Introduction

The outbreak of the Great War powerfully disrupted the domestic life of millions of urban residents. The mobilization during the first months of the war of 30 per cent of the male labour force in Paris and 28 per cent in Berlin, and the voluntary enlistment of 15 per cent of London workers, reduced household income because men's work was the principal source of family income in all three cities. When social policy considered family welfare at the turn of the century, the need to fit male incomes to family needs was a widely held assumption. The war made this a matter of urgent necessity. In Paris, the scale of the employment crisis, the very slow restructuring of the labour market and the persistence of high levels of unemployment all weighed particularly heavily on domestic life. Later the unprecedented rise in the cost of living, the difficulty of finding basic provisions in all three capital cities – but especially in Berlin – made the redirection of income to family needs a prime factor in the management of the war on the home front.

The reshaping of the labour market in these three cities, with an increase in the number and a change in the deployment of women workers, as well as the introduction of wages policies, had profound implications for the urban population. This chapter surveys the essential part in the maintenance of household incomes played by redistributive social policies.