's Tariff Commission had faced insuperable difficulties in finding leading members or witnesses from the industry. As Charles Eckerley, a director of the Fine Cotton Spinners’ Association and the only prominent cotton representative on the Commission, had warned Hewins, ‘I think all my Cotton Spinning friends are free traders, & believe in free imports, & I think it is probable you will have no reply from many of the names I have given you’, B.L.P.E.S., TC6 1/5, 9 May 1904. Unfortunately the questionnaires by cotton firms have not survived. The small response from Manchester can be gauged from the surviving ‘List of cotton firms who sent in forms’ in TC8 2/17–B.271.

⁸⁶ For the economic characteristics of Liberal Unionists, see Rempel, Unionists divided, ch. 6.

⁸⁷ The term is A. Gerschenkron's, emphasising how the Junker notion of the ‘homogeneity of agriculture’ rallied support for tariffs from small farmers in animal husbandry with opposite interests, Bread and democracy in Germany (Berkeley, 1943), pp. 25 ffGoogle Scholar. German protectionism was not however a simple alliance of ‘iron and rye’ but included small farmers, animal husbandry, and small businesses. See the reassessment in Möller, R. G., ‘Peasants and tariffs in the Kaiserreich: how backward were the Bauern’, Agricultural History, LV (1981), 370–84Google Scholar; Tilly, R. H., Vom Zollverein zum Industriestaat: die wirtschaftlich-soziale Entwicklung Deutschlands, 1834 bis 1914 (München, 1990), pp. 109 ff.Google Scholar; Nipperdey, T., Deutsche Geschichte, 1866–1918 (München, 1992), II, 388 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁸⁸ Tilly, , Zollverein, pp. 84–95Google Scholar. Turner, J. (ed.), Businessmen and politics (London, 1984)Google Scholar; Yamazaki, H. and Miyamoto, M. (eds.), Trade associations in business history (Tokyo, 1988).Google Scholar

⁸⁹ For the decline of entrepreneurial radicalism, see Searle, G. R., Entrepreneurial politics in mid-Victorian Britain (Oxford, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For conservative origins of liberalization, see Hilton's, B.Corn, cash, commerce: the economic policies of the Tory governments, 1815–1930 (Oxford, 1977)Google Scholar and The age of atonement: the influence of evangelicalism on social and economic thought, 1795–1865 (Oxford, 1988)Google Scholar; cf. Mandler, P., Aristocratic government in the age of reform: Whigs and Liberals, 1830–52 (Oxford, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the comparative strength of liberal aristocracy and close ties between aristocracy and business elite, see Muhs, R., ‘Deutscher und britischer Liberalismus im Vergleich’, Langewiesche, D. (ed.), Liberalismus im 19. Jahrhundert: Deutschland im europäischen Vergleich (Göttingen, 1988), esp. pp. 228–38Google Scholar; Cassis, Y., ‘Business and the bourgeoisie in Western Europe’, Kocka, J. and Mitchell, A. (eds.), Bourgeois society in nineteenth-century Europe (Oxford, 1993), ch. 4Google Scholar; Cain, P. J. and Hopkins, A. G., ‘Gentlemanly capitalism and British expansion overseas. I. The Old Colonial System, 1688–1850’, EcHR, XXXIX (1986), 501–25Google Scholar and ‘II. New Imperialism, 1850–1945’, EcHR, XL (1987), 1–26.Google Scholar

⁹⁰ Mock, , Imperiale Herrschaft, pp. 103 ff.Google Scholar

⁹¹ Annual dinner of the Shipping Gazette, 20 Nov. 1906, House of Lords Record Office, Lloyd George MSS, B/4/2/36. Lloyd George told the Manchester Chamber of Commerce how ‘very glad [I am] that you are accepting the proposition that Chambers of Commerce ought to keep politics outside (hear, hear). They will cease to have the slightest influence with Government if they do not (hear, hear)’, 16 Oct. 1907, reported in ibid., B/5/1/25. All this, of course, is not to suggest that Free Trade was politically neutral or that individual trades, like railways or shipping, did not enter the political process on issues specifically concerning them. Yet, prior to the war, these were neither part of nationally organized interest groups, such as the Centralverband deutscher Industrieller, nor part of a corporatist decision-making process.

