Inland Steel Company, Chicago, and the more modern Port Talbot plant of the Steel Company of Wales. For Inland produced about 260 ingot tons per man-year as against about 160 ingot tons per man-year at Port Talbot. It was a foretaste of the even more horrifying comparisons in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s between productivity at identical car plants in Britain and on the Continent." - Meaning and context.">
p. 279
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Perhaps the most damaging single proof of this American superiority in all-round productivity lies in a comparison in September 1954 between steel output at the Inland Steel Company, Chicago, and the more modern Port Talbot plant of the Steel Company of Wales. For Inland produced about 260 ingot tons per man-year as against about 160 ingot tons per man-year at Port Talbot. It was a foretaste of the even more horrifying comparisons in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s between productivity at identical car plants in Britain and on the Continent.

— Correlli Barnett

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Perhaps the most damaging single proof of this American superiority in all-round productivity lies in a comparison in September 1954 between steel output at the Inland Steel Company, Chicago, and the more modern Port Talbot plant of the Steel Company of Wales. For Inland produced about 260 ingot tons per man-year as against about 160 ingot tons per man-year at Port Talbot. It was a foretaste of the even more horrifying comparisons in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s between productivity at identical car plants in Britain and on the Continent." in the context of "p. 279" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

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Source: Wikiquote: "Correlli Barnett" (Quotes, 2000s, The Verdict of Peace: Britain Between Her Yesterday and the Future (2001)) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 19, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app

About Correlli Barnett

Correlli Douglas Barnett (28 June 1927 – 10 July 2022) was an English military historian, who also wrote works of economic history, particularly on the United Kingdom's post-war "industrial decline".