During the Great Depression, President Roosevelt used several revolutionary tactics to heal the suffering American economy. These tactics, the providing of public service jobs, the movement for social security and the implementation of a "blanket code" for workers rights, had great success and greatly revolutionized the role of the federal government. The providing of public service jobs (the New Deal) was the tactic that served to heal the most daunting problem in American society, unemployment (document J). In 1935 the Roosevelt administration created the WPA to help employ Americans for publicly funded projects such as "city beautification." As seen in Document J this jobs did help to greatly lower the percentage of unemployed between 1935 and 1938.
This was because there was a commonly held belief that the deprived were responsible for there poor living conditions, as they did not work hard enough – like the upper-class did, some would argue. Yet, the Liberals did pass reforms between 1906 and 1914 in order to tackle this problem. For example, the Old Age Pension Act of 1908 and Education (Provision of Meals) Act of 1906. Two social surveys were published during this time, that not only shocked the British public but changed popular opinion on the causes of poverty. They helped pave the way for a whole range of Government-led welfare reforms.
Not many people would have thought that one reason may have been the countries national efficiency as a whole. Prior to their election the Boer war in south Africa had been taking place and the army found two thirds of men volunteering where unfit to take part due to a wide range of health problems from poor vision , bad eye sight and simply being too small. The government feared that the population might not be self sustainable for much longer and with the slow demise of the British empire , the government had a real problem on its hands that its population might become so weak the whole empire won’t be able to support itself. The rise of the German empire was becoming a threat as well and the possibility of war looked likely the government realised they’d have to intervene when the population was young as well and support them growing up to make them into stronger workers and soldiers or risk losing its colonies and
Towards the end of the war however, people had problems with supporting the war when there was national problems which should be dealt with instead of the war. The horrible situation in Britain by 1902 was reflected in economy, health, education and poverty problems. This was the focus of the Liberal party, and they therefore got increasingly popular. Firstly, the motive of the war is the main reason for why one may argue that the popular enthusiasm did decline as a result of the Boer War. Imperialism was seen as more and more capitalism.
In 1906 the Liberal government were being to realise the effect that poverty was having on the country as a whole including the Liberals ability to govern the country. Research carried out by reformers such as Charles Booth and Seebohm Rowntree influenced the Liberals and enlightened them to the state of poverty in our country. Looking at the research the Liberals saw that more than 30% of our population were living below the poverty line (that Booth had devised). From this they could clearly see that something needed to be done about this. The work of Booth and Rowntree had for the first time highlighted that fact that people were not in poverty just because they were lazy.
Stolypin believed that the encouragement of a class such as the Kulaks would make them hostile to further change therefore more conservative and loyal to the Tsar as the Tsar had made them wealthy. Furthermore, peasants made up 85% of the population of Russia and a majority relied on agriculture for their income. Reforms that would please the ‘dark masses’ would strengthen the tsarist regime. Another reason for reforming agriculture was to oppress peasant unrest. In Poltava and Kharkov provinces, mass impoverishment of the peasants, which was exacerbated by the poor harvests of 1901 led to 40,000 peasants took part in an uprising where they also ransacked 150 landlord properties.
The troops would have felt let down as well, so therefore wanted reform and supported Mussolinis violence tactic. This also links in with the north south divide as the troops would be in the south and it hadnt industrialised as much as the north causeing a huge divide socially and economically. This demobalisation of the troops would have threated the higer classes as the troops could easily over power them for the land. Obviously the 5 million troops would have supported Mussolini and therefore caused a growth in his support. Another reason for Mussolinis success was the weakness of the political system.
These other causes are all political social and economical factors which helped to free the serfs. And had the Tsar taken a more liberal view on his rule the emancipation may never have happened. Firstly there are many political causes for the emancipation of the serfs. The bankruptcy of nobles who were the tsar’s main supporters was, caused because of the inefficiency of using serfs to farm lands, which meant most nobles were losing money and by 1860 over 60% of serfs were mortgaged to the government meaning they were “unofficially” no longer tied to their land. This meant serfdom was already coming to its own natural end, and for Alexander II to support his nobles he had to emancipate the serfs so they could go start increasing their wealth and get out of debt.
11.11.11. History essay- The 5 Giants In his report, Beveridge had identified 'want' as the main giant social problem to overcome. As a result, the 1946 national insurance act was established which not only improved the old liberals act but allowed for sickness and unemployment benefits, retirement, widows pensions and maternity grants. All people in work were included in this insurance but what about those not in work?. The 1948 national assistance act helped people not in work or the elderly who had not paid substantial enough contributions into the new national insurance scheme.
What in your view was the short term significance of the implementation of Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834? The newly-elected Whig government of Lord Melbourne introduced the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, which aimed to reconstruct the country’s poverty relief system. The act was inspired by utilitarian and malthusian principles and was based on notions of discipline and frugality[1]. The New Poor Law is considered to be one of the most ‘far-reaching pieces of legislation of the entire Nineteenth Century’[2]. The implementation of the Poor Law Amendment Act was significant in reducing the countries costs, but not as successful at changing attitudes towards the poor in the short term.