Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-qlrfm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-11T16:17:51.014Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

On the uses of ‘apathy’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Get access

Abstract

Image of the first page of this content. For PDF version, please use the ‘Save PDF’ preceeding this image.'
Type
Notes Critiques
Copyright
Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1974

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

(1) , J. G. [John Gast?], in The Medusa: or Penny Politician, 3.07.1819Google Scholar.

(2) For example, John Pyer (1790–1859), the Tent Methodist, wrote in 1818: “When I contrast Mr. Wesley's journals with the present apathy of preachers and people I am pained exceedingly”. Russell, K. P., Memoirs of the Rev. J. Pyer (London 1865), p. 50Google Scholar, quoted in Currie, R., Methodism Divided: a study in the sociology of ecumenicalism (London 1968), p. 55Google Scholar; The Rev. C. Well-beloved complained in 1842 that, by 1834, the York Mechanics Institute had become engulfed in “a spirit of apathy”: quoted in Harrison, J. F. C., Learning and Living (London 1961), p. 71Google Scholar; O'Connor, Feargus wrote, in the Northern Star, 23. 04. 1842Google Scholar: “In the infancy of our agitation physical force language was absolutely necessary to arouse the people from their apathy”; Lord John Russell asserted in 1860: “The apathy of the country is undeniable. Nor is it a transient humour. It seems rather a confirmed habit of mind”. Walpole, Spencer, The Life of Lord John Russell (London 1891), II, p. 342Google Scholar.

(3) Hindess, Barry, The Decline of Working-Class Politics (London, Paladin, 1971), pp. 167168Google Scholar; see also Herkommer, Sebastian, Working-Class Political Consciousness, International Socialist Journal, II (1965) 7, p. 65Google Scholar.

(4) Harrison, Brian, Drink and the Victorians (London 1971), p. 26Google Scholar.

(5) For example, Allen, V.L., Power in Trade Unions (London 1954), pp. 45Google Scholar; Dubin, R., Industrial Workers' Worlds: a study of the central life interests of industrial workers, Social Problems, III (1956), 131142CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ID. Human Relations in Administration2 (New Jersey 1961), p. 79; Gold-thorpe, John, Lockwood, David, Bechofer, Frank, Platt, Jennifer, The Affluent Worker in the Class Structure (Cambridge 1971), pp. 9396Google Scholar; Erbe, W., Social Involvement and Political Activity: a replication and elaboration, American Sociological Review, XXIX (1964), 198215CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mayntz, R., Leisure, , Social Participation and Political Activity International Social Science Journal, XII (1960), pp. 561574Google Scholar; Blumberg, Paul, Industrial Democracy: the sociology of participation (London 1968), chap, v: “Alienation and Participation: a review of the literature”, pp. 70–122, and “The Participation Literature, a selected bibliography”, pp. 260–266Google Scholar.

(6) T. B. Bottomore, Social Stratification in Voluntary Associations, and Rosalind C. Chambers, A Study of Three Voluntary Organizations, in Glass, D. V.(ed.), Social Mobility in Britain (London 1954), pp. 379Google Scholar, 404; a list of references in Goldthorpe, , The Affluent Worker, op. cit., p. 93 n. 1Google Scholar; Lindquist, J. H., Socioeconomic Status and Political Participation, Western Political Quarterly, XVII (1964), 608614Google Scholar; Foskett, J. M., Social Structure and Social Participation, American Sociological Review, XX (1955), 431438CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Milbrath, L., Political Participation: how and why people get involved in politics (Chicago 1965)Google Scholar; Knupfer, G., Portrait of the Underdog, Public Opinion Quarterly, II (1947), 103114CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For examples from the context of British local politics, see Coates, K. and Silburn, R., Poverty, the forgotten Englishmen (London 1970)Google Scholar;Muchnick, D. M., Urban Renewal in Liverpool, Occasional papers on Social Administration, n. 33 (London 1970)Google Scholar; Davies, J. G., The Evangelistic Bureaucrat (London 1972)Google Scholar; Dennis, N., People and Planning (London 1970)Google Scholar, and Public Participation and Planners' Blight (London 1973). For these references, I am indebted to Dr. John DearloveGoogle Scholar.

(7) Hausknecht, M., The Joiners (New York 1962)Google Scholar.

