Seebohm rowntree biography examples

Seebohm Rowntree

British philanthropist industrialist and sociologist writer

Seebohm Rowntree

Born	()7 July York, England
Died	7 October () (aged&#;83) Hughenden Manor, Buckinghamshire, England
Occupation	Industrialist, sociological researcher and writer
Nationality	English
Period	–

Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree, CH (7 July – 7 October ) was an English sociological researcher, social reformer and industrialist.

He is known in particular for his three studies of poverty in York, conducted in , , and

The first York study involved a comprehensive survey of the living conditions of the poor in York during which investigators visited every working class household, and his methodology inspired many subsequent researches in British empirical sociology.^[1]^[2]

By strictly defining the concept of poverty in his studies, he was able to reveal that the causes of poverty in York were more structural than moral, such as low wages, which went against the traditionally held view that the poor were responsible for their own plight.^[3]

Life

Seebohm Rowntree was born in York, the second son of the QuakerJoseph Rowntree, who had been a master grocer but was becoming a successful cocoa and chocolate manufacturer, and Emma Antoinette Seebohm.

He was educated first privately and then from the age of 10 at Bootham School.^[4]^[5] Rowntree studied chemistry at Owen's College, Manchester for five terms before joining the family firm in , where he laid the foundations of the firm's first chemistry department.^[6] He became the first Labour Director in when the firm became a limited liability company and was the chairman from to During the First World War he was Director of the Welfare Department at the Ministry of Munitions, under the leadership of David Lloyd George.^[2]^[4]

In he married Lydia Potter (/9–), daughter of Edwin Potter, an engineer; they had four sons and one daughter.

After his wife died, he lived in a wing of Former Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli's old house, Hughenden Manor, where he died after a heart attack in He was 83 years old.^[4]

Work

First York study ()

Rowntree investigated poverty in York, inspired by the work of his father Joseph Rowntree and the work of Charles Booth in London.

He carried out a comprehensive survey into the living conditions of the poor in York during which investigators visited every working class household.

Seebohm rowntree biography examples pdf Seebohm Rowntree. Benjamin Latrobe. Wikiquote has quotations related to Seebohm Rowntree. Benjamin, Ethel Rebecca —

This amounted to the detailed study of 11, families or 46, individuals.^[7] The results of this study were published in in his book Poverty, A Study of Town Life.

In Rowntree's work, he surveyed working-class families in York and drew a poverty line in terms of a minimum weekly sum of money "necessary to enable families to secure the necessaries of a healthy life" (quoted in Coates and Silburn, ).

The money needed for this subsistence level of existence covered fuel and light, rent, food, clothing, household and personal items, adjusted according to family size. He determined this level using social scientific methods which had not been applied to the study of poverty before. For example, he consulted leading nutritionists of the period to discover the minimum calorific intake and nutritional balance necessary before people got ill or lost weight.

Short biography examples Related entity Rowntree, Oscar Frederic, Identifier of related entity. In Rowntree's work, he surveyed working-class families in York and drew a poverty line in terms of a minimum weekly sum of money "necessary to enable families Benjamin of Tudela. Liberal reforms [ edit ].

He then surveyed the prices of food in York to find the cheapest prices in the area for purchasing the food required by this minimum diet and used this information to set his poverty line.

According to this measure, percent of the total population of York lived below the poverty line.^[8] This result corresponded with that from Charles Booth's study of poverty in London and so challenged the view, commonly held at the time, that abject poverty was a problem particular to London and was not widespread in the rest of Britain.

Rowntree's () statistics have since been challenged by other sociological researchers such as Gazeley and Newell () who argued he "overestimated the needs of children relative to adults and did not allow for economies of scale", resulting in inflated measurement of primary poverty. ^[9]

He placed those below his poverty line into two groups depending on the reason for their poverty.

Those in primary poverty did not have enough income to meet the expenditure necessary for their basic needs. Those classed as in secondary poverty had high enough income to meet basic needs but some portion of this money was being spent elsewhere (such as on drink, gambling, and betting) and so they were unable to then afford the necessities of life.^[10]

Setting a primary poverty line for which "[e]xpenditure needful for the development of the mortal, moral and social sides of human nature will not be taken into account'' () did not mean that he did not recognise the non-subsistence need of the working class.

Rather, he wished to measure a type of poverty that could not be reduced simply by greater "thrift", so as to cast off the contemporary social myth about poverty as one's own fault.^[2] Ironically, this primary poverty line also helped many manufactures to set the lowest possible minimum wage, which engendered many criticisms toward him.^[1]

In analysing the results of the investigation he found that people at certain stages of life, for example in old age and early childhood, were more likely to be in abject poverty, living below the poverty line, than at other stages of life.

From this he formulated the idea of the poverty cycle^[11] in which some people moved in and out of absolute poverty during their lives. This idea of poverty cycle captured important longitudinal aspects of poverty that were cited later in much other research.^[2]

Second York study ()

Rowntree conducted a further study of poverty in York in under the title Poverty and Progress.

This was based largely on a similar research method as his earlier study and found absolute poverty among the working class in York had decreased by 50% since his first study.^[12] However, as he changed his definition of the poverty line, and so the measure of absolute poverty, it is not a direct comparison from his earlier study.

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In this study he included allowances for some items which were not strictly necessary for survival, these included newspapers, books, radios, beer, tobacco, holidays, and presents. His results showed that the causes of poverty had changed considerably in a few decades. In the s, the major reason for primary poverty was low wages, 52%, whereas in the s unemployment accounted for % and low wages only 10%.^[13]

Despite the inclusion of the extra items, he found that the percentage of his sample population in poverty had dropped to 18 per cent in and to per cent in

Third York study ()

Rowntree published a third study of York's poverty in under the title Poverty and the Welfare State which was produced in collaboration with his research assistant G.

