ABSTRACT
During the early twentieth century Britain was approaching the end of a ‘demographic transition’ from the high birth and death rates typical of pre-industrial society to the modern situation of low birth and death rates and relatively slow population growth. One of the major problems facing British society was to make urban and industrial life for the masses more acceptable. In 1914 British society was dominated numerically by manual workers and their families who made up about 75 per cent of the population covering a wide range from farm workers at the bottom end of the earnings range to skilled industrial workers at the top. Social stratification and inequality have been major themes in history and social science. The traditional approaches or ‘explanations’ of social organisation and change fall essentially into two categories: functionalist and Marxist, based on notions of conflicting material interests between different classes or social groupings.
