LOSS OF LEADERSHIP^455layed remedies in the decades since the World War II, one is inclined
to define the British disease as a case of hard tardiness; entrepreneur
ial constipation.
For the defenders of British performance—let's call them the opti
mists because they see things in the best light—evidence of "declining
market shares, [reduced] scale of operation, [lower] capital intensity,
[old] capital vintage and average labour productivity" does not demon
strate "entrepreneurial backwardness."^31 Nor does evidence of belat-
edness. Why, they say, accord so much importance to the old standby
industries: cotton, iron and steel, chemicals? These branches make in
termediate goods. What about consumer industries? Don't they count?
The business of an economy is to make people happy, not to perform
"statistical feats."^32
So the optimists dismiss the figures on cotton consumption, make of
iron, output of sulfuric acid. Too embarrassing. Instead, they put for
ward statistical constructs of total product and productivity—"un
doubtedly a major advance" over "ad hoc" data for "a few select
industries."^33 These number figments have made a deep impression
on economic historians, first, and then on those general historians who
feel obliged to accept them at face value. The figures seem so precise
(one or two decimal places) and, as asserted by some of the cliometri-
cians, so peremptory.
Yet when all is said and done, the older data on individual branches,
based as they were on direct measures, were far more accurate and re
liable than aggregate constructs, as these same cliometricians conceded
when their figments went against them. This happened as soon as the
focus on British loss of leadership widened from the Victorian and Ed
wardian eras to include the period after World War I. Now, for the
twentieth century, the comparative estimates of productivity, like the
industry data, told a story of Britain's further loss of place. And now,
suddenly, the optimists warned readers of the unreliability of macroes-
timates—of the "frailty of the calculations," of "errors and imprecision
in measurement" and "very large margins of error"; and cautioned
that national aggregates were a "fragile foundation" on which to build
theories of British performance.^34 One leading yea-sayer, more faithful
to theory, did not even bother: he simply dismissed calculations of
higher productivity in other countries (say, the United States) as triv
ial or incredible: why should such large gaps exist and persist?^35
But, of course, they do exist. They just don't persist. The annals of
competition show entire national branches dragging and withering—