Causing poverty

The causes of poverty revealed by the early poverty surveys were as surprising and disturbing to most contemporaries as the calculations of its extent. The common belief was that poverty was caused by idleness, drinking and other personal shortcomings, a belief that was used to justify the stigmatic nature of the Poor Law. Booth found that only a quarter of his ‘submerged one-tenth’ was impoverished chiefly by drink, idleness and ‘excessive children’. More than half were in poverty as a result of insufficient earnings and a further 10% due to sickness and infirmity. The crucial point was that a very considerable part of poverty was not ‘self-inflicted’ but derived from low wages and other circumstances over which the poor had little control.[1]

Low wage rates and unemployment must have both been serious causes of poverty earlier in the century when real wages were lower, when more men and women were engaged in declining domestic industries, in arable farming with its erratic labour requirements, and at casual work and occupations liable to be disrupted by poor weather, by uncertain transport or loss of power. In these circumstances slumps were accompanied by high food prices and few workers had the resources to make provisions against unemployment. However, the working of the trade cycle was still a major source of poverty in 1900. School medical reports show significant variety in the height and health of school children that reflect the amount of work available in their vulnerable early years.[2] The only unemployment figures historians have for the second half of the nineteenth century are those for trade unionists and they show a long-term average rate of between 4.5 and 5.5%. These figures hide localised slumps such as the Lancashire ‘cotton famine’ during the American Civil War and that which impoverished Coventry when the silk trade was opened to foreign competition in 1860 and the effects of major strikes and lock-outs after 1890.

Newspaper illustration of people in line for food and coal tickets at a district Provident Society office during the cotton famine

Old age was not as important a cause of poverty as low wages in 1900 but it was much more important than Booth and Rowntree at first suggested.[3] Booth did not pay sufficient attention to families in which the chief wage earner was elderly and as a result ascribed only 10% of poverty to illness or infirmity. Rowntree said that only 5% of primary poverty resulted from old age or illness but he omitted the numerous elderly inmates of workhouses and poor law infirmaries.[4] In 1890, well over a third of the working-class population aged 65 or over were paupers and in 1906, almost half of all paupers were aged 60 and above. This is not surprising since state pensions were not paid until 1909.[5]

Sickness was still among the important causes of poverty in 1900 and was probably even more important earlier in the century. Chadwick and early public health campaigners pointed to the enormous economic cost of preventable disease and emphasised how poor rates were swollen by the deaths of working men and by the vicious circle of sickness, loss of strength and reduced earnings that delayed economic recovery. Rising wages after 1850 reduced the amount of poverty directly attributable to ill-health. This was aided by the increasing number of working men who joined friendly societies that provided sickness insurance.

Women were the chief sufferers from most of the causes of poverty.[6] They were prominent by a ratio of two to one among elderly paupers largely because of their outliving their husbands. Widows and spinsters also suffered from wage rates that reflected the assumption that all females were dependent. Working-class wives deserted by their husbands and the majority of unmarried mothers almost invariably became paupers. Women were also affected by hardships often hidden from investigators. The male breadwinner was almost always also the meat eater and there is ample evidence of the uneven distribution of income within the family that was to the detriment to the health of wives and children. Uncertain and fluctuating earnings made budgeting difficult and led too easily to dependence on pawnbrokers and retail credit to smooth economic fluctuations.

Drinking was the greatest single cause of secondary poverty in York in 1899 and an average working-class family spent a sum equivalent to a third of a labourer’s earnings on it.[7] Heavy drinkers claimed that beer was necessary to their strength but drink was an extremely expensive way of obtaining nutrition. Some men could not easily avoid drinking especially as wages were often paid in public houses.

Drinking was obviously a consequence of poverty as well as one of its causes. The public house was often warm and cheerful and full of friends and was certainly more attractive that squalid and overcrowded homes. One sign of the importance of drink among the causes of working-class poverty was extensive temperance activity.[8] The temperance movement has been characterised as overwhelmingly middle-class concerned to impose bourgeois value on a degenerate workforce. However, the middle-class did not have a monopoly of the Victorian virtues and temperance was as much a working-class trait as drunkenness.