(8) Hobsbawn, E. J., Economic Fluctuations and some Social Movements since 1800, in Labouring Men (London 1964), pp. 126157. This article deals with movements, or in the author's terminology ‘explosions’, up to c. 1911Google Scholar.

(9) Harrison, J. F. C., The Early Victorians 1832–1851 (London 1971)Google Scholar.

(10) For example, in historical writing, see Church, R. A. and Chapman, S. D. quoted in Thompson, E. P., The Making the English Working Class (London, Penguin, 1968), p. 934Google Scholar; Brown, E. H. Phelps, The Growth of British Industrial Relations (London 1959), p. 62Google Scholar; Deutscher, Isaac, The Prophet Armed, Trotsky: 1879–1921 2 (Oxford 1970), pp. 449Google Scholar, 455. For examples of political scientists assuming that low polls indicate satisfaction, see Wilson, , The inactive electorate and social revolution, South Western Social Science Quarterly, XVI (1936), p. 76Google Scholar; Lipset, S. M., Political Man (New York 1960), p. 217Google Scholar. For examples of explanations of political participation in utilitarian ways, and corresponding assumptions that non-participation indicates satisfaction with affairs at local government level, see references in Dearlove, John, The Control of Change and the Regulation of Community Action, in The Association of Community Workers Yearbook (London 1973), n. 31Google Scholar.

(11) Rose, Arnold M., Theory and Method in the Social Sciences (Minneapolis 1954), p. 67Google Scholar.

(12) Escott, T. H. S., England its People Polity and Pursuits (London 1879), II, p. 267Google Scholar; Masterman, C. F. G., The Condition of England (London 1909), pp. 261277Google Scholar; Herberg, Will, Protestant Catholic Jew 2 (New York 1960), pp. 260261Google Scholar. For the converse—“some researchers, particularly those in America, have discovered that the people who go to church more regularly have less strong religious beliefs” —see Robertson, Roland, A Sociological Portrait: Religion, New Society, 6.01.1972Google Scholar.

(13) Riesman, David and Glazer, Nathan, Criteria for Political Apathy, in Gouldner, Alvin W. (ed.), Studies in Leadership: leadership and democratic action (New York 1950), p. 535Google Scholar.

(14) For examples of social scientists worried about their own assumptions in relation to non-participation, see Cleveland, Harlan and Lasswell, Harold D. (eds), Ethics and Bigness; scientific academic religious political and military (New York 1962)Google Scholar, especially Stokes, Donald, Popular Evaluations of Government: an empirica assessment, pp. 6181Google Scholar; Rokkan, Stein, Approaches to the Study of Political Participation, Acta Sociologica, VI (1962), p. 14Google Scholar. For the complexities of the real attitudes behind labels like ‘apathy’ or ‘alienation’ and for suggestions that they are positive as well as negative, see Barry Hindess, op. cit. (n. 3); Mann, Michel, Consciousness and Action Among the Western Working Class (London 1973), p. 301CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Litt, Edgar, Political Cynicism and Political Futility, Journal of Politics, XXV (1963), 312363CrossRefGoogle Scholar; G. Knupfer, loc. cit. (n. 6); Agger, R., Goldstein, M., Pearl, S., Political Cynicism: measurement and meaning, Journal of Politics, XXIII (1961), pp. 477506CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Reynolds, S. and Woolley, T., Seems So: a working class view of politics (London 1911)Google Scholar. For a romantic view, useful as a corrective, see Read, Herbert, The Politics of the Unpolitical (London 1943), p. 12Google Scholar.

(15) Lenin, V. I., Left-Wing Communism and infantile disorder [1920] (New York, International Publishers, 1940), pp. 7475Google Scholar.

(16) Rutherford, M., The Revolution in Tanners Lane [1887] (Oxford 1936), p. 73Google Scholar.

(17) Yeo, Stephen, Religion in Society: view from a provincial town in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries [unpublished D. Phil, thesis] (University of Sussex 1971)Google Scholar.

(18) Reading Cooperative Record, February–March, 1903; June, 1904. For other complaints of apathy see the following: Reading Football Club, Berkshire Chronicle, 14.04.1900Google Scholar; Reading Y.M.C.A., Executive Committe Minutes, 31.03.1910Google Scholar, 21.3.1910; Reading W.E.A., Berkshire Chronicle, 8-10-1904Google Scholar; Reading S.D.F., Berkshire Chronicle, 23.01.1897Google Scholar; A Congregationalist minister Shepherd, Ambrose, The Gospel and Social Questions (London 1902), p. 17Google Scholar.

