3 - Performance

Summary

Over the course of the nineteenth century the British paper industry went from world leader to also ran. Yet it would be premature to conclude from this alone that the performance of the paper industry in Britain was somewhat lacking. Indeed, on the rare occasion that students of late Victorian and Edwardian Britain mention the industry, they speak of it rather favourably. For example, Ashworth described it as a ‘rapidly expanding’ industry while Wray depicted the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the period leading up to the First World War as a ‘period of expansion and prosperity for the paper industry’. Similarly, Hoffmann, in his survey of British industry since 1700, chose to label it a ‘non-typical’ industry in which ‘almost from the earliest years for which output statistics … are available the smoothed rates of growth of output increase from year to year’. According to his figures, from 1865 to 1913 the rate of growth of output fell below 4 per cent per annum on only two occasions (between 1876 and 1880 and between 1901 and 1905). These periods aside, the overall secular trend was one of rising rates of growth to 1900 followed by a gradual slowdown. In spite of this impressive growth rate, at least by British standards, the British industry even in terms of output growth was still in the process of steadily losing its former international pre-eminence. So much so, in fact, that by the turn of the century Britain in terms of output had fallen to third place behind the United States and Germany with the gap between Britain and its two chief competitors ever widening.