3 AUGUST 1929, Page 28

Manchester economists are gradually revealing the truth about the Georgian

era before the Industrial Revolution. To the monographs on cotton, iron and steel, population, and so on may now be added The Coal Industry of the Eighteenth Century by T. S. Ashton and Joseph Sykes (Manchester University Press, 14s.), which gives a full and authentic account of the methods of working, the organization of the trade, wages, royalties, and so on. The authors incidentally emphasize the extreme value of the steam engine to the collieries, first for pumping and then for haulage. But for Watt the coal trade could never have grown rapidly just when more coal was needed for industrial purposes. This able and interesting book makes the position clear.