(^278) THE WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS
if possible. Eventually he succeeded and thought himself the patriot as
well as the smart businessman.^5 In the meantime, Boulton himself was
the target of numerous attempts at seduction. Sweden was particularly
pressing, and he may even have solicited an offer from there.^6
One cannot always discern the boundaries between curiosity, explo
ration, and outright spying. A leading student of the subject writes
that "many foreigners... gathered useful intelligence... without ever
doing anything underhand."^7 But he also notes that many "visitors"
were themselves ironmasters, manufacturers, chemists, inspectors of
industry, or some kind of informed observer. They had not come to
England to see the monuments and the landscape. Here is Ignace de
Wendel, nominally an artillery officer, more pertinently the scion of a
dynasty of ironmasters and a chosen instrument of the French gov
ernment. He thought himself well endowed with nose, eyes, tongue,
and guile, and thought all of these necessary:
... we found that there was nothing difficult in getting a good view of
English Manufactures, one needs to know the language with facility, not
show any curiosity, and wait till the hour when punch is served to instruct
oneself and acquire the confidence of the manufacturers and their foremen,
one must avoid recommendations from Ministers and Lords which will do
litde good... young men are litde suited to such a mission ... to view
things usefully it is important to have at least some idea about machines, be
cause one does not take a step without seeing them, which all tends to
abridge the process of manufacture.^8
Even more important was the flow of technological talent from
Britain to the Continent: why take a quick look if you can hire some
one with years of firsthand experience? Only people with hands-on
knowledge could pass it on. Even in later ages of scientific diffusion and
transparency, even with sample products and equipment, even with
blueprints and explicit instructions, some know-how can be learned
only by experience.* In 1916, in the hot middle of World War I, the
French had lost some of their major centers of arms manufacture and
desperately needed an additional supply of their 75-mm field guns.
This was their key artillery piece, the pride of their arsenal, a machine
so exquisitely designed that a glass of water perched on the carriage
would not spill when the gun was fired. Violating all their rules of se-
- This is what Michael Polanyi called tacit knowledge. Kenneth Arrow speaks of
learning-by-doing. See Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension; Arrow, "The Economic Impli
cations of Learning by Doing"; J. Howells, "Tacit Knowledge."