When I started handloading, the main powders used in the UK were made by the long defunct ICI Nobel company in Scotland (which also made several rifle powder grades for Hodgdon back then). If you wanted loads data, you bought a soft-back booklet for (I think) £2, not pennies back in the early 80s. For the company's range of four rifle powders and a similar number of pistol grades, not a single make of case, primer, or bullet was mentioned - it was weight only and whether lead, semi-jacketed, or full jacketed. Nobody blew themselves up - unless of course they did the usual careless things like double-charging revolver cartridges, or mixing powder grades up.
When Vihtavuori hit our shores, years before it went to the USA, you got a little more data for the initially small range of propellants, but all in a pamphlet that folded up into A5 size.
Most other powder companies produced similar free 'loading guides', very limited in both the cartridges covered and the bullets used. Hodgdon was one of the few which produced a paid for manual, still continued today with the 'Annual Manual'. The reason Hodgdon dropped the full-size manual around 10 years ago wasn't simply cost, but that by the time it was in print and on the shelves, half a dozen new cartridges had been launched and it was already out of date. Even with vast number of loadings Hodgdon provides in the paid-for Annual Manual, and free through its interactive online Reloading Center, there are vast numbers of cartridge / powder / bullet model combinations that aren't covered - it's simply not feasible to do everything especially with around 20 IMR / Hodgdon / Winchester rifle powders.
Going back a generation, if you wanted more data, and very few actually did IME, you bought the Speer, Hornady, Sierra, and Lyman printed manuals. I have a couple of shelves full of such going back years in some cases, but haven't bought one for a long time now thanks to online data plus QuickLOAD. At least one though, is still an essential I reckon for the tyro handloader as they contain much more than loads data.
Probably the big difference today, apart from the vast increase in both cartridges and components, is that when I started you went for a safe, lowish pressure load that did the job. The lower the load and pressure that worked in the intended role the better. It was called 'common sense'! We didn't have QuickLOAD, we didn't have chronographs, we hardly ever shot beyond 600 yards - and those that did such as our 'Target Rifle' sling shooters used 7.62 military ammo that we now know is ballistically abysmal at 1,000 yards with bullets going subsonic long before this distance.
Nowadays, everybody wants 0.1-MOA groups, obtain absolute maximum MVs way above factory ammo levels, and wants to shoot at 1,000 yards - what am I saying they want to shoot at a mile now or more?! And why not, as long as they continue to apply common sense, use the tools available, and work loads up carefully? It is and always has been the jump-into-the maximum-load-and add- another-grain-or-two merchants mostly who get into trouble.
If every manufacturer had by law to provide data for every possible combination for its products, well forget handloading and forget target shooting as we know it. It's not going to happen!
There is another rule often forgotten these days, or one feels deliberately ignored by those with certain environmental, anti-shooting, or health & safety axes to grind. Don't try and find solutions to non-problems! The starting point for this debate should be, just how many people injure themselves or damage / destroy firearms each year? Whilst I have no idea how it works out in the USA, the number in the UK is tiny, and the reasons that our NRA comes up with in the literally one or two cases per year that cause injury haven't changed from those that applied when I started in this game nearly 40 years ago - defective firearms, wrong powder selected in error when loading various different cartridges in a session and more than one tin of powder on the bench, very occasionally deliberate use of a completely inappropriate powder or reckless negligent over-charges. I've never seen no or inadequate data quoted as a reason. One cause that has arisen much more recently is people not ensuring their powder measures are emptied completely and half a charge worth of one cartridge's powder is dispensed to the first charge of the next. Since we lost pistols here and such cartridges are limited primarily to leverguns, the number of handloading caused incidents has dropped substantially as few rifle cartridges physically allow double-charging. Also as a result of this change, far fewer handloaders here use progressive presses these days. The amount and quality and coverage of manufacturer's data doesn't affect the 38 Special or 357 Magnum that gets a double or triple charge of Bullseye one iota!
There are still more people in the UK hurt each year with shotguns and factory ammo than rifle shooters with handloads - the classic danger of keeping loose cartridges of mixed calibres in a jacket pocket and inadvertently slipping a 16 or 20B cartridge into a 12B gun seeing it slip down the barrel and block it.
Use it sparingly and wisely unless your giving a commencement speech at an Ivy League School.
