We have been talking about the identity of fisher women being that of fish worker and secondarily as housewife and mother, but outsiders defined them, their husbands and the community in general in ways which some-times, though not always, corresponded with how they defined themselves. At times, the focus was upon women specifically, but often it was upon the community as a whole. These more general comments apply to women as much as to men and must be included in our study. Given its small size, the inshore fishing community made a surprisingly deep imprint on the consciousness of the wider society. the explanation for this lies in the drama which surrounded it. The public revelled in the danger, the bravery of both men and women, the picturesque dress of both, the distinctive culture and the isolation of the fishing community. In fact, the fishing community formed a convenient object upon which to foist a variety of different, often contradictory but always extreme, feelings.

The public at times of tragedy represented the fishing population as victims. This characterisation was especially true if the disaster involved several members of the same family or several families. As had long been the case, outpourings of sympathy occurred, made tangible by the donation of sums of money. When in 1851 eight men from Blyth drowned, leaving eight widows and twenty-seven children, the Lord Mayor of Newcastle Fund collected £1,701 and the town of Blyth and the town of morpeth donated £50 and £21 respectively.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, mining, inshore fishing and agricultural labouring communities often figured in the national consciousness, people drawn by the drama and danger faced by miners and fishermen and by the picturesque qualities of all three groups. The representations of these groups were highly ambivalent. some were positive. in the case of mining and fishing communities, we frequently read expressions of admiration for the bravery of miners and fishermen and sympathy for their losses in times of tragedy. Agricultural labourers, often called hinds, profited from the romanticisation of the countryside that had begun in the eighteenth century in, for example, the paintings of John constable or in their role as ‘quaint carriers of english folklore’.

The images of the women of these communities, frequently found in literature and art, were mostly sympathetic and often dramatic. in Germinal by Émile Zola, we read of women huddled at the pit head waiting for news of the men and boys trapped below ground in the flooded pit. This reminds us of the horrendous Hartley pit disaster of 1862 in northumberland in which 262 men and boys from one village were entombed. When found, the bodies of the boys were clinging to their dead fathers, who had left hurried notes pinned to the bodies of their sons. this event garnered much sympathy, as did the tragedies which befell the fishing communities.

The inter-war years brought many changes to the mining community and to mining women. After a boom during the war, the industry sank into depression. One problem was the loss of markets during the war, particularly severe in exporting districts such as northumberland, and a slowness to mechanise the cutting and haulage of coal. the return to the gold standard in 1924 which plunged the United Kingdom into depression five years before the 1929 crash further added to the problems of the coal industry. the combined result was that what had been known as ‘King Coal’ before the war became the ‘sick man’ of industry in the 1920s and 30s. this change in the fortunes of the mining industry had major effects on mining families. A related feature of the inter-war period was the nationwide industrial strife in the coal industry, first in 1920 and 1921 and then, much more severely, in the six-month lockout in 1926. The onset of the Great Depression in the 1930s furthered the difficulties of the industry and added to the woes of mining families. Not until the eve of the second World War did the situation begin to improve. Yet the inter-war period was not all doom and gloom for mining women. Some of the burdens of the women's lives were lifted in this period as a result of official actions and the actions of mining families, especially women.

Inshore marine fishing had some similarities with coal mining but also many differences. Both were long-standing, dangerous, quintessentially male industries, but, whereas mining was a heavily capitalised industry with an all-male workforce, inshore fishing involved petty commodity production in a family based system that also involved women and children. Not to be confused with deep-sea fishing, it was conducted by small entrepreneurs operating their own boats – called cobles – and was a holdover from preindustrial times. The exception to this was the heavily capitalised summer herring fishing industry, in which wives and young fisher girls were involved from the mid nineteenth century. While rarely far apart geographically, these coal mining and inshore fishing communities in terms of their environment could not have been more different: the mining communities set in a grimy, dusty environment over which loomed pit gear and slag heaps, the latter often burning; the fishing communities crouched around picturesque bays, the view that of white beaches, rocks, and charming small fishing vessels. The experience of inshore fisher women was as dictated as that of mining women by the industry in which their husbands worked. Like mining women, they were not allowed actually to participate in the craft, the men fulfilling the most skilled and dangerous part of the trade and gaining all the status. The typical pattern of women being denied access to machinery, in this case the fishing boat, was thus apparent.

As we have seen, the toil and trouble of the Bank Restriction Period gave rise to very few new developments in economic theory. It did, however, canvass and secure general acceptance for views previously held only by the authors of little read works on technical economics. Progress in the social sciences has often been made up of periods when thought made rapid advances, followed by times of intellectual quiet in which the time lag between the thought of the few and the beliefs of the many was made up. The Restriction Period was of the latter sort. The result of this work of consolidation was the emergence of a body of orthodox economic doctrine such as had not previously existed. First and foremost, so far as our present subject is concerned, it was agreed that the standard of value was and ought to be gold. The advocates of an issue of government inconvertible paper, of a silver standard, or of bimetallism, still raise their voices in time of trouble, but they are voices crying in the wilderness. Secondly, the broad outlines of the quantity theory were generally accepted. The changes in prices of the post-war years had induced a more careful consideration of the mechanism which connects the volume of money with the price level. If money be taken to include all instruments of payment, then the dispute was not whether the volume of money really did influence prices, but as to the relation between different sorts of money, and their varying degrees of potency. In fact, however, the word was not used in this comprehensive sense, and the problem resolved itself, like so many others, into a matter of definition. What is money? Thirdly, there was accepted the theory of international price adjustments advocated by Ricardo and the Bullion Report, which had effectively displaced both its converse, the view that high domestic prices promote a favourable balance of trade, and Thornton's income theory of transfer.