(19) Gouldner, Alvin W. (ed.), Studies in Leadership, op. cit. (n. 13), p. 479Google Scholar.

(20) Graeme Duncan and Steven Lukes, The New Democracy; Lane Davis, The Cost of Realism: contemporary restatements of democracy; Jack L. Walker, A Critique of the Elitist Theory of Democracy; all reprinted in Charles A. McCoy and John Playford (eds), A-political Politics: a critique of behaviouralism (New York 1967), pp. 160–220. See also Moore, Barrington Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy 2 (Boston, Beacon, 1967), pp. 485487Google Scholar.

(21) Milbrath, Lester, op. cit. (n. 6), p. 152Google Scholar.

(22) Davis, Lane, The Cost of Realism, op. cit. pp. 186, 189Google Scholar.

(23) Sydney, and Webb, Beatrice, Industrial Democracy (London 1897), Part IGoogle Scholar.

(24) Bowley, A. L. and Hurst, A. R. Burnett, Livelihood and Poverty (London 1915)Google Scholar. Using a “new standard” of poverty as well as that of Rowntrre, S. in his Poverty: a study of town life (London 1901)Google Scholar, this survey concluded that more than one in four of the working class was living in 1912 in a state of primary poverty. The results of the survey were to the authors ‘shocking’, and not due to short time, unemployment, national economic fluctuations or to the weather. They were “not intermittent but permanent, not accidental or due to exceptional misfortune, but a regular feature of the industries of the town concerned”. The average wage for a full week's work by a man over twenty in Reading in 1912 was 24/6: in York in 1899 it was 26/6. Between the two surveys wages had risen nationally by c. 10%.

(25) A situation suggested, interestingly enough, by a classic liberal advocate of participatory democracy like Lynd, Robert, in Knowledge for What? the place of social science in American culture (Princeton 1939), pp. 8283, 86–87, 216–217, 238–239, he advocated mass voluntarism, deplored its absence in the U.S.A., admired the ‘activism’ of the U.S.S.R., and, having said that “some such fundamentally sound selective and organizational program of social activism will have to be adopted and pushed for all it is worth” stated that “whether such a program can be developed within the divisive dynamics of private capitalism is another question”Google Scholar.

(26) Thomas, Keith, Religion and the Decline of Magic (London 1971), p. 165; the whole of chap, vi, “Religion and the people”, pp. 151–173, is important for suggesting the role of changing expectations and perceptions of other people's religious behaviour, in a situation where “we do not know enough about the religious beliefs and practices of our remote ancestors to be certain of the extent to which religious faith and practice have actually declined”Google Scholar.

(27) In, for example, Lynd, Robert, Knowledge for What? op. cit., p. 217Google Scholar; Rose, Arnold, The Problem of a Mass Society, in Theory and Method in the Social Sciences (Minneapolis 1954), chap, ii, “The Problem of a Mass Society”Google Scholar.

(28) Tingsten, H., Political Behaviour: studies in election statistics (London 1937), p. 225Google Scholar; Lipset, S. M., op. cit. (n. ii), pp. 218219Google Scholar; Duncan, Graeme and Lukes, Steven, op. cit. pp. 179180Google Scholar.

(29) Quoted and discussed in Herkommer, Sebastian, Working Class Political Consciousness, International Socialist Journal, II (1965) 7, p. 70Google Scholar, and in Duncan, and Lukes, , op. cit. p. 180 n. 43Google Scholar.

(30) R. A. Dahl, Hierarchy, Democracy and Bargaining in Politics and Economics, in Eulau, H., Eldersveld, J., Janowitz, M. (eds), Political Behaviour: a reader in theory and research (Glencoe 1956), p. 87Google Scholar.

(31) Bernard Barber, Participation and Mass Apathy in Associations, in Gouldner, Alvin W., op. cit. (n. 19), pp. 477478Google Scholar.

(32) Morris-Jones, W. H., In Defence of Apathy, Political Studies, II (1954), p. 37Google Scholar.

(33) Pollard, A. F., The Evolution of Parliament (London 1926). I owe this reference and the references in notes 46, 75–77 and 89 to Brian SalterGoogle Scholar.

(34) Mills, C. Wright, Letter to the New Left, New Left Review, V (1960). p. 18Google Scholar.

