ABSTRACT
In historiography, Seebohm Rowntree’s 1901 text Poverty marks the point of arrival at the modern social problem of Poverty and its associated collectivist solutions. This chapter considers a characteristic pattern of restriction of reference in Poverty and in some of Rowntree’s other texts, including his second Poverty survey. Historians unanimously praise Rowntree’s first York social survey whose results were summarised in Poverty, published in 1901. The point can be illustrated by considering the example of Poverty deprecation of lower-class culture and moral tone of working-class life. The problems multiplied when it came to non-food expenditure. Poverty was unable to specify any natural minima, and for all non-food expenditure, the text simply made wildly variable concessions to culture. Historiography has always assumed that minimum expenditure calculation first appeared in Seebohm Rowntree’s 1901 text Poverty. Poverty constantly insisted that only necessities were included, and ‘no allowance is made for any expenditure other than that absolutely required for maintenance of merely physical efficiency’.