Large families were also shown by Booth and Rowntree to be less important as a cause of poverty than many had believed. Nevertheless they were important and, like drink, were indirectly responsible for some of the poverty ascribed to low wages and other causes. Rowntree calculated that almost a quarter of those in primary poverty in York would have escaped had they not been burdened by five or more children.[9]

Low earnings, irregular employment, large families, sickness and old age were the root causes of poverty in the nineteenth century rather than intemperance or idleness. By 1900 new levels of poverty were discovered showing clearly that official statistics for pauperism revealed only the tip of the iceberg and that comfortable assumptions based on the belief that poverty would melt away in the warm climate of economic prosperity must be considerably modified.

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[1] In some respects, the recognition that poverty had different causes harked back to the distinction made in the 1601 Poor Law legislation (itself echoing the distinction made by JPs in 1563) between the able-bodied poor and the impotent poor both regarded as ‘deserving poor’ and the idle or ‘undeserving’ poor.

[2] Floud, Roderick, ‘The dimensions of inequality: height and weight variation in Britain, 1700-2000’, Contemporary British History, Vol. 16, (2002), pp. 13-26 and Jordon, T.E., ‘Linearity, gender and social class in economic influences on heights of Victorian youths’, Historical Methods, Vol. 24, (1991), pp. 116-123.

[3] Thane, Pat, Old age in English history: past experiences, present issues, (Oxford University Press), 2000, pp. 147-193.

[4] Ibid, Seebohm Rowntree, B., Poverty: a study of town life, p. 121.

[5] Pugh, Martin, ‘Working-class experience and state social welfare, 1908-1914: old age pensions reconsidered’, Historical Journal, Vol. 45, (2002), pp. 775-796.

[6] See, Levine-Clark, Marjorie, Beyond the reproductive body: the politics of women’s health and work in early Victorian England, (Ohio State University Press), 2004, especially pp. 116-130.

[7] Ibid, Seebohm Rowntree, B., Poverty: a study of town life, pp. 323-331. See, Dingle, A.E., ‘Drink and working class living standards in Britain, 1870-1914’, Economic History Review, 2^nd ser., Vol. 25, (1972), pp. 608-622.

[8] Harrison, Brian, Drink and the Victorians, (Faber), 1971, revised edition, (Keele University Press), 1995 is a work of major importance on the ‘drink question’ between the 1830s and the 1870s. It should be supplemented with the study by Lambert, W.R., Drink and Sobriety in Victorian Wales, (University of Wales Press), 1984.

[9] Ibid, Seebohm Rowntree, B., Poverty: a study of town life, pp. 121-122, 129-135.

Alexis de Tocqueville and Lower Canada

In 1831-1832, Alexis de Tocqueville spent time in America during which he wrote his De la démocratie en Amérique, a critique of the socio-political nature of American civilisation that is widely regarded as a classic work of political theory. While touring northern New York State with his companion Gustave de Beaumont, Tocqueville learned to his surprise that a French enclave survived on the banks of the St. Lawrence and at the end of August 1831 he and Beaumont visited. They spent twelve days in Lower Canada at the end of the summer of 1831 notably in Quebec and Montreal where Tocqueville had discussions with the Lower Canadian elite including the deputies John Neilson and Dominique Mondelet. [1] Although he did not write up his experiences, Tocqueville left valuable notes about Lower Canadian society scattered in his work and correspondence that show considerable insight and analytical clarity.

Tocqueville, deeply Catholic and French in his loyalties, was impressed by Lower Canada, both on the spot and later in reflection. It seemed to him like a museum. On the one hand, as aristocrat and landowner, he was charmed by the warmth, hospitality, and morality of the peasantry. On the other hand, the colony served him in his published work as the mirror image of American democracy. As he would later write in Democracy in America, ‘the habit of thinking and governing for oneself is indispensable in a new colony,’ but there seemed to be little of this in Lower Canada, where the mass of the French population was subordinated to curé, seigneur, and agricultural routine. The presence of local, electorally managed institutions in New England seemed to him to account for much of the striking difference in economic and commercial development between Lower Canada and the American states. Yet he would continue to reflect on the relations between ‘civilization’ (the growth of commerce and the division of labour) and morality in the rest of his travels.[2]

Believing that nothing remained of the French presence in America, Tocqueville was agreeably surprised to discover in Lower Canada a ‘race forte’, largely French, peaceful, agricultural, prosperous, hospitable, whose customs were well-established, not excessively religious and with a strong sense of their heritage. He recognised that the difference between the French Canadians and the British lay in their different values. If the ‘race canadienne’ appeared somewhat ignorant to him compared to the Americans, for Tocqueville they seemed ‘supérieure quant aux qualités du cœur’.[3] He appreciated that although French Canadians rejected the utilitarianism and mercantile spirit evident in Anglo-American values they were influenced by the egalitarianism of American democracy.

