THE PLIGHT OF INDUSTRY

Official efforts to revive those staple sectors harbouring the greatest concentrations of unemployment were continually confounded between the wars by the sheer scale of industrial decline. Both the coal and cotton industries suffered severely in the 1920s from a loss of overseas markets, an intensification of international competition and growing self-sufficiency abroad. The problems in coalmining were further aggravated by technological change, which encouraged greater fuel economy and substitution, by a reduction in domestic demand as a result of recession in Britain's heavy industries, and by a more general decline in the demand for coal which rendered producing countries capable of supplying more output than the market could absorb at prices sufficient to meet production costs. The spinning and weaving sections of the cotton industry, trading in cheaper coarse piece-goods, proved incapable of holding markets in the Far East against intense Japanese competition. In both coal and cotton low productivity, a tradition of labour immobility and an aversion to internal structural change went hand in hand with an ill-fated optimism that revival in competitive efficiency and trade was but a matter of time.

Similar problems were faced in other basic trades. Despite the rise of German and American competition, British iron and steel exports had exceeded imports before 1914.