In fact, during the quarter of a century following the resumption, monetary theory slides down to a lower plane; We are concerned less with general principles and more with administrative details. How was the Bank to regulate its issues so as to ensure the maintenance of convertibility? What was the effect of the growth of deposit banking and the cheque system? and so on.

THE NATURE OF THE EXPERIMENT

Between the end of the Restriction Period and the beginning of the “Currency” and “Banking” controversy there occurred, almost without notice, a great change in the attitude of the Bank directors towards the regulation of their issues. In 1819 the senior directors still thought that the function of the Bank was to supply “the legitimate demands of commerce”, and that the only criterion by which to judge of the sufficiency of the circulation was the demand for the discount of first-class commercial bills at what might be deemed a reasonable rate of interest. The Bank formally denied that the note issue could have any effect on the foreign exchanges. In 1827, however, William Ward secured the rescinding of this resolution, and during the next few years there was developed the new rationale of the matter, which was explained to the Committee of 1832 by Palmer.

The connection between Bank of England issues and those of the country banks, between banknotes and prices, and between prices and exchange rates, is now freely admitted, and over-issue is defined in relation to the foreign exchanges:

Over-issue means excess of prices having regard to the prices of other countries. It is quite clear that a bank can only issue legitimately on a demand, and that demand arises upon the prices of the country, but these prices may, by excitement or speculation, be above their relative value with respect to foreign countries; in such case, I maintain an over-issue to exist; and I say this without meaning in the slightest degree to infer a charge against the Banking Interest for that action.

Such an over-issue would show itself in an unfavourable exchange and a demand for gold from the Bank, and the corrective would be a reduction of issues.

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS

The period from 1850 to 1873 had been one in which cyclical fluctuations had been superimposed on a marked upward trend in prices. Wages had been rising, unemployment low, and international trade rapidly expanding. The stock of monetary gold was rapidly increasing, yet in spite of this interest rates were generally high. Between 1873 and 1896 all these features were reversed. The various price indices all showed a markedly downward trend, the drop over the whole period being about 40%, or rather more than double the normal cyclical fluctuation of the nineteenth century. It was not until the 1890's that Mr G. H. Wood's wage index rose above the 1874 level, and the rise over the whole period was only 5 %, compared with over 40% between 1858 and 1873. In spite of the great increase in food imports the value of our international trade rose by only a moderate amount—the highest import figure recorded is only 16% and the highest export figure only 10% above those of 1873; the volume of trade, however, increased by more than this, owing to the fall in prices. The Trade Unions unemployment figure shows an average of 5.3%, compared with just under 4.7% for 1856–73. From 1874 to 1879 there was a virtual cessation of foreign investment, and our favourable balance of payments shrank to nothing; there was a recovery to a very high level in the late 1880's, but a fall again in the 1890's.

The world production of gold showed a slight decline, but one which was very small in relation to total stocks. Much more important was the increased demand for gold, as a result of the resumption of cash payments by the Bank of France, and the adoption of a gold standard by Germany, America and a number of smaller countries. Net imports of gold into this country were £74.5 mn. between 1858 and July 1871, but between then and the end of 1888 they were no more than 4.7 mn. A more detailed analysis of movements between 1871 and 1886 will be found in Table XVII.

Discerning readers will not fail to notice the pioneer quality of Mr Morgan's essay. They will also observe that its novelty lies not so much in its matter as in its theme. It is not that the matter is in any way hackneyed or stale. There are many things in the book which at least one reader found wholly new, and which other and more expert readers may find at least interesting. Yet the principal characteristic of the book is not the information which it contains, but the purposes for which the information is employed. Mr Morgan has set out to do what in the writing of modern economic history has so seldom been done. His study is both historical and theoretical, and though many students before him tried to marry economic history to economic theory, few of them ever achieved the union on Mr Morgan's terms.

Economic studies combining theory with history fall, as a rule, into two interrelated groups. They are conceived either as exercises in “applied economics” in which a few historical facts are used to illustrate the few economic theories which are capable of being illustrated; or else as “historical revisions” in which certain well-known episodes of economic history are re-told in terms of modern theory. Examples of the former will be found embedded in most of the better known economic treatises from Adam Smith to Marshall and Keynes. Examples of the latter have been lately produced by economists and historians alike: vide Bresciani-Turoni's book on the German inflation, Rostow's articles on the Great Depression, or Fisher's article on the commercial policy of the Tudors.

