A medical doctor, journalist, and railroad official, Samuel Smiles exemplified middle-class liberal atti; tudes that justified the position of that group in society. In books such as Self-Help (1860), liberals such as Smiles claimed that the poverty and oppression of the working classes were their own fault. Here Smiles explains that the work ethic was a fundamental basis of English success during the age of industrialization.

Indeed, all experience serves to prove that the worth and strength of a State depend far less upon the form of its institutions than upon the character of its men. For the nation is only an aggregate of individual conditions, and civilization itself is but a question of personal improvement of the men, women, and children upon whom society is composed.

National progress is the sum of individual industry, energy, and uprightness, as national decay...