⁹² In addition to the above, see Schuster, and Palgrave, in Journal of the Institute of Bankers, XXV (1904), 76, 221Google Scholar; Hirst, F. W., Monopolies, trusts and kartells (London, 1905)Google Scholar; Chapman, , Cotton industry, pp. 177 f.Google Scholar

⁹³ Kocka, J., ‘The European pattern and the German case’, Kocka, and Mitchell, (eds.), Bourgeois society, pp. 28 ff.Google Scholar; Kocka, J., ‘Capitalism and bureaucracy in German industrialization before 1914’, EcHR., 2nd s., XXXIII (1981), 453–68Google Scholar. Hübinger, G. ‘Hochindustrialisierung und die Kulturwerte des deutschen Liberalismus’, in Langewiesche, (ed.), Liberalismus, pp. 193–208Google Scholar. For the weak relationship between political and economic liberalism, see Langewiesche, D., Liberalismus in Deutschland (Frankfurt A.M., 1988), pp. 27 ff., III ffGoogle Scholar. In addition to n. 87, see Wehler, Gesellschaftsgeschichte, III, Böhrne, Grossmacht.

⁹⁴ For commercial policy, see Bunselmeyer, R. E., The cost of the war, 1914–1919: British economic war aims and the origins of reparation (Hamden, Conn., 1975)Google Scholar; Cline, P., ‘Winding down the war economy: British plans for peacetime recovery, 1916–19’, in Burk, K. (ed.), War and the state: the transformation of British government, 1914–1919 (London, 1982), pp. 157–81Google Scholar; for the Paris economic conference 1916, see esp. Schmidt, H.-I., ‘Wirtschaftliche Kriegsziele und interallierte Kooperation’, Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen, I/81, 37–54.Google Scholar

⁹⁵ Guildhall Library, London Chamber of Commerce, MS 16,745, ‘Preliminary report of the special committee on trade during and after the war as adopted by the council of the Chamber on 13 Jan. 1916’. B.L.P.E.S., TC6 4/18, Nugent's confidential report on F.B.I, resolutions, 28 Feb. 1917 encl. in Lawrence to Hewins, 5 March 1917. On Manchester, The Times, II, 12 May 1916.

⁹⁶ P.R.O., B.T.55/20–24, B.T.55/38–41, B.T.55/112–121. See also the respective Report of the departmental committee appointed to consider the position of: the iron and steel trades after the war, cd.9071; the textile trades after the war, cd.9070; the engineering trades after the war, cd.9073; the shipping and shipbuilding industries after the war, cd.9092; the electrical trades after the war, cd.9072 (all London, 1918).

⁹⁷ I say ‘records’ because I have sought to preserve their original form as much as possible. What has been counted is the record of evidence rather than the number of witnesses or firms represented at each meeting. I am aware of the drawbacks of adhering to the original record, as a large trade association is weighted like a small firm. Counting heads, however, would not have been a more revealing method. Capital investment (or employment) might be a more scientific guideline but proved impossible, given incomplete data and very different capital/labour ratios in the various trades and branches. Nonetheless, the sub-division of the quantitative evidence presented here is, I believe, sufficient for our analytical purpose: to indicate the general tendency and changing nature of the politico-economic views of the business community. Foreign witnesses, civil servants, and other experts have been excluded from the sample.

⁹⁸ This disproportionate weakness would have been even more pronounced if members of associations had been counted separately.

⁹⁹ In spite of their official names, the Fine Cotton Spinners Association, the Calico Printers Association and similar bodies were amalgamated concerns and are, consequently, not listed here.

