To those who lived in the midst of this vast industrial system, or were a part of it, it seemed natural and inevitable that there should be rich and poor; and this belief was enforced on the one hand by the clergy, and on the other by political economists, so that religion and science agreed in upholding the competitive and capitalistic system of society as the only rational and possible one.  Hence it came to be believed that the true sphere of governmental action did not include the abolition of poverty.  It was even declared that poverty was due to economic causes over which governments had no power; that wages were kept down by the “iron law” of supply and demand; and that any attempt to find a remedy by Acts of Parliament only aggravated the disease.  During the Premiership of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman this attitude was, for the first time, changed.  On numerous occasions Sir Henry declared that he held it to be the duty of a government to deal with problems of unemployment and poverty.

In 1908 three great strikes, coming in rapid succession—­those of the Railway and other Transport Unions, the Miners, and the London Dock Labourers—­brought home to the middle and upper classes, and to the Government, how completely all are dependent on the “working classes.”  This and similar experiences showed us that when the organisation of the trade unions was more complete, and the accumulated funds of several years were devoted to this purpose, the bulk of the inhabitants of London, and of other great cities, could be made to suffer a degree of famine comparable with that of Paris when besieged by the German army in 1870.

Wallace’s watchword throughout these social agitations was “Equality of Opportunity for All,” and the ideal method by which he hoped to achieve this end was a system of industrial colonisation in our own country whereby all would have a fair, if not an absolutely equal, share in the benefits arising from the production of their own labour, whether physical or mental.[50]

With regard to the education of the people, especially as a stepping-stone to moral and intellectual reform, Wallace believed in the training of individual natural talent, rather than the present system of general education thrust upon every boy or girl regardless of their varying mental capacities.  He also urged that the building-up of the mind should be alternated with physical training in one or more useful trades, so that there might be, not only at the outset, but also in later life, a choice of occupation in order to avoid the excess of unemployment in any one direction.