Prior to the late 19th century ‘Laissez-faire’ was the Governments policy towards poverty in Britain. “Laissez-faire” meaning to leave alone was the attitude of both the government and the public towards the issue of the poor who were living in poverty. The state was not to interfere in the lives of people or in the workings of market economy. Individuals had to look after themselves and their families. It was believed that poverty was the individuals own fault, due to their own personal defects and moral failures.
When the great depression started the Wealthy dropped down to the middle class and the people in the middle class dropped down the economic ladder to the poor economic ladder. When the US first went into this depression Herbert Hoover didn’t care about the poor. Herbert cared about the wealthy and the middle class, but did not care about the poor because they were already poor in the Social ladder. When the election came FDR became president.
Poverty in the 19th Century We know more about poverty in the 19th century than in previous ages because, for the first time, people did accurate surveys and they made detailed descriptions of the lives of the poor. We also have photographs and they tell a harrowing story. The worst thing about poverty in the 19th century was the callous attitude of many Victorians. Many of them believed in 'self-help'. That is they thought everyone should be self-reliant and not look to other people for help.
The poor would only enter these if they were absolutely destitute the conditions were so harsh. So in fact the workhouses were used as a derarent in order for the poor to become self reliant. Historically during the 18th and 19th century the most powerful and influential political ideology was economic liberalism. This encouraged individualism and free trade. It discouraged governments from spending public money on welfare services.
In “What is Poverty?” Theodore Dalrymple argues that poverty has been redefined. In traditional poverty, poor people’s income levels are low, they are starving, or the medical care is not enough. However, this kind of poverty does not exist in industrial countries like England because of the welfare state. The welfare state redistributes wealth, provides free medical care and free houses for the poor. According to the author, this causes moral poverty.
The idea of Old Poor Law being demoralising can be found in Source A within which one finds the comments of a Derbyshire Overseer of the Poor who describes a Robert Smith who ‘will not try to get work anywhere else’ because he could not have an employer as good as the magistrates who provide him with 11 shillings showing Mr Smith to have become too reliant on the Law suggesting the Poor Law to be the cause of poverty. Source A also shows the Overseer suggesting that the large family Robert Smith might have something to do with him obtaining more money from the parish which links with a quote from Edwin Chadwick in Source E who states the poor having large quantities of children is because God said ‘increase and multiply’, even ‘without any likely means of keeping them’ in response to an Assistant Poor Law Commissioner who asked him why a poor man might have such a large family. It suggests that the poor man expects his family to be looked after. This
How far did the workhouses meet ‘less eligibility?’ Under the old Poor Law the local parish workhouse were seen as a relatively unthreatening and evenly friendly institution. However, workhouses under the new Poor Were aimed to discourage paupers into not wanting to enter. This was known as less eligibility. Less eligibility was a British government policy passed into law in the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834. It stated that conditions in workhouses had to be worse than conditions available outside so that there was deterrence to claiming poor relief.
Giving people what they deserve, and what they deserve depends upon how they behave within the society. The deserving poor were those who were poor through no fault of their own, either because of illnesss, accident or age or because there was no work available for them. In Uk the elderly and children were also seen as more deserving than prime-age adults. Where the pauperism referred to those who were receiving relief and were less deserving than the more honest individuals who were desperately poor but not receiving government
Alexander was hopelessly out of touch with the emerging realities of a modern Russia. For example, agriculture was exploited as a source of export earnings; this helped cause a series of famines, especially in 1891. This made him hugely unpopular as he took grain from the people in an attempt to make money and improve the economy. Due to his slow intelligence and lack of experience, Alexander forgot the fundamental rule of keeping his people happy and instead chose to supress them. He did not realise that, following Alexander II’s emancipation of the serfs in 1861, he could not return to a state of rigid autocracy when the serfs had already had some freedom.
Perhaps the foremost factor contributing towards the failure of the 1905 revolution was the apparent readiness of both the peasants and the liberals to accept the concessions offered by the government. The peasants had been bought off with an announcement abolishing the mortgage repayments in the near future; the liberals’ appetite for reform satisfied with the creation of a legislative duma as well as the introduction of a range of civil rights. This shows how the people (except the industrial workers) were not looking for the overthrow of the government-they were easily appeased with the apparent reform and were not ready for revolution. However, in 1917, when the government had made clear that it had no intentions of relinquishing power or granting the people their rights, the tsar was forced to abdicate in the face of severe opposition to his ineffective and damaging rule. Moreover, this goes on to show that the government was faced with the same situation both in 1905 and 1917-the only difference was in its choice of reaction.