Next down the social ladder were the middle class. They earned around under £400 a year. They were usually doctors, business men or lawyers. They also lived comfortable lives even though they had to work. They usually lived in the suburbs in a large house and maybe had one or two domestic servants. They would spend weekends away with friends or in cottages shooting fishing etc and their holidays would be within the continent. The women usually helped charities or kept their social lives in-tact. The children would attend a grammar school and then enter the business world if they were male.
The working class would get around £50-100 a year. They lived in very small terraced houses cramped with lots of people. They worked around 10 hours a day from Monday to Friday and six and a half on Saturday. They had no holidays and small innutritious meals which meant they died younger. The children would go to work after school and stay in the factory most of their life.
The most popular jobs were domestic, agricultural and in the building trade. The women were the lowest paid of them all and most worked in the domestic service. The Daily Mail was the cheapest newspaper at ½ pence.
In those days, Britain was a parliamentary democracy but the House of Lords could block decisions made by the House of Commons. The system was unfair in that only a few people could vote. By 1906, all men with households could vote but the women couldn’t. There were two main parties, the liberals and the Conservatives. They were mostly supported by richer people. The conservatives believed in laissez faire, where they leave people to their own problems. The Conservatives believed that they should leave the rich people to get on with making Britain richer.
The Liberals believed in freedom of the individual and that you had to work hard if you wanted to be wealthy. This meant that the rich then looked down on the poor as they believed it was their own fault that they were poor and they deserved it.
Both classes showed interest in the rich and there was no party representing the poor until the labour party was introduced in 1900.
Until the late 19th century, the only successful unions were of those run by highly skilled and rich craftsmen who could afford to subscribe to unions for a long time. Their unions worked more successfully as they could make the whole factory come to a standstill if they went on strike. The other unions weren’t as successful as they could be replaced or couldn’t afford to strike. They had to fight individually. At the beginning of the 20th century the trade unions with many poor unskilled men and women began to get stronger and more powerful. They realised that fighting the employers was a waste of time. They could send members of the Parliament to argue the working mans case and change the laws. Then the independent labour party was formed with 3 members in 1893. The Labour party was then formed in 1900. Although they had more power, they couldn’t quite get everything they wanted. They still only had a few short holidays and the wages were still low. Old age pensions were introduced in 1908.
At that time, there was an industrial revolution. More things became invented which changed life for many people for the bad and the good. There used to be few rich and many poor but now everyone was being educated and factories workers didn’t have to put in as much effort at work due to machines.
In transport, the car became very popular for the rich man. Rich families competed on how good their cars were. By 1914, there were 132,000 cars in Britain. The aeroplane had also been invented. It wasn’t considered very useful until the war in 1914. It was never really thought as a means of transport for normal people then though. It was developed for military uses.
More people began to use the newly invented telephone within cities. With the wireless, more people began to use it and so did navies, business men etc. this speeded up business and news making life easier for many people.
The vacuum was both a good and a bad thing. It meant less work for maids as they didn’t have to beat the carpets all day. Irons and lighting also meant less work for maids. But this also meant that as there was less work to do, which meant fewer domestic servants were needed so many lost their jobs.
Entertainment became more popular for all classes. The gramophone was mainly used by only the upper classes but the cinema was available for all classes. Although there were different cinemas for different people, everyone could go and it lifted the souls of many poor people as it was something they could get involved in too.
So in the early 20th century, dramatic changes happened. By the end of the early 20th century, the world around people had become a whole different place in Britain.