CHAPTER 14

BRITISH SOCIETY IN DECLINE

1) ACCORDING TO THE AUTHOR, WHAT WAS THE REAL PROBLEM WHICH CAUSED THE ECONOMIC
DEPRESSION?
In fact, however, the traditional industries- cotton, coal, steel,
shipbuilding continued to make large profits, though their productivity
fell significantly. The real problem lay in the concentration of the
economy in a narrow range of industries that had been the base for the
earlier industrial revolution. Cotton and metal goods together generated
no less than 10 per cent of all export earnings. Where the economy
failed in the late 19th C was in exploiting the fast growing industries, on
which the next stage of industrialization was to be based: chemicals,
motor cars, machine tools and electricity. British companies produced a
wide range of these products but only in relative small quantities, so,
they failed to gain the economies of scales and were less pricecompetitive than foreing producers.
2) WHY DID BRITISH GOVERNMENTS REFUSED TO ABANDON THE FREE TRADE POLICY? STATE THE
REASONS.
Britain was not yet prepared to abandon the free trade system. There
were several compelling reasons for doing so. First, the fast growing
population depended for its standards of living on importing the
cheapest food available and manufacturers new that food became
dearer the pressure to raise wages would inevitable grow. Secondly,
Britain gained great advantage from free trade because by maximizing
the level of world trade she boosted her earnings from finance, shipping
and insurance, moreover he purchases food and raw materials from the
less developed countries gave them the resources with which to buy her
manufactured goods.
3) REFER TO THE OPPOSING VIEWS AS REGARD THE ENTERPRISE CULTURE OF THE LATE VICTORIAN
PERIOD.
Britains economic performance in the Late Victorian period reflected a
decline in the skill and drive of her businessmen and a general failure of
British culture. It seems unlikely, in some ways, that in the first industrial
nation entrepreneurial values and attitudes did not dominate society.
However, the middle class failed to impose its thinking on mid-Victorian
society as fully prescriptive literature might suggest. Middle class were
devoting less effort to influence the upper class more to joining with
them. One expression of this was the expansion of the public schools,
which were in fact privates, fee-paying schools, where middle-class boys
were educated alongside young aristocrats and aspiring to careers
associated with landed, rather than the manufacturing class.
4) HOW WAS POVERTY TRADITIONALLY HANDlED?
Traditionally poverty was handled in three ways: by charity, by self-help
in the form of Friendly Society, and by the poor law system. The State
support system asked for relief and they had to go to workhouses, they

were provided food and longings but people had to prove they were in
poor conditions. Poverty was due to lazy people, according to the State.
5) HOW WERE THE EDUCATED MIDDLE CLASS INTERESTED IN POVERTY AND UNEMPLOYMENT
ISSUES? WHAT WERE THE RESULTS?
The question of poverty and unemployment became a matter of concern
amongst the educated middle classes. They devoted time to working
with the poor and conducting academic surveys of working conditions.
Some ideas resulted from this activity, for example, the introduction of
old age pensions, the provisions of public-work schemes by local
authorities, the feeding of schoolchildren, and the creation of a ministry
in central government to be responsible for providing either work or
benefits for the unemployed.
Politicians in London did little because they feared that urban poverty
would create fertile conditions for the spread of socialism.
6) WHAT DID THE 1870S CENSUS SHOW? STATE CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES.
The census had begun to reveal something even more worrying to the
politicians, the birth rate which had been at 34 per thousand people
began to fall to 28 by the turn of the century and continued downwards
to 1914. Many middle classes groups were reducing their family size
partly due to the growing cost of rearing and educating children, also
due to a reaction on the part of women to the physical dangers of
childbirth, many died giving birth and many more ruined their health by
repeated pregnancies.
7) DEFINE THE TERM EUGENICS.
The idea of improving the national stock by breeding from the best
elements and preventing reproduction amongst the physically unfit and
mentally backward.