Methods of social study / by Sidney and Beatrice Webb.

  • Sidney Webb
Date:
1932
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Methods of social study / by Sidney and Beatrice Webb. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    49/284 (page 37)
    Impelled by intellectual curiosity, and uneasy in conscience at being one of a small minority of wealthy and leisured persons in the midst of a com¬ munity of workers obviously suffering from insuf¬ ficiency and irregularity of livelihood, she was im¬ pelled to test by enquiry the validity of the economic creed in which she had been reared. She honestly wanted to know whether freedom of competition and freedom of contract, with a minimum of state and municipal activity, did or did not lead to the greatest possible production of wealth for the world, and, therefore, to the fullest subsistence for the whole aggregate of people that the world’s condi¬ tions allowed. The relevant facts seemed to lie all around her. There were reports of directors and managers as to the ruinous effects of strikes; de¬ tailed complaints by foremen about short-sighted restrictions upon apprenticeship or limitations on output; innumerable articles in newspapers describ¬ ing the mischievous effects of the excessive cost of production resulting from high rates and taxes spent on public services, or of the clumsy build¬ ing byelaws and sanitary regulations of the local authorities, or of the foolish protective tariffs of the United States, or those then newly adopted by the German Empire. And were there not, on the other hand, the life-histories of vagrants and chronic paupers collected by the devoted workers of the Charity Organisation Society, not to mention the lurid account of the “National Workshops” of the Paris of 1848, to prove that any attempt to make up