Construction of Assets and Its Variation: The Case of Newton Chambers, Iron Manufacturer, 1799-1820

Takeuchi Tatsuko

doi:10.20624/sehs.47.3_265

Capital formation in an industrial enterprise can be analyzed by the construction of assets and its variation with the development of the company. Because various assets in account books during the industrial revolution in Britain were not well-classified, fixed capital in an industrial enterprise has not been adequately defined in the debates of capital formation so far developed by many authors. The author has analyzed in a previous paper the content of debtor in balance sheets of Newton Chambers, and revealed the importance of loans in the early period of its history (1792-1806). The present paper analyzed creditor, the opposite side of balance sheets, in 1799-1850(earlier period), and 1817-1820(later period). The material assets in the stock books were classified into three groups: (1)fixed assets(buildings, fixtures, machines, tools and other equipments), (2)circulating assets(raw materials, half-finished goods, and goods stock), and (3)other assets which were considered not indispensable for production of goods,(such as firms, lands, shop stocks, sunday school, etc.). The immaterial assets were divided into two groups: (4)ordinary account of credit sales (charge account) which amount to about 65 % of annual turnover, and (5) long-term credits which arose on sales and are considered to be due after more than one year. In the present analysis, fixed capital is detined by (1), circulating capital by(2)+(4), and surplus capital by(3)+(5). The surplus capital is treated as useful for the analysis of the growth of an industrial enterprise. The ratio of the fixed to circulating capital in the present definition was almost constant in the both periods, but the surplus capital greatly increased in the later period, by as large as one thirds of total assets. In the period after the completion of Thorncriffe Iron Works of Newton Chambers, the the surplus capital was very small and the percentage of the fixed capital to the total capital was about 45-50%. The same percentages of two cotton enterprises (M'Connel Kennedy and Oldknow Cowpe) in the similar stages of their growth were about 40-45 %. It has been said that some of surplus capital flowed out of industrial activity, but the amount was very small in Newton Chambers, and most of the surplus capital was used as credit for other newly established industrial enterprises. The variation of the construction of assets in Newton Chambers can be regarded as an elementaly unit of capital formation in the industrial revolution in Britain.

Construction of Assets and Its Variation: The Case of Newton Chambers, Iron Manufacturer, 1799-1820

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