ABSTRACT
N o generalisations are more unsafe than those relating tosocial classes. The wide diversity of organisation in Englishagriculture and manufacture was matched by a similar diversity in the conditions and attitudes of the workers. Many of the writers of treatises and pamphlets tended to ignore these differences: they were obsessed with the problem of the paupers, and, since in an age of economic fluctuation independent workers were liable to fall into poverty, there was a tendency to identify them with that sub-stratum of the population which was rarely, if ever, regularly employed. The insecurity of the standard of life of the wage-earner was attributed not to faulty social or economic arrangements, but to defects of personal character.
