ECS3705-Study-unit-3 notes

ECS3705-Study-unit-3 Chapter 6, 7 & 8: Chapter 6 1. Malthus on the Poor Laws Malthus believed poverty and misery are natural punishments for the failure by the “lower classes” to restrain their reproduction. He felt that there must be no government relief for the poor. He believed that by giving them aid would cause more children to survive thus ultimately worsening the problem of hunger. Some of his ideas were adopted into the Poor Laws. This law abolished all relief for ablebodied people outside workhouses. A man applying for the relief had to pawn all his possessions and then enter a workhouse before assistance was granted; his family either entered a workhouse or was sent to work in the cotton mills. Either way, the family was broken up and treated harshly to discourage it from becoming a public charge. These workhouses were invested with a social stigma and entering them can at a high physiological cost. The law aimed at making public assistance so unbearable that most people would rather starve quietly than submit to its indignities.