ABSTRACT
The oddity of the marriage of 1912 is most clearly hinted at in two of the three major institutional histories of the Charity Organisation Society (COS). Members of the COS were to the forefront of the new interest in both theoretical and applied social sciences. COS comment on the publications of the Ratan Tata foundation ranged from cautious approval to frank hostility, and nicely illuminated some of the differences of principle between the two groups. The Webbs themselves however seem to much more ‘idealist’ in perspective than is often supposed. This was particularly true of Beatrice's private diaries, which were full of half-formulated hankerings for a social philosophy of the kind articulated by Urwick. Both Urwick and Tawney served an apprenticeship with the COS and both of them moved away from a strict COS perspective - Urwick gradually merging this perspective with progressive liberalism, Tawney making a more dramatic break by becoming a socialist.