¹⁰⁰ P.R.O., B.T.55/38, I.S.C.2, no. 7, 29 Sept. 1916, 15.

¹⁰¹ P.R.O., B.T.55/116, T.I.C.4, no. 34, 22 June 1916; see also William Priestley's evidence in B.T.55/120, T.I.C.4, no. 143, 20 Oct. 1916, Priestley was Liberal M.P. for East Bradford, 1906–18.

¹⁰² P.R.O., B.T.55/116, T.I.C.4, no. 27, 20 June 1916: Finlayson of Ashton, Hoare & Co; ibid. no. 33, 21 June 1916: Ellinger, 17; ibid. no. 25, 20 June 1916: Demetriadi of Ralli Bros., 12f.; B.T.55/117, T.I.C.4, no. 53, 5 July 1916: Hollins of Horrockses, Crewdson & Co. Opposition to the protection of the dye industry extended to dye producers and shareholders of the newly created British Dyes Ltd, partly resulting from fundamental opposition to state assistance, e.g. B.T.55/117, T.I.C.4, no. 59, 6 July 1916: Walker, Allen & Sons.

¹⁰³ P.R.O., B.T.55/117, T.I.C.4, no. 42, 23 June 1916: T. E. Casdagli; B.T.55/116, T.I.C.4, no. 21, 19 June 1916, 14, 30: Barlow & Jones Ltd; B.T.55/116, T.I.C.4, no. 29, 21 June 1916: E. F. M. Sutton of Paul Susmann & Co. It has not been possible to find any firm in the cotton sample that had previously given evidence to the Tariff Commission, which further indicates the general insignificance of Tariff Reform cotton witnesses noted above.

¹⁰⁴ P.R.O., B.T.55/113, S.S.C.4, no. 18, 15 Dec. 1916: Thomas Bell.

¹⁰⁵ P.R.O., B.T.55/22, E.I.C.I, 27 July 1916, 16: Alfred Herbert, whose company had had branches in pre-war Germany and whose anti-German feeling outweighed his concern for his import business.

¹⁰⁶ P.R.O., B.T.55/120, T.I.C.4, no. 111, 3 Oct. 1916: W. Watson of Lister & Co; he stressed, however, that he was not representing the company. Cf. his earlier evidence to the Tariff Commission, II, 6, Evidence on the silk industry (London, 1905), no. 79, para. 3337.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁷ P.R.O., B.T.55/117, T.I.C.4, no. 46, 3 July 1916: Charles Armstrong, managing director of Lyon, Lord & Co, cotton merchants; B.T.55/120, T.I.C.4, no. 176, 29 Nov. 1916, O. B. Stanion & Son, yarn merchants. Cf., P.R.O., B.T.55/23, E.I.C.I, part 5, no. 61, 20 Oct. 1916: James Harvey. Managing Director, Harvey Engineering Company, Glasgow; no. 66, 3 Nov. 1916, Henry Lawton of Asa, Lees & Co., Oldham machine makers, and G. W. Needham of Platt Bros., & Co., Oldham textile machinery manufacturers; ibid., no. 69, 16 Nov. 1916, F. Jones, J. Mellor, sewing machine makers.

¹⁰⁸ See, for instance, P.R.O., B.T.55/120, T.I.C.4, no. 142, 20 Oct. 1916: Law & Russell & Co, Bradford woollen merchants; see also the imperialist conversion of the entire board of the woollen manufacturers John Shaw & Sons, ibid. no. 138, 19 Oct. 1916. Other Free Traders were willing to accept anti-dumping policies if linked to colonial preference, e.g. Sinclair of the Wire Netting Association, B.T.55/138, I.S.C.2, no. 17, 2 Nov. 1916. Note, however, the empire was sometimes included in reciprocity demands, e.g. by the British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association. P.R.O., B.T.55/20, El.T.C.I, no. 5, 20 June 1916, 8.

