The problem he faced with the education in schools. He dealt with this particular problem well by employing the education act of 1902. This act improved the education provided at secondary schools with weren’t up to the standard expected. He did this by abolishing the school boards and transferring responsibility for education provision to county and borough counties. Also church schools received funding. This was a good act because the government had control over where the money went to. This was almost a completely successful act created, the only down side was that it upset the nonconformists because they complained that the rates would be used by the Anglican (religious) schools
Another problem faced was one of having many unwanted pubs. He created the licensing act of 1904 to solve this. This act involved the closing of pubs in unwanted areas and also compensation for industry which lost their pubs. This was an unpopular act the common people because it meant they lost more money which went to industry. He didn’t deal successfully with this problem because the nonconformists were extremely unhappy at the money going to industry, with which he lost some more of their support.
The problem of Chinese slavery was poorly dealt with by Balfour because he didn’t really do anything to counter this problem. South Africa needed an economical boost post Boer war, so the British high commander Milner thought it would be a good idea to send the Chinese slaves across to them. Chamberlain blocked the idea at first in parliament, but wasn’t there the second time and it was passed. The public were shocked and appalled at the treatment of the Chinese slaves. Also they didn’t like the fact that it reduced the number of job opportunities for the white Brits because they were worried that the Chinese slaves were brought over to Britain. The combination of this with the Taff Vale and the Licensing gives the impression that the Tory’s love money and it is also easy to see why they lost the support of the working class. He didn’t deal successfully with the Chinese slaves because again he lost the support of the working class and those who thought what he was doing were humanly wrong.
The idea of tariff reform is to protect the home produced food and manufactured goods by putting duties on imports from abroad. Joseph Chamberlain and the Tariff reform was yet another problem faced by Balfour and his government. Chamberlain thought that tariff reform would win him popularity even tough all the claims were based on assertion rather then firm evidence. Chamberlain was an imperialist and wanted to help the empire. Before now Britain had free trade. Chamberlain wanted to keep trade so it would bring the empire closer together. This would also make it cheaper within the empire and bring prosperity to the empire. Britain relies on imports having lost agriculture. Free trade keeps prices low. Britain’s two largest competitors, U.S. and Germany had import taxes on British goods. Balfour’s government adopted Chamberlain’s imperial preferences policies as its official programme in 1903. However few conservatives were actually happy about this, so the idea was taken up with little enthusiasm. Balfour wasn’t successful in this issue as he didn’t really do anything towards solving this issue.
I don’t think Balfour was very successful in the way in which he treated these problems. He lost some support in all of the problems listed above, especially in the licensing act, the Taff vale case and the way in which he treated the Chinese slaves. In these instances he lost a lot of the support from the common people. Even in the education act which was a successful act he still managed to lose some support of the nonconformists because he was giving money to religious schools. The problem with the tariff reform and the Chinese slaves Balfour did little to help the problems as he didn’t really do anything for them. To sum up I don’t think Balfour did much to treat these problems successfully.