Canon Green, whom I
am going to quote because of his great experience among the working
class populations in various circumstances and over many years in
Manchester and elsewhere. This is what Canon Green writes:
They (the working classes) do not see why their hours should be so
long, and their wages so small, their lives so dull and colourless,
and their opportunities of reasonable rest and recreation so few.
Can we wonder that with growing education and intelligence the
workers of England are beginning to contrast their lot with that of
the rich and to ask whether so great inequalities are necessary?
There I believe you have put in the plainest and gentlest terms the
working of the working class mind as it is to-day. The country has given
them more opportunities of education. When they were less educated, or,
if I may say so, more ignorant than they are now, they were naturally
more submissive and content with conditions the cause of which they so
little understood. You cannot send the children of the poor to school,
and improve your State agencies for education, and increase the millions
annually which the country is ready to spend in teaching the masses of
the people more than they knew before, and expect those masses to remain
content with the economic and social conditions which even disturbed
their more ignorant fathers.
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