It is with emotion and astonishment that Tocqueville noticed the extent of the similarities between the French and the ‘Français du Canada’: merry, undertaking, sharp, talkative, scoffer, open, avid of glory, sociable, obliging, proud of their origins and more instinctive than reasoned. [4] Attached to their religion and their traditions, the Canadians were xenophobic and unwilling to move away their land to colonise other areas whatever their possibilities. Fearing a possible cultural fusion with the ‘English’, Tocqueville was delighted by the fact that religion represented ‘un obstacle aux mariages entre les deux races’. Those who feared the French Canadians most were the British and Canadian elites who were profoundly ‘English in manners and ideas’.[5] Tocqueville also feared the submission of the Canadian elite to the colonial authorities, the massive influx of immigrant and the general apathy of the Canadians.

Tocqueville considered that the Conquest was a tragic event for the Canadian people but was convinced that it had the ability ‘one day to establish a great French nation in America’.[6] It seemed easy for him to note that ‘les Français sont le peuple vaincu’ because, although they were in the majority, many of Lower Canadian elite were primarily ‘British’ in attitude. Even if French was almost universally spoken, Tocqueville recognised that

...the majority of the newspapers, the posters and signs of the French merchants were in English. Commercial enterprises are almost all in their hands. It is beyond doubt the leading class in Canada and I expect that this has long been the case.’[7]

Several other things demonstrate that Tocqueville noticed the latent animosity between the two people and had a premonition of the deep upheavals to come: ‘Tout annonce que le réveil de ce peuple approche’. [8] He also noticed the enthusiasm with which some within the Lower Canadian elite had become ‘enlightened’ and deeply opposed to the ‘Anglais’. However, he noted that the hatred of the Canadians ‘se dirige plus encore contre le gouvernement que contre la race anglaise en général’.[9]

Tocqueville left America shortly after his Lower Canadian visit, but continued his enquiries into its government, culture and politics as he thought through what he had seen in America. He was in England in 1833 and again in 1835; in the latter year he also toured Ireland, still making notes and preparing the second volume of Democracy.[10] His appreciation of the simple morality and material comfort of the French Canadian peasantry contrasted sharply with his reactions to the moral degradation, loose sexual morality and widespread illegitimacy caused by the operation of the English Poor Laws and by the astonishing contrasts of wealth and misery in industrial Manchester. Tocqueville was also struck by the popular enthusiasm for schooling among the Irish Catholic peasant population, despite its miserable poverty, something that contrasted sharply with the indifference of the French-Canadian peasantry. He visited schools and in County Tuam had a long conversation with a priest who supported the English government’s new educational system, even though it excluded sectarian religious instruction from the schoolroom. This system, which liberals in England had promoted, but whose adoption there was blocked by sectarian struggles, was suggested both by the Gosford Commission and by the Durham Mission for Canada and it formed the basis of much of the Canadian school legislation in the 1840s. Wasn’t the priest worried about Protestant conversion, Tocqueville wondered? Education first, the priest argued, Ireland desperately needed education and, anyway, he got the children as soon as they came outside class.

The Whigs and Radicals whom Tocqueville visited and corresponded with in England were not limited to J.S. Mill and J.A. Roebuck, although Lower Canadian Patriote politicians might have profited from Tocqueville’s comments on the latter. As Lower Canadian politics dissolved into attrition over the Civil List and the question of an elective Legislative Council, the Patriote Parti’s analysis of the stance of the British government was said to be that of the Assembly’s agent, Roebuck.[11] While Tocqueville commented on Roebuck’s commitment to reform, and his respect for property and religion, he also noted his marginal social status and the fact that his political position depended on ‘continually keeping the people’s passions in motion.’ Those passions failed in the 1837 elections when he lost his seat in Bath and well before that he had only limited success in arousing much interest in Lower Canadian grievances in the Commons.

