If Elizabeth Bentley and the unemployed weavers of Coventry might be forgiven for not appreciating the wonders of industrialization, many in the growing middle classes of nineteenth-century Europe certainly did. Perhaps the most prominent expression of middle-class values and aspirations came from Samuel Smiles (1812–1904), a Scottish writer and businessman, whose best-selling book Self-Help extolled individual effort, discipline, morality, and hard work as a guaranteed path to personal success. In a subsequent work titled Thrift, he sought to explain the paradox of industrial wealth and widespread poverty.

SAMUEL SMILES

Thrift

1875

England is one of the richest countries in the world. Our merchants are enterprising, our manufacturers are industrious, our labourers are hard-working. There is an accumulation of wealth in the country to which past times can offer no parallel. The Bank is gorged with gold. There never was more food in the empire; there never was more money. There is no end to our manufacturing productions, for the steam-engine never tires. And yet notwithstanding all this wealth, there is an enormous mass of poverty. Close alongside the Wealth of Nations [a famous book by Adam Smith in 1776], there gloomily stalks the Misery of Nations,—luxurious ease resting upon a dark background of wretchedness.

Parliamentary reports have again and again revealed to us the miseries endured by certain portions of our working population. They have described the people employed in factories, workshops, mines, and brickfields, as well as in the pursuits of country life. We have tried to grapple with the evils of their condition by legislation, but it seems to mock us. . . . Thus the Haves and the Have-nots, the opulent and the indigent, stand at the two extremes of the social scale, and a wide gulf is fixed between them.

Much of the existing misery is caused by selfishness—by the greed to accumulate wealth on the one hand, and by improvidence on the other. . . . High profits are regarded as the summum bonum [highest good]—no matter how obtained, or at what sacrifice. Money is our god. . . . With respect to the poorer classes,—what has become of them in the midst of our so-called civilization? An immense proportion of them remain entirely uncivilized. Though living in a Christian country, Christianity has never reached them. . . . They work, eat, drink, and sleep: that constitutes their life. They think nothing of providing for to-morrow, or for next week, or for next year. . . . In these respects, they resemble the savage tribes, who know no better, and do no worse. Like the North American Indians, they debase themselves by the vices which accompany civilization, but make no use whatever of its benefits and advantages.

Hence, the skilled workman, unless trained in good habits, may exhibit no higher a life than that of the mere animal; and the earning of increased wages will only furnish him with increased means for indulging in the gratification of his grosser appetites. . . . This habitual improvidence—though of course there are many admirable exceptions—is the real cause of the social degradation of the artisan. . . . But the misery is entirely the result of human ignorance and self-indulgence. . . . Misery is the result of moral causes, most commonly of individual vice and improvidence. . . . Everything that is wrong in Society results from that which is wrong in the Individual. When men are bad, society is bad. . . . [I]t is perfectly clear that people who live from day to day without plan, without rule, without forethought—who spend all their earnings, without saving anything for the future—are preparing beforehand for inevitable distress. . . . What hope can there be for a people whose only maxim seems to be, “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die”?

All this may seem very hopeless; yet it is not entirely so. The large earnings of the working classes is an important point to start with. The gradual diffusion of education will help them to use, and not abuse, their means of comfortable living. The more extended knowledge of the uses of economy, frugality, and thrift will help them to spend their lives more soberly, virtuously, and religiously. . . . Surely it ought not to be so difficult to put an end to the Satanic influences of thriftlessness, drunkenness, and improvidence!