(35) MacIntyre, Alastair, Breaking the Chains of Reason, in Thompson, E. P. (ed.), Out of Apathy (London 1960), p. 198Google Scholar.

(36) George White to Mark Norman, 2–10–1849, in , F. G. and Black, R. M. (eds), The Harney Papers (Assem 1969), p. 86Google Scholar.

(37) The Clarion, 30.6.1894.

(38) Rev. Shepherd, Ambrose, op. cit. (n. 18), p. 17Google Scholar.

(39) Dahl, R., Who Governs? (New Haven 1961), p. 225Google Scholar.

(40) Wirth, Louis, Urbanism as a Way of Life, American Journal of Sociology, XLIV (1938), pp. 124CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Entries in Morley's Commonplace Book, quoted in Hamer, D. A., John Morley, Liberal Intellectual in Politics (Oxford 1968) Appendix, pp. 386389Google Scholar; Goldsen, R. K. et al. , What College Students Think (Princeton 1960), p. 199Google Scholar; Turner, H. A., Trade Union Growth, Structure and Policy (London 1962), p. 285Google Scholar; Gold-Stein, Joseph, The Government of British Trade Unions: a study of apathy and the democratic process in the transport and general workers' union (London 1952)Google Scholar; Ostergaard, G. N. and Halsey, A. H., Power in Cooperatives: a study of the internal politics of British retail societies (Oxford 1965)Google Scholar, chap. III, “The Problem of Apathy”, pp. 67–102; Banks, J. A. and Ostergaard, G. N., Cooperative Democracy, ap. Cooperative College Papers, no 2, 03, 1955Google Scholar.

(41) Bray, R. A., Labour and the Churches (London 1912), p. 33Google Scholar.

(42) Gerth, H. H. and Mills, C. Wright (eds), From Max Weber: essays in sociology (London 1948), pp. 226227Google Scholar.

(43) H. A. Turner, op. cit. (n. 40), argues that low attendance at branch meetings is a characteristic of ‘open’ rather than ‘closed’ unions. He provides (p. 292) a useful critique of size of organisation as a simple determinant of apathy.

(44) Harrison, Paul M., Authority and Power in the Free Church Tradition (Carbon-dale, Southern Illinois V.P., 1959). Formally one of the least centralised denominations in the United States, the book shows that it is in fact a highly bureaucratic organization with great power in the central leadership: “the effort […] to stabilise the process of organisational co-ordination results in the displacement of the original goals by the methods of bureaucratic procedure. Thus from a means the organisation becomes an end” (p. 136)Google Scholar.

(45) For a brilliant statement of this point in relation to parties, see Hoare, Q. and Smith, G. Nowell (eds), Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci (London 1971), pp. 150151Google Scholar; see also Lynd, R., op. cit. (n. 25), p. 217Google Scholar; Barber, B., loc. cit. (n. 31), p. 478Google Scholar; Walker, J. L., loc. cit. (n. 20), p. 209Google Scholar.

(46) Goldsen, R. K., op. cit. (n. 40), p. 199Google Scholar, compared to Brown, D. R., Student Stress and the Institutional Environment, Journal of Social Issues, III (1967) 23, pp. 92107CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

(47) A. M. Rose, op. cit. (n. 11): chap. II “The Problem of a Mass Society”, and III “A Theory of the Function of Voluntary Associations in Contemporary Social Structure” (pp. 25–71) point to the dangers of producing what he calls a passive ‘audience’ rather than an active ‘public’. These dangers arise from centralisation, the mass media, etc. But “the popular reaction to the audience may have dangers for society even more extreme than those created by the audience itself”. See also Ulf Himmelstrand and Donald Stokes in works cited above. A more hopeful view of the vulnerability of modern states is in Thompson's, E. P. contribution to Out of Apathy, op. cit. (n. 35), pp. 67Google Scholar.

(48) Gladstone, W. E., The County Franchise and Mr Lowe thereon, ap. The Nineteenth Century, 11, 1877, p. 542Google Scholar.