Mr Morgan attempts none of these things. While his debt to modern economic theory and more especially to Keynes will be obvious to all (and economic theories are an avowed part of his subject) he treats the theories themselves as historical facts and subjects them to historical analysis. At the same time the book is no mere “history of economic doctrine”. It pays an equal if not a greater attention to the banking policies, the monetary changes and the movements of prices, which sometimes influenced theoretical discussion and were often themselves affected by contemporary doctrines. The two topics are run on concurrent lines, which often intersect, but are never merged or confused.

After 1844 monetary theory comes to have progressively less connection with the practical problems of central banking. The major practical issues of the first half of the century had concerned the working, first of an inconvertible, and then of a convertible note issue, in both of which the central bank was immediately and directly concerned. But in the second half of the century the things most in the public eye were the secular movements in prices closely associated in time with changes in the output of gold. It is the connection between the two which forms the most important point of discussion in monetary theory, and which was responsible for the development of such new ideas as there were. By the letter and the spirit of the act of 1844 the Bank was made only the passive agent in transmitting the effects of changes in the supply of gold to the economic system as a whole, and the theorists were quite right in paying little attention to its activities in this respect. The problems of the Bank were of a more technical nature— the size of the reserve, the behaviour of the bankers' balances, and so on —and they received comparatively little theoretical discussion. The ideas involved in the gold controversy, though only indirectly relevant, will take up a good deal of our space, but first we must clear away the legacy of dispute left by the Bank Charter Act itself.

THE POST BANK CHARTER ACT DISCUSSION

The surprising thing about the Bank Charter Act is its persistence. Within a generation of its passage it had been three times suspended by the arbitrary action of ministers; it was ridiculed by leading bankers, and condemned by eminent theorists; yet only once was a bill introduced into Parliament to make any serious modification of it. This one bill, introduced by Lowe in 1873, proposed a legal means by which the fiduciary issue could be exceeded so long as Bank rate was 12%; it was felt that this was too high a rate, and that the machinery proposed by the bill was too complicated, and it failed to find any support. Perhaps the reason for this inertia was that the public had been so wearied by the constant repetition of the arguments of the Currency and Banking controversy.

THE BANK OF ENGLAND

When John Horsley Palmer, Governor of the Bank in 1832, was asked what were its chief functions, he replied:

To furnish the paper money with which the public act around them, and to be a place of safe deposit for die public money, and for die money of individuals who prefer a public body like die Bank to private bankers.

It will be noticed that Palmer stresses the action of the public with the notes provided by the Bank, for throughout the first half of the century the Bank was earnestly disclaiming any active role in determining the quantity of money.

But already the Bank's functions had ramifications which are hardly suggested in Palmer's simple outline. The functions of a modern central bank are fourfold: to act as manager of the National Debt and banker to the government; to regulate the currency; to be a banker's bank, and to act as lender of last resort. Even at the beginning of the nineteenth century we can find important traces of all these functions.

The Bank and the National Debt had grown up together, and critics of both said that the prosperity of the Bank depended on the Debt. The Bank kept the books in which transfers of stock were recorded, and made the dividend payments, for which services it received a commission prescribed by the terms of the charter. The Bank also handled the government account. The revenue was received and accumulated as government deposits, on which, in accordance with the Bank's usual rule, no interest was paid. When payments exceeded revenue, the government was allowed to overdraw its account by means of deficiency bills and special advances. After their formation in 1826 the branch banks assisted in the collection of the revenue, by receiving it from the commissioners in the provinces, and crediting it to the government account in London. The very complex machinery of the Exchequer was somewhat simplified by an act of 1834, by which payments formerly made to the Tellers of the Exchequer were now made direct to the Bank.

The amount which the Bank could lend to the government was fixed by law, but during the French wars Pitt had the restriction removed, after the directors had questioned the legality of the advances which he required.

Changes in Bank rate, 1876-1913, with the Amount of the Reserve of the Banking Department and the “Proportion” on the preceding Wednesday

FALLING PRICES, 1821–4

The price fall, which had begun in 1819, continued with but slight interruption until 1824. The general index, 150 at the end of 1818, fell to 120 at the beginning of 1821, to 112 in the third quarter of 1822 and, after a slight rally in 1823, to 104 in the third quarter of 1824. Wheat prices fell disastrously in 1821 and 1822, but then recovered somewhat.

In the second quarter of 1821, when cash payments were resumed, the average circulation of Bank notes had been £22.9 mn.; a year later the figure was only £ 17. 3 mn., but a large quantity of coin had been issued, so that the combined circulation of notes and coin had almost certainly increased. This decline was balanced chiefly by the decline in government securities, as the government completed the repayment of the promised £10 mn. Commercial discounts remained fairly constant at a very low level, and bullion, in spite of the large issue of coin, fell by less than £ 2 mn.

Ricardo blamed the Bank for the too rapid contraction of their issues. During the resumption debates he had said:

In the years that followed, Ricardo often returned to this point, and emphasised that the evils of the time arose from the Bank's not having followed his advice.

Tooke, on the other hand, maintained that the act of 1819 was quite inoperative. In his usual manner he points out discrepancies in time between changes in the note circulation and in prices.