ABSTRACT
The trend towards state Socialism and the decline of business confidence in the late-Victorian years both stimulated and sprang from the many-sided attacks on the whole philosophy and structure of the society which had emerged as a result of a century’s devotion to industrialization and material progress. Although there had been much criticism of the evolving
industrial society right from its beginnings, its effects had been overborne by the confident general belief in the almost inexorable progress of ‘improvement’ in the middle of the century. Dickens had criticized through ridicule and verbal caricature; in Heroes and Hero-Worship Carlyle declaimed,
But once he had extended his dislike of industrial society to include the newly-enfranchised masses after 1867 and had taken refuge in glorifying the Hero he no longer had much to contribute: in the end Carlyle offered not so much Old Testament prophecy as a synthesis of Samuel Smiles with Mein Kampf.