(49) Census of Great Britain 1851, Religious Worship, England and Wales, Report and Tables (London 1853), p. cliiGoogle Scholar. For another example of interacting prescription and description m the sphere of religious organisation, leading to organisational change (in this case, ecumenicalism) with effects produced as causes, see Currie, R., op. cit. (n. 2), pp. 195196Google Scholar:

Don't be anxious as to the reception the proposals for Union may have among the people […] (the Recorder declared in 1918) It is said among our own congregations that the people are not much interested or concerned”. This was unimportant. “For the generality there is in most high and spiritual movements little that stirs, or even touches the imagination […] why are leaders desirable save that they are necessary as an offset against the torpor of the average […] They ought to be interested, and it is our business to compel their interest.

(50) Michels, R., Political Parties (New York, Collier, 1962), pp. 8687Google Scholar.

(51) Evening Argus [Brighton], 19.1.1973.

(52) For frenetic writing of an intensity comparable to that of Carlyle's “Shooting Niagara”, see Dicey, A. V., Law and Public Opinion in England 2 (London 1914)Google Scholar Introduction, pp. 33–44. For a more considered argument for state social services but without ‘apathetic’ acceptance of them by the public, see Briggs, Asa, The Social Services, in Worswick, G. D. N. and Ady, P. H., The British Economy, 1945–1950 (Oxford 1952), p. 380Google Scholar; for a real attempt at theoretical reconciliation between an active state and an active citizenry, Hobhouse, L. T., Liberalism (London 1911)Google Scholar.

(53) For work on this, see Beveridge, W. H., Voluntary Action: a report on methods of social advance (London 1948)Google Scholar, and The Evidence for Voluntary Action (London 1949)Google Scholar. And Stephen Yeo, op. cit. (n. 17), chap, VI–IX.

(54) Taylor, A. J. P., English History 1914–1945 (Oxford 1965), on cinemas: pp. 315316Google Scholar, on radio: p. 307; McLuhan, Marshall, Understanding Media (London, Sphere, 1967)Google Scholar, on media which are ‘hot’ or ‘cool’ as regards active response: pp. 12–13. 17. 31–38, 73; Hall, Stuart, Political Commitment, in Bright, Laurence and Clements, Simon (eds), The Committed Church (London 1960), p. 13Google Scholar: “The spread in the systems of communication has led to an increased sense of remoteness among the majority of people from the decisions which affect their lives—the false community of the media appears to atomise the audience in the very process of massing it for effective penetration”. For effect of railways on attendance at Quaker business meetings, see Isichei, Elizabeth, Victorian Quakers (Oxford 1970), p. 75Google Scholar.

(55) DrGreen, Ernest, Adult Education: why this apathy? (London 1953), p. 130Google Scholar.

(56) Williams, Raymond, Communications (London, Penguin, 1968), p. 99Google Scholar.

(57) Hoggart, R., The Uses of Literacy (London 1957)Google Scholar.

(58) MacIntyre, Alastair, loc. cit. (n. 35), p. 198Google Scholar.

(59) Lazarsfeld, P. F. and Merton, R. K., Mass Communication, Popular Taste and Organized Social Action, in Schramm, W. (ed.), Mass Communications (Glencoe 1949), pp. 459480Google Scholar.

(60) George, W. L., Caliban (London 1920)Google Scholar, quoted by Ferris, Paul, in The Observer, 16.05.1971Google Scholar. This novel is an excellent document from the inside, of the commercial side of “New Grub Street”. Bulmer, Richard represents Harmsworth, Alfred. Gissing's, G.New Grub Street (London 1891) is a vivid interweaving of the themes of this and the next two paragraphsGoogle Scholar.

(61) Williams, Raymond, op. cit. (n. 56), p. 91Google Scholar.

(62) Wells, H. G., Experiment in Auto-biography (London 1934), pp. 327328Google Scholar.

(63) Young, G. M., Daylight and Champaign: essays (London 1948), p. 145Google Scholar.

(64) Tressall, R., The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists [1914] (London, Panther, 1965), p. 364Google Scholar.

(65) Ibid., pp. 542–543.

(66) Shaw, G. B., Fabian Tract n° 40, 1892Google Scholar Election Manifesto. For a classic expression of the moral interpretation of alienation, see Gaston's, R. Editor's Remarks in The Club World, 5.01.1895, p. 4Google Scholar.