¹⁰⁹ See, for instance, B.T.55/120, T.I.C.4, no. 154, 2 Nov. 1916, G. Marchetti of Crossley & Sons, whose Edwardian demands for a 10–15% tariff rose to 20–30%.

¹¹⁰ P.R.O., B.T.55/39, I.S.C.2, 16, 23 Nov. 1916; tube makers, like other heavy industrial and engineering interests, justified tariffs by pointing to the rise of neutral competition during the war as much as to anticipated German competition after the war.

¹¹¹ P.R.O., B.T.55/120, T.I.C.4 no. 162, 22 Nov. 1916: Drewry & Edwards, hosiery manufacturers.

¹¹² P.R.O., B.T.55/22, E.I.C.I, 1, no. 3 (nd but early April 1916), 5 f.: C. S. Treacher, director of the Continuous Reaction Company, manufacturers of ferro-tungsten; ibid. no. 6, 7 April 1916, 33 f.: P. MacGregor, chairman of the High Speed Steel Association; B.T.55/119, T.I.C.4, no. 128, 17 Oct. 1916: Thomas Hirst, woollen manufacturer; B.T.55/120, T.I.C.4, no. 137, 19 Oct. 1916: Whitworth & Co, Yorkshire worsted and cotton spinners and manufacturers. The last two are again instances of the escalation of protectionist demands, cf. their evidence to the Tariff Commission, II, Woollen industry, paras. 1778 f., 2208.

¹¹³ P.R.O., B.T.55/22, E.I.C.I., 7 April 1916, 23 ff.: Frederick Best of Thomas Firth & Sons.

¹¹⁴ P.R.O., B.T.55/22, E.I.C.I, 8 Sept. 1916, 30: H. Pilling, general manager of Galloway's Ltd, Manchester engineers.

¹¹⁵ P.R.O., B.T.55/20, EL.T.C. 1, part 3, 19 Oct. 1916, G. Chauvin of Siemens Dynamo Works in Britain, cit. pp. 35, 57; Chauvin had been naturalized prior to the war. For the benefits in production, management, and export selling organization in large-scale electrical engineering units in Germany, see also, ibid., part 2, 5 July 1916, W. W. Blunt; 27 Sept. 1916, T. Petersen, cable manufacturer.

¹¹⁶ For Mond, see further references in Trentmann, , ‘Strange death of Free Trade’, pp. 246ff.Google Scholar

¹¹⁷ P.R.O., B.T.55/23, E.I.C.I, no. 80, 30 Nov. 1916: L. Chandler (Metropolitan Carriage, Wagon & Finance Co), W. J. Maclellan, Mr. Moyse.

¹¹⁸ P.R.O., Cab24/175, C.P.482: ‘Iron and steel industry’, 16 Nov. 1925, and C.P.488: ‘Position of the iron and steel industry’, 19 Nov. 1925. Cf. Cab24/212, C.P.189: ‘Economic Advisory Council, iron and steel committee’ report, 30 May 1930, paras. 157 ff. Steven, Tolliday, Business, banking, and politics: the case of British steel, 1918–1939 (Cambridge, Mass., 1987).Google Scholar

¹¹⁹ The British Engineers' Association, for instance, was founded in 1912. On the eve of the war it was ready with financial schemes to enable members to take on contracts with deferred payments, based on German experience. By 1916 the combined capital of its membership was about 100 million pounds and the association encouraged the formation of groups of non-competing firms, P.R.O., B.T.55/22, no. 11, 4 May 1916, 31 ff., 60.: W. Stokes (a Free Trader), S. Ransome and J. E. Thornycroft. Before the war there had already been some tendency towards vertical combination as blast furnace owners acquired mines and coke ovens. It was the war, however, which accelerated this movement by integrating the production of pig iron and steel, and establishing selling organizations, as well as by extending control over mineral supplies, see the report by the Iron and Steel Committee of the Economic Advisory Council, P.R.O., CAB 24/212, C.P.189, 30 May 1930, esp. para. 44.