Tocqueville corresponded at length with the political economist Nassau Senior and Mill served as an intermediary between Tocqueville and Edward ‘Bear’ Ellice (although it seems they did not manage to meet when Ellice was in Paris).[12] Ellice was the seigneur of Beauharnois, south-west of Montreal, and for much of the 1820s and 1830s a leading voice in governing circles on Canadian questions. He was an intimate of Lord Durham and it was likely that Ellice’s urging convinced Durham to undertake his mission to Canada in the wake of the 1837 Rebellion. In Canada in 1836, Ellice was in frequent contact with Pierre-Dominique Debartzch, seigneur for St. Charles and through him with others disaffected with the radical politics of the Papineau faction. Ellice reported his meetings with Debartzch to Melbourne’s cabinet, discussing how best to manage Lower Canadian politics and urging the creation of a form of ministerial government with ‘a discreet division of the loaves and fishes’ to include the appointment of Louis-Joseph Papineau to the office of President of the Executive Council or as Attorney-General.

In a letter dated 3 January 1838, Tocqueville commented on the rebellions that occurred in Lower Canada the previous year. [13] With limited information about events, he limited his comments to general conclusions but seems to have understood the reasons behind the rebellions

À l’époque de mon passage, les Canadiens étaient pleins de préjugés contre les Anglais qui habitaient au milieu d’eux, mais ils semblaient singulièrement attachés au gouvernement anglais qu’ils regardaient comme un arbitre désintéressé placé entre eux et cette population anglaise qu`ils redoutaient.

However, Tocqueville appeared unaware of how the situation could have degenerated but that it was ‘peine à croire que l’administration coloniale n’a pas quelques reproches à se faire’.

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[1] Vallée, Jacques, Tocqueville au Bas-Canada, (Editions du Jour), 1973, pp. 86-88, 93-99.

[2] De Tocqueville, Alexis, Democracy in America, (Knopf), 1994, p. 430n.

[3] Ibid, Vallée, Jacques, Tocqueville au Bas-Canada, p. 100.

[4] Ibid, Vallée, Jacques, Tocqueville au Bas-Canada, p. 109.

[5] Ibid, Vallée, Jacques, Tocqueville au Bas-Canada, pp. 101-102.

[6] Ibid, Vallée, Jacques, Tocqueville au Bas-Canada, p. 114.

[7] Ibid, Vallée, Jacques, Tocqueville au Bas-Canada, p. 88.

[8] Ibid, Vallée, Jacques, Tocqueville au Bas-Canada, p. 101.

[9] Ibid, Vallée, Jacques, Tocqueville au Bas-Canada, p. 104.

[10] De Tocqueville, Alexis, Memoir on Pauperism, Paris, 1835, (Institute of Economic Affairs), 1998 and Mayer, J.P., (ed.), Journeys to England and Ireland, (Arno), 1987 provide Tocqueville’s reflections. Zemach, Ada, ‘Alexis de Tocqueville on England’, Review of Politics, Vol. 13, (3), (1951), pp. 329-343 and Welch, Cheryl B., (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Tocqueville, (Cambridge University Press), 2006 provide analysis.

[11] Knowles, E. C., The English Philosophical Radicals and Lower Canada, 1820-1830, London, 1929, provides the context. Thomas, William, The Philosophic Radicals: Nine Studies in Theory and Practice, 1817-1841, (Oxford University Press), 1979, is the best examination of this amorphous and highly ambiguous political ‘party’. See also Turner, Michael J., Independent Radicalism in Early Victorian Britain, (Praeger), 2004, pp. 207-215, and in his ‘Radical agitation and the Canada question in British politics, 1837-41’, Historical Research, Vol. 79, (2006), pp. 90-114.

[12] Colthart, James, ‘Edward Ellice’, DCB, Vol. 10, 1861-1800, 1976, pp. 233-239 is a useful study.

[13] Ibid, Vallée, Jacques, Tocqueville au Bas-Canada, p. 168-170.