One reason why the Conservatives won is there Stop-Go economic policy. Although the policy itself was bad the Conservatives engineered it by making it a go period when the election came round. They did this by ‘electioneering’ the Budget and cut income tax, purchase tax and the duty on beer. This made the public feel like the economy was good as most of them vote with their wallets they voted Conservative. The Labour economy policies are also a reason why they lost.
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. The majority of the cases were caused by unemployment, sickness, old age, large families and low wages. The Liberals knew now if they were going to have a strong country and keep control of the country they needed to address this. They used data collected during 1905-1909 to come up with the Liberal reforms. During 1906-1914 the Liberals made a huge progress in beginning to deal with poverty but the reforms did not make a big a difference as first thought during this time so they were not completely successful in dealing with the issue of poverty.
This informed liberals that the ‘welfare’ that the poor law provided, was not working. It could be said that this led to the introduction of reform acts in order to tackle the poverty felt by the young and the old. The Old Age Pensions Act was introduced in 1908 and provided the over 70’s with income to tackle their poverty. It was far more dignified than the provisions provided to the elderly prior to this as, unlike the poor law, it provided no shame to the people. One of the Acts passed to aid children was the Administrative Provision Act which appealed to the idea of National efficiency.
As seen in Document J this jobs did help to greatly lower the percentage of unemployed between 1935 and 1938. Although the work of the WPA did not completely solve the enormous problem it was certainly a move in the right direction, bringing the USA closer to the complete extermination of the unemployment problem, which was finally achieved after the second world war. This New Deal, fueled by organizations such as the WPA, completely revolutionized the role of the federal government. Coxey had advocated for actions similar to the new deal decades before but his ideas were shut down because the government had such close ties with big. However now, in such drastic times, the federal government realized that it needed to help the common people directly through providing more Jobs.
The Populist movements formation The rise of populism perpetuated from two issues that were dramatically affecting the lives of western farmers. Firstly, was debt that had engulfed most farmers who were adjusting to a new form of farming under dry conditions along the legal form of sharecropping, secondly was the social isolation due increasing farm size. Out of depression farmers formed social groups where talk of hardship took main stage. The late 19th century was seeing its largest formation of industrialization in the history of the nation and subsequently farmers were caught in trammels between the increase in costs and shrinking prices of goods. As a result, currency became a main focus along with increasing railroad rates and tariffs.
How did society's attitude change towards the poor from 1830-1914? How did the Government deal with poverty during this period? Before the 1830's people who were subject to poverty were looked upon as lazy and deserving of their situation. People of this time thought the main three causes of poverty was idealness, drunkenness and thriftiness. Factors that contributed to changes from this were help from social investigators like Booth and Rowntree, artistic contributions from Dickens and Dore and a realisation that the Boer's war impaired Britain’s national efficiency.
There were also other key factors such as the ideas of new liberalism, national efficiency, political pragmatism and national security to be taken into consideration of why the government changed its policy. It can be argued that the investigations of Charles Booth and Seebohm Rowntree results into Britain’s poverty were a significant motivating factor behind social reform in the nineteenth century. It revealed the true and mainly unsuspected levels of poverty which the wealthier classes of Britain were unaware of and was difficult to ignore as it was based on hard scientific data that the Victorians admired greatly and not simply an opinion by leading the government by abandoning its policy and adapting a more interventionist approach. The first investigation was conducted by Charles Booth, originally a Liverpool ship owner but by 1889 a London businessman, who doubted the claims of socialists that a quarter of the population lived in extreme poverty. At first he believed that the level of poverty in Britain was limited and could be dealt with by charity.
During 1906 to 1914 the Liberals passed reforms to try and improve the lives of the British people. Booth and Rowntree impacted the way people viewed the poor, they conducted a report which identified two areas of poor. Primary poverty was due to low wage, unemployment, sickness and old age. And secondary poverty was the source of laziness and citizens wasting money by spending it on drink and gambling. When the report was released, people began to see the true extent of poverty and that the British people couldn’t fulfil their basic needs and provide for themselves food, water, clothing and shelter.
These laws proved to be highly unsuccessful and caused resentment towards Augustus, forcing him to revise them in AD 9 through the Lex Papia Poppaea. This amendment reduced penalties against unmarried and childless people, whilst increasing rewards for those married with children. Overall, Augustus’ social reforms were definitely not as successful as his political ones due to the unpopularity and resentment they created. Conclusively, it is evident that Augustus introduced many new political and social reforms and managed to create a whole new system of government through the Principate. Augustus was clearly more successful with his political reforms
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. The Act was preceded by the well-publicised Royal Commission of Enquiry into the operation of the Poor Laws in 1832. Prior to the Royal Commission, there had only been cosmetic changes to the poverty relief system, since the establishment of the Elizabethan Poor Law in 1601. The Elizabethan Poor Law favoured assistance and correction as forms of repression and took a laissez-faire approach towards the poor.