Alfred Russel Wallace 



not been sufficiently educated to permit of any effectual 

 remedy being applied. The workers themselves had failed 

 to visualise its fundamental causes, land monopoly and 

 the competitive system of industry giving rise to an ever- 

 increasing private capitalism which, to a very large extent, 

 had controlled the Legislature. All through the last century 

 this rapid accumulation of wealth due to extensive manufac- 

 turing 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 en- 

 forced 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." This 



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