ABSTRACT
But what was the reality underlying the ideal of mid-Victorian society? Was it quite so progressive and prosperous as it has been painted? Or were there already signs of a slackening of industrial growth and technological innovation? Was it, as its champions believed, the best possible society not merely for increasing wealth but for sharing it out more equally between the classes? Or were the rich becoming richer and the poor, if not absolutely, then relatively poorer? Was poverty a relatively minor problem to be solved by individual exertion, or was it a massive one involving a substantial fraction of the population? If upward mobility was the chief compensation for poverty and inequality, how much of it was there, and was it expanding or contracting? If the answers to these questions prove unsatisfactory, then the tensions between ideal and reality were undermining the stability of entrepreneurial society and storing up trouble for the future.