¹²⁰ P.R.O. B.T.55/23, E.I.C.I, part 6, No. 85: 24th day, 1 Dec. 1916: Clarendon Hyde, the chairman of the Engineering Committee in the interview of Frederick Best, director of Thomas Firth & Sons, Sheffield. The German cartel structure was considered more favourably than the U.S. Trust because it preserved the independence of British capitalists to a greater degree, leaving ‘sufficient independent brains in different concerns to get the very best value out of all the brains available’, L. B. Atkinson, secretary, Cable Makers' Association. P.R.O., B.T.55/20, EL.T.C. 1, part 2, 12 July 1916, at 53. For positive views of the German Verband structure, see, e.g. Scoby-Smith's evidence to the Balfour of Burleigh committee, P.R.O., B.T.55/11, C.&I.P. 8, no. 46, 7 June 1917; for the view of a former Free Trader, see W. Pearce in the committee's discussion, B.T.55/13: C.&I.P. 37, 7 June 1917, esp. 23.

¹²¹ P.R.O., B.T.55/23, E.I.C.I, part 6, no. 87, 15 Dec. 1916, William Shanks. The firm's main export market was South America.

¹²² Modern Records Centre (M.R.C.), University of Warwick, 200/F/1/1/210: Manchester F.B.I, committee minutes, 5 June 1917, ‘Legal status of associations in Germany’. See also, the memorandum for private circulation by Nugent in 200/F/3/D1/1/17, ‘“Reconstruction” and the future of British trade, industry and labour’ (July 1916).

¹²³ P.R.O., B.T.55/24, E.I.C.5, no. 19: ‘Note supplied by Mr A. Balfour on German systems of “dumping”’; ibid. E.I.C.12, ‘A report on the development and operations of the Stahlwerksverband during the years 1912, 1913, 1914, 1915, and part of 1916: prepared by Dr C. Copland Perry’. Note the prominence of arguments for combination, joint selling agencies, and regulated competition by associations in the war compared to their relative absence in members’ evidence to the Tariff Commission, e.g. B.T.55/39, I.S.C.2, 17 Jan. 1916, B.T.55/40, I.S.C.2, 1 Dec. 1917, B.T.55/112,1.S.C.4, 20 March 1917: British Joist Makers' Association, Scottish Steel-Makers' Association, cf. B.L.P.E.S., TC3 1/15, 11 May 1904, John Strain, chairman of the Lanarkshire Steel Co.

¹²⁴ R. Nugent to W. Mullins (Gold Rolled Brass & Copper Association, Birmingham), 17 Dec. 1930, M.R.C., 200/F/3/S1/13/1: 1930–1 F.B.I, industrial policy committee.

¹²⁵ Turner, J., ‘The British Commonwealth Union and the general election of 1918’, EHR, XCIII (1978), 544.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹²⁶ P.R.O., B.T.55/22, E.I.C.I., no. 11, 4 May 1916, 53. More generally, see Davenport-Hines, R. P. T., Dudley Docker: the life and times of a trade warrior (Cambridge, 1984)Google Scholar, chs. V, VI, and references in n. 88 above.

¹²⁷ P.R.O., B.T.55/20, EL.T.C.I, part 2, 12 July 1916, 50: Llewellyn B. Atkinson.

¹²⁸ For scepticism at the F.B.I, whether the lowering of tariff barriers proposed by Alan Anderson in 1928 would be of any real benefit to export trades, like electrical engineering, excluded from markets by non-tariff restrictions, see Glenday's memorandum, M.R.C., 200/F/3/E1/13/5/2.

¹²⁹ Schumpeter, Imperialism.

