Problems of Poverty: An Inquiry Into the Industrial Condition of the Poor - Softcover

Hobson, John Atkinson

9781444405590: Problems of Poverty: An Inquiry Into the Industrial Condition of the Poor

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1444405594 ISBN 13: 9781444405590

Publisher: Aeterna, 2026

View all copies of this ISBN edition

0 Used

1 New

From � 14.91

In Problems of Poverty, John Atkinson Hobson examines the human cost of modern industrial life with the urgency of a reformer and the precision of an economist. Looking beyond sentimental charity, he asks what poverty is, how it can be measured, and why so many workers remain insecure in an age of expanding production. Drawing on investigations into working-class life, Hobson explores the forces pressing hardest on the poor: machinery, overcrowded cities, casual labour, low-skilled competition, women’s industrial work, and the notorious sweating system. He shows how poverty is not merely a personal failure, but a structural condition shaped by wages, housing, employment, population movement, and the unequal power of employers and labourers. Clear, searching, and morally engaged, this study challenges readers to face the social consequences of industrial capitalism. Hobson weighs proposed remedies, including legislation, reform, and socialist measures, without reducing poverty to a single cause or easy cure. For students of economics, labour history, social reform, and Victorian Britain, Problems of Poverty remains a compelling inquiry into the conditions beneath prosperity: the hidden workshops, unstable wages, cramped homes, and public choices that determine whether progress serves society, or leaves the poor behind in every generation and every city.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.