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The originator of this question about "industries" mentioned the Standard 
Industrial Classification.  In the US the SIC was only established in the 
1930's as a part of the work of the Committee on Governmental Statistics 
and Information Services (COGSIS) that had the job of refining and 
improving Government statistical work--originally with regard to the New 
Deal NRA codes and their implementation.  I am sure the National Archives 
could provide a great deal in the way of information as the how the SIC was 
actually arrived at.  Prior to this, during the first World War, Wesley 
Mitchell, working for the Prices Section of the War Industries Board, made 
a vast study of price indexes for a large number of industries.  Again, it 
would be interesting to find out how an industry was defined for the 
wartime purpose of production planning.   
 
Marshall, of course, was obseving 1890s Britain where there was a high 
degree of industrial localization: Cotton in Lankashire, Wool in Yorkshire, 
Steel and cutlery in Sheffield, pottery around Stoke on Trent, shipbuilding 
and heavy engineering on the Tyne and Clyde.  So the idea of well defined 
industries might have appeared quite a matter of common sense and not in 
need of a great deal of analysis. 
 
 
Malcolm Rutherford. 
University of Victoria 
 
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