Profile Major Works Resources

Sir Hubert Llewellyn Smith, 1864-1945.

British labor economist, statistician and civil servant. H. Llewellyn Smith was educated at Bristol and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, taking a double first in mathematics and beating out L.L. Price and Edwin Cannan for the Cobden prize in 1886. Placing second in the civil service examination, Llewellyn Smith was offered a post in the War Office, which he declined on account of his Quaker faith.  Instead, in 1887-8, he took up a position lecturing on political economy for the Oxford University Extension and Toynbee Trust in East London.

It was while he was in East London that Llewellyn Smith joined the team of researchers (which included Beatrice Potter) around Charles Booth, who would produce the massive study of working class conditions and urban poverty in Life and Labour of the People (published in seventeen volumes between 1891 and 1903).  Partly on the strength of this work, in 1893, when the Labour Department was created under the Board of Trade, H. Llewellyn Smith was appointed its first commissioner, reporting directly to the commissioner-general Robert Giffen.  He would succeed Giffen as controller-general in 1897 and follow a distinguished career in the civil service, becoming permanent secretary of the department until 1919, when he was appointed Chief Economic Advisor of His Majesty's Government (1919-1927).  He compiled and produced the massive New Survey of London working life in the 1930s.

 

 

  

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Major Works of H. Llewellyn Smith

  • Economic Aspects of State Socialism, 1887 [bk]
  • The Story of the Dockers Strike, with V. Nash, 1889
  • "The Position and Prospects of Industrial Conciliation", 1890, JRSS
  • Modern Changes in the Mobility of Labour, especially between trade and trade,, 1891 [bk]
  • "Chapters in the History of London Waterside Labour", 1892, EJ
  • "Influx of Population",  in Charles Booth, ed., 1889, Labour and Life of the People, v.1, p.501, [repr. 1892, v.3, p.58]
  • "Influx of Population (continued)", in v.3, p.120
  • "Influx of Population", p.501, in Charles Booth, ed., 1892, Life and Labour of the People of London.
  • "Influx of Population (East London)", in v.3, p.58,
  • "Influx of Population (continued)", in v.3, p.120
  • "Secondary Education (1) Boys". in v.3,  p.247.
  • "Economic Security and Employment Insurance: Presidential address to Section F", 1910, JRSS
  • The Economic Laws of Art Production, 1924
  • The Board of Trade, 1928
  • New Survey of London Life and Labour, 9 vols, 1930-35
  • The History of East London from the earliest times to the end of the eighteenth century, 1937

 
HET

 
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Resources on  H. Llewellyn Smith

  • "The Cobden Prize Essay", 1887, Oxford Magazine, (Jun 18) p.289
  • "Review of Llewellyn Smith's State Socialism and Burnett et al's Claims of Labor",  by E.R.A. Seligman, 1888, PSQ (Mar) p.188 [js]
  • H. Llewellyn Smith entry at Oxford DNB
  • Llewellyn Smith at Spartacus
  • Trip to Kent: atercolors & sketches of Llewellyn Smith at King's College, Cambridge.

 

 
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