The English Poor
The English Poor
$47.00
USDIn 1889, British wine merchant Thomas Mackay published The English Poor, which espoused the ideas of Darwin and applied them to British social and economic history. An acolyte of social Darwinist Herbert Spencer, Mackay writes that human history has been a struggle between individualism and socialism, and argues that only through individual competition (not state social support) will poverty be eradicated. The opening chapters discuss the human instinct for property accumulation, primitive forms of society, elite control of workers during the plague years, and the growth of the proletariat. Later chapters discuss social legislation, the evolution of England's poor laws, and the Industrial Revolution. Finally, Mackay debates the scholarship of socialist Ernest Belfort Bax, bemoans the misguided ideas of Christian charity, and argues that the lives of 'lower types' of people have been prolonged by the poor laws. This is a fascinating document of late-Victorian economic thought.
Product details
July 2009Paperback
9781108003704
320 pages
216 × 140 × 18 mm
0.41kg
Available
Table of Contents
- 1. Property the main condition of survival
- 2. The same considered historically
- 3. English villeinage
- 4. The Black Death
- 5. The increase of sheep-farming
- 6. Town life and the trade guilds
- 7. Social legislation and the poor law
- 8. The industrial revolution
- 9. The theory of wages
- 10. Private property and population
- 11. The modern aspect of the poor law
- 12. The poor law (continued)
- 13. Insurance a substitute for the poor law
- 14. Some forms of socialistic legislation
- 15. The ethical aspect of the question.