¹³⁰ P.R.O., Cab24/227, C.P.41(32), ‘Present position of the iron and steel industry’, 23 Jan. 1932. This also included cotton, see Wurm, C. A., Industrielle Interessenpolitik und Stoat: Internationale Kartelle in der britischen Aussen-und Wirtschaftspolitik während der Zwischenkriegszeit (Berlin, New York, 1988), part 11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹³¹ Hilton, Age of atonement; Biagini, E. F., Liberty, retrenchment and reform: popular liberalism in the age of Gladstone, 1860–1880 (Cambridge, 1992).Google Scholar

¹³² P.R.O., B.T.55/120, T.I.C.4. no. 159, 21 Nov. 1916, 34: A. B. Lambert and F. L. Kirk.

¹³³ Wehler, Gesellschaftsgeschichte, III, 664, my translation. For Hilferding's concept of ‘organized capitalism’ and its historical problems, see ibid., 662–80; Winkler, Organisierter Kapitalismus; for corporatist alternatives, see Berger, S. (ed.), Organizing interests in Western Europe: pluralism, corporatism, and the transformation of politics (Cambridge, 1981)Google Scholar; Lehmbruch, G. and Schmitter, P. (eds.), Patterns of corporatist policy-making (Beverly Hills, 1982)Google Scholar; Geschichte und Gesellschaft, X (1984).Google Scholar

¹³⁴ The board at Rylands Bros. Ltd felt ‘very strongly that if a body of Manufacturers came into existence for the express and sole purpose of controlling Parliament… there would be conjured up in the mind of the public visions of those methods which we believe to exist in the United States, and which have been so adversely criticized in this country. Anything of the kind would tend to close the ranks of all interests in opposition’, Rylands to Lincoln Chandler, 29 May 1917, M.R.C., 200/F/3/D1/2/1. Many old Tariff Reformers were reluctant to step outside the existing party system, e.g., House of Lords, Record Office, Bonar Law MSS, 82/4/12, Thomas Wrightson to Page Croft, 10 Sept. 1917. Marrison has emphasised the opposition within the textile trades to amalgamation between F.B.I, and the British Empire Producers’ Organisation, ‘ Businessmen’, pp. 166 f. The important point here is that it was successful precisely because it was not simply a partisan Free Trade strategy among cotton masters but expressed the general sentiment against starting a producers’ party in other sectors (including engineering). M.R.C., 200/F/3/D1/2/2, Nugent to Caillard, 5 Nov. 1919; 200/F/1/1/7, executive committee, 30 July 1919; 200/F/3/D1/2/7, Nugent to Dixon, 7 June 1917. Staying out of politics was seen as a principal reason for the strength of the F.B.I., e.g. 200/F/3/D1/2/1 Nugent to Rylands, 21 Jan. 1920. Even the B.C.U. was intended as a fighting corps for producers inside not outside parliament, House of Lords, Record Office, Hannon MSS, H 13/4, ‘Industrial policy report since July 1st, 1918’ (Hannon); H 14/2, Docker to Hannon, 20 Jan. 1919.1 am grateful to John Turner for discussing this issue with me.

¹³⁵ P.R.O., Cab27/86, G.T.7936 ‘Federation of British Industries; the control of industry: nationalisation and kindred problems’, 30 July 1919. See also, M.R.C., 200/F/1/1/6, F.B.I. executive council, II Dec. 1918. ‘Initiative’ was not to be transferred from firm to state, not even in public utilities.

¹³⁶ State support for the combination movement did not cease with the end of the war, see, for instance, P.R.O., B.T.198/10, B.T.C.828, ‘Trade monopolies and combinations’, 29 Nov. 1921, memo by P. Ashley, who argued that ‘combination is an inevitable outcome of modern economic conditions’, 7.

¹³⁷ ‘The abolition of economic controls, 1918–1921’, EcHR, IS., XIII (1943), 1–30.Google Scholar

¹³⁸ P.R.O., B.T.55/U7, T.I.C.4, no. 61, 7 July 1916, 19: Milton S. Sharp.