Originally published in 1987, this book examines how much industrialisation improved the standard of living of the British worker, based on the experience of one representative city: Glasgow. It analyses whether there was an increase in skilled as opposed to unskilled labour in major industrial centres – as for example in Glasgow, manufacturing shifted from textiles to engineering. Other important issues such as the rate of housing construction, public health, local politics and leisure pursuits are also considered. Glasgow has a long history of working-class culture and is therefore a particularly interesting city to study.

Beloved, reviled – and not only by Glaswegians – Glasgow isn't just the Industrial Revolution nor the Victorian slums. Founded in the sixth century, its forebears pushed back the Romans. The roof of its cathedral, founded in the twelfth century, survived the Reformation. Its fifteenth-century university welcomed Adam Smith and the Enlightenment. It prospered from sugar, tobacco, cotton and slavery in the eighteenth century, and saw the rise of the Red Clydesiders in the twentieth. Glasgow's not just a city, it's an urban civilization in itself, unique and fruitful. Its denizens have seen the city rise and fall, they have survived bombs and demolitions, and somehow kept their humour intact. Now these people and this city play a pivotal role in Scotland's future, and in the future of the UK. It's time for a book that tells the story in all its complexity.

This book was first published in 1967. This volume contains a number of essays looking at Scottish business history, its sources and archives. Section two explores domestic and enterprise organsation with examples of lead-mining, joint stock and he law, the Glasglow savings bank and the east coast herring fishing. Section three expands Scottish Enterprise overseas from 1707 to the nineteeth century.