The Emergence of Big Business: The Largest Corporate Employers of Labour in the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States c. 1907

Peter Wardley

Business History, 1999, vol. 41, issue 4, 88-116

Abstract: This article, which builds on previous studies published in Business History, documents the largest employers of labour in the Edwardian United Kingdom. It provides a more comprehensive coverage than hitherto by indicating several important firms which have previously escaped enumeration. More specifically, it demonstrates the neglected importance of several large companies in the coal industry and in metallurgy. With the identification of large employers in Wales, Scotland and the north-east of England, it also redresses an imbalance caused by previous under-enumeration of large firms in 'Outer Britain'. This more comprehensive coverage also contributes to analysis of several aspects of big business in twentieth-century Britain: first, it contributes to analysis of concentration, analysis which can be undertaken for the whole economy or with reference to specific sectors; second, it reveals firms which exhibited economic dynamism, stasis or decline; third, it is indicative of the impact of internal growth and amalgamation for individual companies; fourth, it discloses many of the firms which would have had recourse to an internal labour market. An international perspective is adopted by comparative analysis of similar developments in Britain's major rivals, the USA and Germany. All told, it sheds important light on both the emergence of big business and the historiography of this phenomenon, reaffirming a revisionist view that British companies were larger and more varied in their activities than previously suggested.

Date: 1999
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DOI: 10.1080/00076799900000346

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