R. Lavers. Unlike his other studies of York a sampling technique was used rather than a comprehensive survey, as he had primarily tested its viability in his second York study, though he did not adopt it in the previous time.^[14]^[2]

By the s, it appeared that absolute poverty was a minor problem although poverty did remain, for example among the elderly, but it was believed that increased welfare benefits would soon eradicate this lingering poverty.

The conquest of poverty was put down to an expanding economy as the s were the years of the 'affluent society', to government policies of full employment, and to the success of the welfare state. It was widely believed that the operation of the welfare state had redistributed wealth from rich to poor and significantly raised working class living standards.

Seebohm rowntree biography examples for kids Learn more about citation styles Citation styles Encyclopedia. Rowntree investigated poverty in York , inspired by the work of his father Joseph Rowntree and the work of Charles Booth in London. His study was enormously influential, challenging as it did long held assumptions about the moral causes of poverty. ISBN

Other writings

David Lloyd George urged Rowntree to write on rural living conditions in Britain: The Land () and How the Labourer Lives () looked at the living conditions of farming families. Rowntree argued that an increase in landholdings would make agriculture more productive.

His work The Human Needs of Labour () argued for family allowances and a national minimum wage, and in The Human Factor in Business, Rowntree argued that business owners should adopt more democratic practices like those at his own factory rather than more autocratic leadership styles.

He expressed his conviction of the possibility of establishing a close-knit community including both the management and the workers.^[2]

In the study of his later period, English Life and Leisure: A Social Study (), he inquired into the ways people spent their relative, newly-found leisure and income; but this work suffered more conceptual difficulties than his former works.^[4]

Influence

Liberal reforms

Rowntree was a supporter of the Liberal Party and hoped that his work would influence Liberal politicians.

Rowntree became close friends with David Lloyd George in after the two men met when Lloyd George was serving as President of the Board of Trade. The influence of Rowntree can be seen in the Liberal reforms passed by the Liberals when in power. He was a member of the Liberal Industrial Inquiry which published Britain's Industrial Future, better known as the Yellow Book, in ^[4] In he co-wrote, with Lloyd George and Philip Kerr, the Liberal Party's plan How to Tackle Unemployment.^[15] In June he was elected to serve on the Liberal Party Council.^[16]

Labour Party

Poverty and Progress impacted on the policies of the post-war Labour government and Poverty and the Welfare State was used in a Labour party election manifesto headed Ending Poverty although this was without his knowledge.^[17]

Industrialist and philanthropist

Seebohm and the Rowntree's firm broke new ground in terms of industrial relations, welfare and management.

Lyndall Urwick describes him as "the British management movement's greatest pioneer" in his book Golden Book of Management.^[18] Rowntree's Quaker upbringing influenced his business practice; he believed that the existence of companies which paid low wages was bad for the "nation's economy and humanity".^[19] "More a philanthropist than a capitalist", he introduced various reforms in the working condition of the workers: the establishment of the eight-hour day in , a pension scheme in , a five-day work week and work councils in , the establishment of a psychology department in , and a profit-sharing plan in ^[1]

Rowntree was also personally involved in two major conciliation efforts following strikes in and ^[2]

In when the British Institute of Management was created he became an Honorary Founder Member and in the first English person to become an Honorary Fellow of the institute.^[20]

Rowntree's Cocoa Works

The Rowntree Cocoa Works was a site of great scientific investigation and became internationally known as such.

Rowntree was a great believer in trained specialists, and employed many at the Cocoa Works.^[21] They included Oliver Sheldon, Lyndall Urwick and Dr Clarence Northcott. The Works was a corporate member of the Taylor Society and was admired by its President Henry S. Dennison.^[22]

Seebohm oversaw the formation of an industrial psychology department in which pioneered the use of psychological recruitment tests in British industry.

Employing psychologist Victor Moorrees^[23] who developed a new test, the form board selection test, to ascertain how well prospective employees would be able to fit chocolates into their box.^[24]

He was also heavily involved in the National Institute of Industrial Psychology serving on its executive committee from its foundation in , as chairman from to , until his resignation in ^[25]^[26]

Bibliography

References

^ ^a^b^c"Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree." World of Sociology, Gale, Gale In Context: Biography, ?u=mlin_c_collhc&sid=BIC&xid=a .

Accessed 6 Oct.
^ ^a^b^c^d^e^f^gScott, John, ed. ().
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Seebohm rowntree biography examples wikipedia
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Fifty Key Sociologists: The Formative Theorists. Routledge. p.&#; ISBN&#;.

^Joseph Rowntree Foundation Centenary: PovertyArchived 12 October at the Wayback Machine
^ ^a^b^c^d^eHarrison, Brian.

"Rowntree, (Benjamin) Seebohm". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online&#;ed.). Oxford University Press. doi/ref:odnb/ (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
^Bootham Old Scholars Association (). Bootham School Register.
Seebohm rowntree biography examples Seebohm Authorized form of name Rowntree, Benjamin Seebohm, , sociologist and manufacturer. Inspired by his father's work and the study by Charles Booth , Life and Labour of the People in London , Seebohm Rowntree decided to carry out his own investigations into poverty in York. Current Fruit Gums Fruit Pastilles.
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^Gazeley, I.

and Newell, A., ‘Rowntree revisited: poverty in Britain, ’,Explorations in Economic History,37(), p
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Seebohm (). How to Tackle Unemployment - The Liberal Plans as laid before the Government and the Nation. London: The Press Printers Ltd.
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^Doyle, D.C., 'Aspects of the Institutionalisation of British Psychology: the National Institute of Industrial Psychology, ' (PhD thesis, Manchester University, ).

Seebohm rowntree biography examples