Urban poverty is bad ... rural poverty is worse ... importing cheap wheat & wool destroys traditional agriculture in the 1880s ... those living in the country are FORCED to migrate to the city ... by 1901 men working on farms drops by 1/3
Farms in southern England ... they join work gangs led by a task-master
women give children opium so they will not make noise as they work in the fields
The working class was continually shut out of the political process ... education opportunity = slim
Those of children and children's children's of European immigrants look with suspicion on those that say ...
• do not get a college education when it is in your grasp
• do not vote
• voting is a choice of the "lesser of two evils"
... some may not know why they resist these notions so strongly ... but I would suggest a portion of it stems from this timeframe
there is NO DESIRE to make a return to a living standard worse than the serfs under folks that wear a cloak of Christianity
~ from the notes of Lady Victorian Historian