What were the values of 19th century liberalism?

[Destin]

Referring to Europe

[DivineInspiration]

Free stuff

[cray]

Nineteenth-century liberalism revolved largely around social issues - employment, health, poverty, etc.

As industrialization began to dominate the job market, with more people moving to cities for jobs rather than work agricultural jobs, the 'boom' of industry & personal & national economies allowed for great development & invention, but protections for workers lagged far behind. Having so many jobs situated in factories & mills, privately owned, but requiring great numbers of employees was a new situation, new in all of human history.

Factory owners & industrial investors, naturally as humans seem to do, thought themselves deserving of every penny of profit they could get - create products for as little $ as possible, then sell them for as much profit as possible. Part of the cost of production was wages for employees. Abysmal, inhuman conditions became the norm for those workers.

Child labor, 16 hour days, wages that did not provide enough for food & decent housing, much less any savings, physical abuse - all with no legal recourse or protection for workers. If one couldn't work, one starved, or went to a 'poor house' or 'work house' where the philosophy of charity was - don't give these starving people enough to actually live on or they will become dependent on charity & will only expect more & more. So the 'charity' side of society didn't help at all.

Liberalism grew out of those horrendous conditions, newly appearing during that time. The novels of Charles Dickens served to open the eyes of some people to the injustice. Other journalists, physicians, & social commentators worked to publicize the suffering & pain of the poor - including the 'working poor.' Later in the century, photographers also took on the cause.

It took the entire 19th century to push legislation through resistant governments that could do more than shallow lip service to the issues, but legal protections were achieved, piecemeal, throughout most of the western world, with the USA's reforms coming somewhat later.

In the UK, social reforms, long wanted by the liberal movement, arrived during the 1890s & up thru 1906 with the passage of legislation providing certain amounts of health care, wage guarantees, safety laws, limits on working hours, minimum age requirements for employment, schooling for children, & a pension program for elderly & disabled people.

While some called those reforms "socialism" and 'stealing from the rich,' it was discovered that employers & industry actually benefited, production increased, because workers were healthier, better educated (though not by today's standards), and safer on the job.