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'Welfare' issues tended to be separated from issues of enterprise, but there were signs in 1900 that the industrial future of the country was as insecure as the agricultural. The Times took up comparisons between �then� and 'now' and 'here' and �there�, which were to be assembled years later in M J Wiener's still controversial thesis, English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit, 18501950 (1981).
In 1900 American steel production was twice that of Britain, where even the textile industry was beginning to look out of date. During the 1890s the 'condition of the British economy' had become as complex as the changing situation of British culture. There was resistance in Britain to the 'scientific management' propounded across the Atlantic by Frederick Winslow Taylor, 'father of scientific management', and problems with both labour and management were apparent both in the coal and iron industries in 1901, when it was announced too that the number of workers in the textiles industry had declined over the previous ten years.
Given the role of trade unionism in analysis of 'industrial decline', it is revealing to discover that one news item of long-term historic importance scarcely figured in the newspapers of 1900. On February 27th, Shrove Tuesday, a day of 'dreary dripping rain', what became the Labour Party was voted into existence in London at the Memorial Hall, Farringdon Street. Trade-union officials were in the large majority, and the only item on the agenda was labour representation in Parliament.. There was little consensus, although the Independent Labour Party founded in 1894 and then led by Keir Hardie, was successful in carrying amendment after amendment which culminated in an agreement to form 'a distinct Labour Group in Parliament, who shall have their own Whips'. Ramsay MacDonald, who was elected Secretary of the new Labour Representation Committee, believed that some delegates had attended in order to 'bury the attempt in good humoured tolerance'.
At the general election of 1900 only two LRC candidates won seats, one of them, Hardie, a true socialist. There were other candidates, nonetheless, who attracted attention, like Philip Snowden, who fought the election at Blackburn in Lancashire, where his addresses were compared by A.G. Gardiner, a great Liberal journalist, with 'the tides of spiritual revivalism which periodically sweep over the land'. In a time of increasing secularisation, socialism could have the power of a gospel. At the next general election in 1906 no fewer than 29 LRC candidates were elected. Yet the politics of the new Labour group in Parliament reflected interest rather than ideology. It was interest too, trade unionist fear in 1901 of the consequences for trade unionism of the Taff Vale judgement in the courts, which limited the right to strike, that gave the biggest boost to the Labour Representation Committee.
All these problems were British. The world, however, was changing more than the nation, and as the year 1900 ended Harmsworth chose to visit New York where at the invitation of Joseph Pulitzer, the great American journalist and newspaper owner, he took charge of Pulitzer's The World for one day to edit the issue for January 1st 1901, described as the first number of the new century. Harmsworth produced what he called a tabloid, demanding from his journalists, who for the occasion had to work in evening dress, that no story should be longer than 250 words. Having completed their task they toasted in the new century in champagne. There was one transatlantic story to report. Hiram S. Maxim, the American-born inventor of 'the swiftest death-dealing machines', had been knighted by Queen Victoria in her New Year's honours list.

It was an American tribute that Harmsworth received on this occasion. He was hailed as 'the most prepossessing and picturesque figure in journalism on either side of the Atlantic'. He spent most of the following day with Thomas Edison and also met Mark Twain. His edition of The World had sold out by nine o'clock in the morning and another 100,000 were to be printed. One was to be kept on permanent exhibition in the New York Public Library. ENDS