All through the last century this rapid accumulation of
wealth due to extensive manufacturing industries led to a still greater
increase of middlemen engaged in the distribution of the products, from
the wealthy merchant to the various grades of tradesmen and small
shop-keepers who supplied the daily wants of the community.
To those who lived in the midst of this vast industrial system, or were
a part of it, it seemed natural and inevitable that there should be rich
and poor; and this belief was enforced on the one hand by the clergy,
and on the other by political economists, so that religion and science
agreed in upholding the competitive and capitalistic system of society
as the only rational and possible one. Hence it came to be believed that
the true sphere of governmental action did not include the abolition of
poverty. It was even declared that poverty was due to economic causes
over which governments had no power; that wages were kept down by the
"iron law" of supply and demand; and that any attempt to find a remedy
by Acts of Parliament only aggravated the disease. During the
Premiership of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman this attitude was, for the
first time, changed. On numerous occasions Sir Henry declared that he
held it to be the duty of a government to deal with problems of
unemployment and poverty.
In 1908 three great strikes, coming in rapid succession--those of the
Railway and other Transport Unions, the Miners, and the London Dock
Labourers--brought home to the middle and upper classes, and to the
Government, how completely all are dependent on the "working classes.
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