The great state : essays in construction / by H.G. Wells [and others].

Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The great state : essays in construction / by H.G. Wells [and others]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    84/396 (page 72)
    What was it that Jevons so truly wrote nearly fifty years ago? I quote from page 234 of The Coal Question: “The history of British industry and trade may be divided into two periods, the first reaching backward from about the middle of the eighteenth century to the earliest times, and the latter reaching for- ward to the present and the future. These two periods are contrary in character. In the earlier period Britain was a rude, half- cultivated country, abounding in corn and wool and meat and timber, and exporting the rough but valuable materials of manu- facture. Our people, though with no small share of poetic and philosophic genius, were unskilful and unhandy; better in the arts of war than those of peace; on the whole, learners rather than teachers. ‘But as the second period grew upon us many things changed. Instead of learners we became teachers; instead of exporters of raw materials we became importers; instead of importers of manufactured arti- cles we became exporters. What we had exported we began by degrees to import; and what we had imported we began to export.’ A wise man having thus pointed out for all time to the British people that the use of coal changed