Why did the Liberal government introduce a program of social reforms in 1906?

The terrible effects of poverty got much publicity towards the end of the 19th century. Charles Booth and Seebohm Rowntree set out to make people more sympathetic towards the poor. They carried out two studies: Booth in London and Rowntree in York. Booth got evidence from house-to-house enquires, school records, census returns and interviews who worked in his areas and wrote a series of books called “life and labour of the People in London.” he said that being poor was earning less than £1 a week to feed a family of five. He also said that poverty, sickness, old age, unemployment, large families and low wages where the reasons people were poor and they could do nothing about it. Rowntree’s findings were more or less the same as Booth even though London was a much bigger city than York. He also found out that at least 30% of the population were poor. Both studies suggested that the Poor Law was not good enough.

Many people began to be very worried about the effect the poverty was having on society. The poor were everywhere and it was thought that if nothing was done the poor my rise up in revolution against the government. David Lloyd George says “there are ten millions in this country enduring year after year the torture of living while lacking a sufficiency of the bare necessities in life.” He is trying to say that many people are to poor to afford the things we need in life like food,

clothes and maybe medicine. He says that England is to rich to let its people starve.

The Liberal government introduced a programme of social reform in 1906 because the British society had changed. The industrial revolution meant that most people now lived in towns and cities, and the urban poor were living in terrible conditions people could no longer ignore the terrible effects of poverty and the Liberal government responded to this new concern by the introduction of their social reform programme.