WORKS BY W. J. ASHLEY ENGLISH ECONOMIC HISTORY AND THEORY Crown 8vo. Part I., 5s. Part II., 10s. 6d. SURVEYS, HISTORIC AND ECONOMIC Crown 8vo. 9s. net. THE ADJUSTMENT OF WAGES LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. BRITISH INDUSTRIES A SERIES OF GENERAL REVIEWS FOR BUSINESS MEN AND STUDENTS NEW YORK EDITED BY W. J. ASHLEY, M.A. PROFESSOR OF COMMERCE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 1903 All rights reserved 73497 5579 609 a PREFACE MIDA THE ten lectures here printed were delivered during the winter of 1902-3 under the auspices of the University of Birmingham, and were designed for two classes of auditors. They were intended to supplement the instruction given by the permanent teachers to the students in the Faculty of Commerce; and it was hoped that they would also prove interesting and suggestive to men already in business. Similar motives have now led to their publication. Men of affairs will find information in them not easily accessible elsewhere; and those who are concerned in the administration of one particular trade may perhaps learn something from the arrangements and experiments of other branches of business. But the main object of the volume is to serve the purposes of students in the new Faculties and Departments of Commerce that are being created in our universities. It is very clear that a training for commercial life is both desirable and possible, and that that trainingfor the men who are likely to occupy positions of control and large responsibility-should be of the highest intellectual type; that, in short, it should be, in the best sense of the phrase, "of a university type." But I feel very strongly that the problem how best to constitute such a course of training has not yet been adequately considered. It will not be enough, in my |