Productivity and Performance in the Paper Industry: Labour, Capital, and Technology in Britain and America, 1860-1914

This is a welcome addition to books on the history of papermaking, particularly as it is a comparative study of the industries in Britain and America. For the period 1860 to 1914 there are a few histories of individual British mills but only two general studies of the British scene: my own brief overview of the technical developments, and A. H. Shorter, Paper Making in the British Isles: An Historical and Geographical Study (Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1971). An investigation on the economic aspects is long overdue and adds to our understanding of the period. Unfortunately, Gary Bryan Magee’s work suffers somewhat from its being originally prepared as a thesis. Too many discussions about economic theory, which may have been necessary to convince examiners of his knowledge of the subject, have been retained unnecessarily.

Magee set out to investigate the truth of the claim that the British paper industry declined in comparison with the American, particularly after 1870. He examined the performance of the industries in both countries and shows that the British worker was generally less productive than his/her American counterpart. Here we come to one problem. Are we dealing with similar industries? British industry served the higher quality end of the market and, when handmade paper is included, this was more labor intensive. Magee probably has not given enough consideration to the final product, particularly later with the vast output of American newsprint.

Magee concentrates on entrepreneurial activity in association with technological change and the decision making linked therewith. The basic technology of actually making sheets of paper altered little because the Fourdrinier machine was the one principally used, although after 1900 productivity was raised by greatly increasing the width and the speed. This was to meet the ever increasing demand for paper throughout this period. Production in Britain grew steadily, from just under 100,000 tons in 1860 to 1,085,000 tons in 1912, but imports rose quickly as well, from 41,000 to 508,000 tons in the same period. And prices fell! Here again Magee has not taken into consideration the effect on management of a seller’s market, except in times of depression. But this tenfold increase in production helps to explain Magee’s proposition that there was not a failure of entrepreneurship in Britain, at least until the turn of the century. It may also help to explain why in neither Britain nor America do the unions appear to have been a cause of restrictive output.

To meet this enormous rise in production, dramatic changes occurred in sources of cellulose, the basic raw material for paper. At the beginning, this was rags, linen or cotton cloth, sails, old ropes, and so on. At the end it was wood. Britain almost alone turned to esparto in the 1860s and after that to different sorts of woodpulp. Mills had to change because the supply of rags was insufficient to meet the increasing demand, and hence management had to learn new techniques. Magee examines the use of these different raw materials in terms of percentages, which does not reveal their true importance (see table 4.1). From his graph, at first sight, it would appear that the use of esparto declined after 1875, whereas in fact it increased more slowly while that of wood rose dramatically. What happened was that each type of raw material found its own niche in the market, so they did not compete directly. Esparto was well suited to high-quality printing paper, which British mills produced, whereas groundwood was best for cheap newsprint, which was what was in demand in America.

Magee shows how two factors put the British industry at a disadvantage toward the end of the century. The first was the growing predominance of wood. Alexander Cowan in Scotland found that indigenous supplies were...