ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses certain vital statistics about the rank and file Volunteers: the occupations of the members of the Force, their age and length of service, and their geographical spread. On analysing occupations it will be shown, first, that a high and increasing proportion of the Volunteer was working-class, and, second, that the working-class component of the Force became less exclusively upper working-class as time went on. Figures for Volunteer recruitment into the Regular Army, Militia, or from 1908 Special Reserve, which are available from the end of the century give support to the view that there was a progressive convergence in the social composition of the various sections of the armed forced. An increasing proportion of that working-class membership, eventually about a quarter of the whole Force, was composed of unskilled workers. Quite contrary to the expectations of the founders of the Force, the middle class drifted away from it, while the working class consolidated its numerical preponderance.
