The Lost History of Liberalism: From Ancient Rome to the Twenty-First Century

by Helena Rosenblatt

Some liberals said that government programs to help the poor bred laziness. Raising wages or reforming conditions of work would not improve anything but just inhibit the development of the values and habits that workers needed to acquire. The problem, it was often said, was that workers were indolent and degenerate; they spent their money on alcohol and prostitutes rather than on their homes and families. Intervention by the state should therefore be avoided as much as possible. It would simply exacerbate the situation and might also encourage workers to think that they could demand aid as a right. The truth, moreover, is that the liberals in power did intervene in the economy, but it did so selectively and in ways that favored themselves and their class. They supported employers against workers, repeatedly sending out troops to suppress strikes and demonstrations. They imposed censorship on their critics, and persecuted and exiled political adversaries. They imposed taxes that hit the poor disproportionately hard and maintained a high tariff regime that favored wealthy producers and landowners. The only nominally social law passed by the July Monarchy was an 1841 prohibition on the labor of children under eight years of age and the employment of children younger than thirteen for nighttime work. The law, however, was routinely flouted.