(67) A strategic quote in this regard is in Rowntree, B. S., op. cit. (n. 24), pp. 133134Google Scholar. In a city (York) not thought to be exceptionally poor, in a year (1899) known to have been better than many, Rowntree included in his quantified study of poverty a qualitative description of the life of the 43.4% of the wage-earning class, or 27.84% of the total population, living around or below the “physical efficiency” level:

“A family living upon the scale allowed for in this estimate must never spend a penny on railway fare or omnibus. They must never go into the country unless they walk. They must never purchase a half-penny newspaper or spend a penny to buy a ticket for a popular concert. They must write no letter to absent children, for they cannot afford to pay the postage. They must never contribute anything to their church or chapel, or give any help to a neighbour which costs them money. They cannot save, nor can they join a sick club or Trade Union, because they cannot pay the necessary subscriptions. The children must have no pocket money for dolls, marbles or sweets. The father must smoke no tobacco and must drink no beer, The mother must never buy any pretty clothes for herself or for her children, the character of the family wardrobe as for the family diet being governed by the regulation: ‘Nothing must be bought but that which is absolutely necessary for the maintenance of physical health, and what must be bought must be of the plainest description’. Should a child fall ill, it must be attended by the parish doctor: should it die, it must be buried by the parish. Finally, the wage earner must never be absent from his work for a single day”.

(68) Walzer, Michael, The Revolution of the Saints: a study in the origins of radical politics 2 (New York, Atheneum, 1968), pp. 4Google Scholar,311; see also Lerner, Daniel, The Passing of Traditional Society (Glencoe 1958), pp. 57 sq.Google Scholar; for an interesting later association between lack of Protestantism and “indolent contentment”, see Carpenter, Mary, Reformatory Schools for the Children of the Perishing and Dangerous Classes and for Juvenile Offenders (London 1851), pp. 6871. Of the children of Irish families she wrote: “The worst parts of the national features are of course developed in them; indolent contentment with their condition however low, excitability, unstableness of purpose, and jealous yet blind attachment to the Catholic religion”Google Scholar.

(69) Green, , op. cit. (n. 55), p. 134Google Scholar.

(70) Rose, , Alienation and Participation: a comparison of group leaders and the ‘mass’, American Sociological Review, XXVII (1962), reprinted in C. A. Gibb (ed.), Leadership (London, Penguin, 1969), pp. 190–199Google Scholar.

(71) Tawney, R. H., Equality [1931] (London 1964), p. 128Google Scholar; see also Hardie, J. Keir, Can a Man be a Christian on a Pound a Week? 3 (London 1905), IIGoogle Scholar.

(72) London, Jack, The People of the Abyss [1903] (London, Fitzroy, 1962), p. 38Google Scholar.

(73) Marshall, Alfred, The Future of the Working Classes [1873], in Pigou, A. C. (ed.), Memorials of Alfred Marshall (London 1925)Google Scholar.

(74) Herkommer, , op. cit. (n. 29), p. 68Google Scholar, quoting Andrieux, A., Lignon, J., L'ouvrier d'aujourd'hui (Paris 1960), p. 189Google Scholar.

(75) Dahl, , op. cit. (n. 39), p. 225Google Scholar.

(76) McCloskey, H., Consensus and Ideology in American Politics, American Political Science Review, LVIII (1964), p. 374Google Scholar.

(77) Hogan, J., Election and Representation (Cork, U. P., 1945)Google Scholar; see also Morris-Jones, W. H., In Defence of Apathy, Political Studies, II (1954)Google Scholar; Di Palma, G., Apathy and Participation: mass politics in western societies (New York 1970)Google Scholar.

(78) Riesman, David, The Lonely Crowd (New Haven 1950), p. 187Google Scholar.

(79) A seminal work in this regard, developing a “social tension chart”, was Gayer, A. D., Rostow, W. W., Schwartz, A. J., The Growth and Fluctuations of the British Economy 1730–1850 (Oxford 1953)Google Scholar.

(80) The Life of Thomas Cooper Written by Himself (London 1872), p. 393Google Scholar.

(81) Harney, G. J. (ed.), Democratic Review of British and Foreign Politics, History and Literature (London 18491850), pp. 178179Google Scholar.

(82) Priestley, J. B., English Journey [1934] (London 1937), pp. 401405Google Scholar; for a starker view, see A Gentleman with a Duster, The Howling Mob (London 1927), pp. 38 sqqGoogle Scholar.

