Benjamin
Seebohm Rowntree
was born in York on 7th July, 1871. He was
the third child of Joseph Rowntree and
Emma Seebohm. He was educated at the York Quaker Boarding School and
Owen College, Manchester.
In 1897 Rowntree was appointed as a director of his father's successful
business in York. Like his father, Seebohm believed it was his duty
to help the poor and disadvantaged. On Sundays he taught at the York
Adult School. He also visited the homes of his students and obtained
first-hand knowledge of their problems.
In the 1860s Joseph
Rowntree, had carried out two major surveys into poverty in Britain.
Inspired by his father's work and the study by Charles
Booth, Life
and Labour of the People in London
(1889), Seebohm Rowntree decided
to carry out his own investigations into poverty in York.
Rowntree spent two years on the project and the results of his study,
Poverty, A Study
of Town Life, was published
in 1901.
In his study, Rowntree distinguished between families suffering from
primary and secondary poverty. Primary poverty, he argued, was where
the family lacked the earnings sufficient to obtain even the minimum
necessities, whereas families suffering from secondary poverty, had
earnings that were sufficient, but were spending some of that money
on other things. Whereas some of these were "useful", others,
like spending on alcohol, was "wasteful".
Rowntree's study provided a wealth of statistical data on wages, hours
of work, nutritional needs, food consumed, health and housing. The
book illustrated the failings of the capitalist system and argued
that new measures were needed to overcome the problems of unemployment,
old-age and ill-health.
Rowntree, a strong supporter of the Liberal
Party, hoped that the conclusions that he had drawn from his study
would be adopted as party policy. David Lloyd
George, President of the Board of Trade, met Rowntree in 1907
and the two became close friends. The following year Lloyd George
became Chancellor of the Exchequer and introduced a series of reforms
influenced by Rowntree, including the Old Age Pensions
Act (1908) and the National Insurance
Act (1911).
David Lloyd George asked Rowntree to carry
out a study of rural conditions in Britain. His report, The
Land, published in 1913, argued
that an increase in small landholdings would make agriculture more
efficient and productive. In 1913 Rowntree also published How
the Labourer Lives, a detailed
study of fifty-two farming families.
Seebohm Rowntree believed that healthy
and well-fed workers, were also efficient workers. Working closely
with his father, Joseph Rowntree, Seebohm
introduced a series of reforms at his own company. One change was
an increase in wages for the 4,000 people the company employed. Seebohm
argued that employers who refused to pay decent wages should be put
out of business as their existence was bad for the "nation's
economy and humanity".
In his book The
Human Needs of Labour (1918)
Rowntree argued strongly for a government enforced minimum wage and
the introduction of family allowances. In The
Human Factor in Business (1921),
Seebohm urged employers to abandon their preferred style of autocratic
management in industry. However, few companies followed
Rowntree's example of establishing industrial democracy by the use
of Works Councils.
In the 1930s Seebohm
Rowntree carried out a second survey of
York. In Progress
and Poverty (1941), Rowntree
argued that the city had experienced a fifty per cent reduction in
poverty since his first study. He also pointed out that in the 1930s
the main cause of poverty was unemployment, whereas in the 1890s it
had been low wages. However, he argued that there was still much to
be done and the conclusions of his report helped influence the policies
of the post-war Labour Government. As a
person said at the time, Rowntree's work made him the "Einstein
of the Welfare State".
Rowntree published a third study of York
in 1951. In Poverty
and the Welfare State, Rowntree
argued that the measures introduced by the Labour
Government between 1945 and 1951 were dealing successfully with
the worst aspects of poverty that he had recorded
in his earlier studies. Benjamin
Seebohm Rowntree died on 7th October, 1954.
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