Compare The Changing Attitudes Of The State From 1906 To 1914

The lack of military efficiency on the battlefield and the physical inadequacies of the male populace revealed the situation that an industrialised, non-interventionist state had created. Britain had nothing that could contend with Germany’s exemplary army, Bismarkian network of social insurance which consisted of compulsory sickness and accident insurance and old age pensions, or the well organised educational system. Germany’s newly found economic, military and industrial dominance, provided the British government with evidence that state intervention had great benefits in establishing an efficient nation and this changed the attitude of the state towards the poor rapidly. Between 1906 and 1914 the Liberal Government introduced a large number of reforms to try to reduce poverty: compensation for workers who suffered from injuries that took place in the workplace was introduced in 1906; medical tests for students at schools with free treatment provided if necessary was introduced in 1907; non-contributory pensions for the elderly in 1908 and in 1911, the government introduced the National Insurance Act that provided contributory insurance for workers in time of sickness and unemployment benefit in certain industries
The other way you can measure the attitudes of the state towards the poor is to measure the changing attitudes of the state towards the rich. In order to fund this social reform, the Liberals placed a higher taxation rate on the rich. This is significantly different from 1834 when the ‘less eligibility’ principle decreased the poor rate for landowners who saw it to be burdensome prior to the New Poor Law. The poor were no longer being penalised on account of appeasing the richer