(83) According to Jackson, Holbrook, The Eighteen-Nineties (London 1913), p. 240Google Scholar, “the man in the street” is a phrase of the 1890's. Raymond Williams opened up this whole area of social history, see Culture and Society 1780–1950. (London, Penguin, 1961), pp. 16Google Scholar, 112, 168–169, 178–179, 287–304. One of the indices of the status of a term like ‘masses’ at different dates is when it ceases to be put in inverted commas. By the 1880's it is still occasionally used like that (e.g. Commonweal, 24.7.1886) but mostly it is by then sufficiently commonly used not to need the self-conscious stepping back from it which inverted commas imply. For interesting self-consciousness in the use of ‘masses’, see Kingsley, Charles, Alton Locke, Preface to the Under-graduates of Cambridge (London 1861)Google Scholar; or Hamilton, R. W., The Institutes of Popular Education (Leeds 1845), p. 8Google Scholar, quoted by Briggs, Asa in Martin, E. W. (ed.), Comparative Development in Social Welfare (London 1972), p. 10Google Scholar. For a recent discussion, see Wilkinson, Paul, Social Movement (London 1971), P. 13CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Rose, A. M., op. cit. (n. 27), “The Problem of a Mass Society”, p. 30 n. 9Google Scholar.

(84) The Porcupine, 13.1.1866, quoted in Simey, M. B., Charitable Effort in Liver-pool in the Nineteenth Century (Liverpool 1951). pp. 8182Google Scholar; Bax, E. B., The Ethics of Socialism (London 1902), p. 127Google Scholar; Macdonald, Ramsey, in Stewart, W., Hardie, J. Keir, a biography (London 1921)Google Scholar, Introduction; Engels, F., Engels-Lafargue Correspondence, I (Moscow 1959), p. 334Google Scholar, quoted in Jones, Gareth Stedman, Outcast London (Oxford 1971), p. 345Google Scholar; Leighton, Sir Baldwyn (ed.), Letters and Other Writings of the Late Edward Denison (London 1872), p. 49Google Scholar.

(85) Bax, E. B., Reminiscences and Reflections of a Mid to Late Victorian (London 1918), p. 126. This was a very different tone to the one he adopted in the period c. 1885–1895Google Scholar.

(86) Wallace, J. Bruce, Labour Leader, 14.12.1895Google Scholar.

(87) Webb, Beatrice, Our Partnership (London 1948), pp. 259260, diary entry 25.2.1903Google Scholar.

(88) Letter to W. P. Johnson, 24.4.1893, in Laurence, Dan H. (ed.), G. B. Shaw, collected letters 1874–1897 (London 1965), p. 389Google Scholar.

(89) Key, V. O., Public Opinion and American Democracy (New York 1961), p. 57Google Scholar; see also ID., Public Opinion and the Decay of Democracy, Virginia Quarterly Review, XXXVII (1961), pp. 493–494.

(90) Arnold, Mathew, Culture and Anarchy [1869] (Cambridge, Dover Wilson, 1966), p. 193Google Scholar.

(91) For examples of “the masses” and “the classes” used together, see Hardie, Keir in 1887, quoted in Reid, Fred, Keir Hardie's Conversion to Socialism, in Briggs, Asa and Saville, J. (eds), Essays in Labour History 1886–1923 (London 1971), p. 43Google Scholar; editorial on the Anglican church in Lewisham Gazette, 19.4.1895; Club Life, 18.2.1899, quoted in Price, R., The British Working Class and the Boer War [unpublished D. Phil. Thesis] (University of Sussex 1968), p. 128 n. 3Google Scholar.

(92) The Club World, 5. 01.1895, p. 4Google Scholar.

(93) “As I lay a-thynkynge”, in The Sunday Chronicle, 20.1.1889.

(94) George Gissing, op. cit. (n. 60); Morris, William, Lecture on “Art under Plutocracy”, 14.11.1883, in Collected Works (London 19101915), XXIII, p. 167168Google Scholar. See also Allen, Grant, The Wrongfulness of Riches, in Reid, Andrew (ed.), Vox Clamantium (London 1894), pp. 144145Google Scholar.

(95) For example Sturt, George, The Wheelwright's Shop (Cambridge 1923)Google Scholar.

(96) Williams, Raymond, The Country and the City (London 1973), pp. 154, 222Google Scholar.

(97) Moore, George, Confessions of a Young Man [1886] (London, Travellers' Library, 1929), pp. 100101, 216Google Scholar.

(98) Moseley, Henry, quoted in Johnson, R., Educational Policy and Social Control in Early Victorian England, Past and Present, XLIX (1970), p. 104Google Scholar.