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The article presents a discussion on the periodical literatures of 1969. Some of the literatures include: "The Explanation of English Regional Differences," by G.C. Homans, "Economic Growth in England Before the Industrial Revolution: Some Methodological Issues," by R.M. Hartwell and "Size and Structure of the Household in England Over Three Centuries," by Peter Laslett. Homan contends, a narrowly economic explanation to see regional social differences in terms of technical and geographical differences and leads to generalizations for which the evidence is inadequate, though it maybe less so in the Middle Ages than in the sixteenth century. The vexed question of the extent of aggregate economic growth in pre-industrial England is brought into the open again in a challenging paper by Hartwell. Surveying the current position, he reminds that despite the accumulating knowledge, ambiguity and uncertainty still reign. He concludes with a plea for greater definition of the problems to be investigated, and for more concern with ways of making the results of inquiries comparable.

Discusses the competence of businessmen in England from 1860-1914. Notion of adverse social attitudes towards entrepreneurship as a major factor causing retardation in economic development; Overview of the social structure of pre-industrial revolution England; Improvements in the educational standards of the nobility and gentry.

The purpose of this article is to examine whether hallage duties on cloth trade can provide an approximate statistical commentary on the course of economic change in England. In this article, attention is devoted to the question of whether any branch of the London cloth trade was in fact exempt from the statutory market requirements. Circumstantial evidence suggests that hallage receipts are sensitive to the more extreme fluctuations of trade; but in the light of all the difficulties analyzed above, it seems unlikely that a percentage measure of the yield fluctuation would supply a reasonably accurate measure of the actual trade fluctuation. The hallage receipts provide a remarkably continuous chronology of at least the major trade fluctuations in the London cloth markets; and behind these fluctuations, major trends of growth in the level of activity are discernible, although quite obviously, given all the problems discussed above, the precise points of trend changes are difficult to identify. As such, these receipts supply important new evidence, which confirms, by and large, previous views of the course of change in the seventeenth-century English economy.

The article focuses on statistics of coal output in southwest Lancashire, England during 1590-1799. No one doubts the central role of coal in the Industrial Revolution, but statistics of coal output before the mid-nineteenth century are meager on both the national and the coalfield scales. Moreover, that those which do exist contain potentially serious flaws is admitted by their authors and by those who have subsequently used them. No comparable body of coalfield estimates exists for the eighteenth century. Regional statistics could not be used to corroborate or refute national estimates. It has not yet been demonstrated that there was an English economy rather than a collection of self-contained or trading regions within England by the end of the eighteenth century, and even if a cohesive national economy did exist regional rates of economic growth would differ. In such a situation national aggregate data are of chimerical value, and regional statistics are more useful for testing hypotheses about the role of coal production in the Industrial Revolution.

This article discusses the role of transport dues collected in the woollen textile area of the West Riding of Yorkshire, England as valuable indices of economic growth and a subtle indication of speculative investment between 1775 and 1820. First, it details the construction of five main roads by the merchants and manufacturers in the West Riding's chief woollen cloth centers during a national outburst of turnpike construction between 1739 and 1743. The article also discusses controversies regarding the finances of the turnpike roads. It provides a sample data of toll leases on the main turnpike roads around Leeds from 1772 to 1820. Finally, it provides a summary of the movements of the trade cycle within the West Riding.

The article provides information on the causes of the industrial revolution in medieval England. It also presents information on the consequences of the industrial revolution and the problem of determining the reason for the occurrence of the revolution. The twentieth century has been remarkable for historical productivity, for the increasing quantity and range of source materials available, for the growing sophistication of techniques, and for the large-scale growth in numbers of professional economic historians, with their own societies, journals, university departments and degrees, but there still is relative ignorance about many major problems of the industrial revolution, and in lieu of detailed investigation into their solutions, inevitably much speculation. On any historical accounting, the industrial revolution is one of the great discontinuities of history; it would not be implausible indeed, to claim that it has been the greatest. Economic history has always been concerned largely with the documentation, description and explanation of what the economists call economic growth, and with so much empirical and theoretical literature on growth by the economists now available, some historians are turning towards the economists for guidance.