70 l&ON AND STEEL IN BRITAIN
Summary
One may conclude this section by remarking that the British iron
and steel industry was somewhat weaker than other British indus-
tries in, exports, while it permitted an increased ratio of imports to
supply the home market.
It suffers from the problems of a capital goods industry in an
extreme degree and requires more co-operation, (a) to prevent the
building of excess capacity and for the most economic usage • of
capacity in time of slump, and (b) to hold its own in both the home
and the overseas market, particularly in the face of intensive
competition-
Chapter I set out to study the development of the iron and steel
industry.'It has shown that both as regards output and exports the
industry in Great Britain has lagged behind the rest of the world
both absolutely and relatively. While Great Britain began with
certain differential advantages, these were lost through neglect of
developing technique, which was accentuated as the period ad-
vanced, while in the post-war decade monetary policy and State
neglect hampered the domestic industry still further.
A theoretical examination of the movements in British production,
consumption, imports and exports, both in relation to world trends
and to the trend of other sections of British industry, leads to the
conclusion that factors both internal and external to the industry
were responsible for its changing fortunes. The problem, being thus
stated^ it remains now to study the general environment of the
industry and its internal development in order to attempt to assess
the relative weights to apply to the various causes of decline. With-
out a clear understanding of these causes the true remedies cannot,
of course, be found.