6.9 - Institutional Responses and Reform

Evolution of Liberalism and Government-Led Reforms

• Laissez-Faire Principle: In the early 1800s, classical liberals, following Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations (1776), advocated a laissez-faire approach, meaning the government should stay out of economic matters and allow businesses to operate freely without interference.

• As urbanization led to significant problems like overcrowding and crime, people began demanding government intervention to address these issues.

• The shift from a laissez-faire approach to government intervention marked a new role for governments as the chief actors in social reform, responding to the complexities of growing capitalist societies.

• Why Liberals Changed: Government reports on slums, disease, and child labor showed that free markets alone were not solving these problems. John Stuart Mill accepted that government sometimes had to act for the common good, and later "New Liberals" argued that people could not be truly free if they were sick, uneducated, or desperately poor. As working men gained the vote (see 6.8), parties also had to offer them reforms.

• Social Welfare: Governments began to protect workers against sickness, injury, and old age. In Germany, the conservative Bismarck created health insurance (1883), accident insurance (1884), and old-age pensions (1889), partly to weaken support for the socialists. In Britain, the Liberal government elected in 1906 passed old-age pensions (1908) and the National Insurance Act (1911), which covered many workers for sickness and unemployment.

• Who Pushed for Reform: Governments acted because of public opinion (stirred up by cholera epidemics, newspaper reports, and novels like those of Charles Dickens), prominent individuals like Edwin Chadwick and Georges Haussmann, and charity organizations that exposed problems and lobbied for laws (see 6.8).

Examples of Government-Led Reforms:

• Public Health Reforms:
• Edwin Chadwick in Britain identified unsanitary living conditions as a major cause of disease among the poor.
• In his 1842 report on the sanitary condition of Britain's working population, Chadwick showed that people in poor city neighborhoods died much younger than the well-off, mostly from diseases spread by filth and dirty water. Deadly cholera epidemics in 1832 and 1848 added to the pressure.
• His findings led to Britain’s first Public Health legislation, which resulted in the construction of modern sanitary systems, including sewers and clean water systems.
• This was the Public Health Act of 1848, which created a national Board of Health and let towns set up local health boards to build drains, sewers, and water supplies. In 1854, Dr. John Snow traced a London cholera outbreak to one polluted water pump, showing that the disease spread through dirty water. After the "Great Stink" of 1858, when sewage in the River Thames made London's air unbearable, the engineer Joseph Bazalgette built a huge new sewer system for the city.
• These reforms were popular among the public and helped build trust in the government, reducing the likelihood of violent class struggles.
• Later laws went further. The Public Health Act of 1875, passed by Disraeli's Conservative government, required towns to provide sewers, clean water, and medical officers of health, showing that both major parties now accepted that government had a role in public health.

• Urban Planning Reforms:
• Napoleon III tasked Georges-Eugène Haussmann with transforming Paris by tearing down overcrowded areas and building a new, modern city.
• Haussmann widened boulevards, which not only created open spaces but also made it harder for revolutionaries to build barricades.
• He also built two massive public parks and installed sewers and aqueducts to reduce disease.
• Haussmann’s successful urban planning became a model for cities across Europe.
• Haussmann's rebuilding (1853-1870) also had costs: many poor Parisians were pushed out of the old city center to the edges of the city when their neighborhoods were torn down.

• Modernizing Infrastructure:
• Lighting: Gas street lamps spread through cities in the early 1800s, and electric lighting began to replace them in the 1880s, making streets safer at night.
• Public transportation: Horse-drawn buses, London's first underground railway (1863), and electric streetcars (1880s and 1890s) let workers live farther from crowded city centers.
• Public housing: Charities like the Peabody Trust (1862) built low-rent apartment blocks for workers, Britain's Artisans' Dwellings Act (1875) let city councils clear slums, and by the 1890s London's council had begun building housing itself.

• Development of Professional Police Forces:
• Due to the overcrowding in industrial cities, maintaining order required more than just a few local officers.
• In the mid-19th century, governments began training and hiring professional police forces to maintain peace and order.
• The model was London's Metropolitan Police, created in 1829 by Home Secretary Robert Peel (its officers were nicknamed "bobbies" or "peelers"). They wore uniforms, patrolled set routes called beats, and focused on preventing crime. By 1856, every county and town in England and Wales had to have a police force, and other European cities built similar forces.

• Prison System Reforms:
• Influenced by reformers like Elizabeth Fry in Britain, governments began to reform prisons.
• Fry, a Quaker, began visiting London's Newgate Prison in 1813 and was shocked to find women and children crowded together in filth. She organized schooling, sewing work, and Bible reading for women prisoners, and her work helped lead to Britain's Gaols Act of 1823, which called for women guards for women prisoners and regular visits by chaplains.
• Prisons were segregated by gender, and inmates were provided opportunities for education and employment.
• These reforms aimed to improve the conditions within prisons and were part of broader efforts to address social issues through government intervention.

Compulsory Education in Europe (1870-1914)

• Between 1870 and 1914, the majority of European governments passed compulsory education laws requiring boys and girls of elementary school age (roughly 6 to 12 or 13) to attend school.

• For example, Britain's Education Act of 1870 set up local school boards to build schools where churches had not, attendance became compulsory in 1880, and elementary school became free in 1891. In France, the Jules Ferry laws (1881-1882) made primary school free, compulsory for ages 6 to 13, and secular (run by the state instead of the Catholic Church). Prussia had required schooling much earlier, in the 1700s.

• These laws were implemented for three primary reasons:

• With increasing laws prohibiting child labor, many children were left without work and had more idle time, which could lead to disorder.

• Compulsory education served as a means to keep children occupied and maintain public order by providing structured activities in a school setting.

• Schools were seen as ideal environments to instill nationalism in young people.

• By ensuring that all children learned the same language and history, governments aimed to create a more integrated and patriotic population.

• In France, for example, teachers taught every child standard French instead of regional languages like Breton, and lessons stressed patriotic history after the loss of Alsace-Lorraine to Germany in 1871.

• The Second Industrial Revolution brought about more technical and specialized jobs.

• Compulsory education prepared students for these roles by providing them with the necessary knowledge and skills to succeed in the evolving job market.

• Literacy rose sharply. By 1900, most adults in western and northern Europe could read, while literacy stayed much lower in southern and eastern Europe.

• Kindergartens in Germany:
• The concept of kindergarten was developed by Friedrich Froebel, a German reformer who believed that very young children should be educated primarily through play.
• Kindergartens offered opportunities for children to build with geometric blocks and engage in play-based activities, laying the foundation for their future education.
• After the Revolutions of 1848 failed, the conservative Prussian government banned kindergartens in 1851, calling them atheistic and dangerous, and the ban lasted about a decade. By then, the idea had already spread to other European states, where it was successfully implemented.