Social Conditions

Britain's population continued to grow after the war, but much more slowly than in the Victorian period. The main cause of this deceleration was a sharp fall in the birth-rate. This decline, due largely to the wider use of birth-control practices, meant that the size of the average family was much less. Families of between six and ten were common in 1900, but two was the average by the 1930s. To compensate for the lower birth-rate, the death-rate also fell as a result of improvements in medicine, hygiene, and housing and, in particular, a remarkable decline in infant mortality. Another important population change was that the drift from south to north, which was characteristic of the Industrial Revolution, was reversed as heavy industry in the north declined and light industry in the south and Midlands expanded. Between the wars the number of people living in south-east Lancashire, Merseyside, west Yorkshire, and Tyneside hardly increased, while the west Midlands and London and the Home Counties grew rapidly. The other significant development was that fewer people lived in the centers of towns.

Upper and middle classes

There were some changes in the composition of the upper middle classes after the First World War. At the top end of the scale, the ranks of the very wealthy were swelled by men who had made large profits out of the war, the 'hard-faced men' of whom Stanley Baldwin complained, the men to whom Lloyd George's government was suspected of selling titles and honors. Lower down the ladder, there was an increase in the number of clerical workers and professional men, a result of the expansion of individual firms and the complexity of the new industrial processes. The chief complaint of wealthy people between the wars was the higher rate of taxation. Increased death-duties, in particular, led to the sale of many estates and a decline in the status of the landed aristocracy. Income-tax had also risen: it had stood at 1s. 2d. (6p) in the pound at the outbreak of war, but had risen to 5s. (25p) in the pound in 1918 and remained between 4s. (20p) and 5s. (25p) until 1939. It is estimated that a rich man paid eight per cent of his income in tax before the war, but over thirty per cent afterwards.
The comparative decline of the well-to-do is illustrated by the fall in the number of domestic servants. The main reason for this, however, was that men and women who would formerly have gone willingly into service now preferred to work shorter hours for higher wages in factories. Nevertheless, it is calculated that in the West End of London in the 1920S two families in every five still had at least one resident servant. Evidence of middle-class prosperity is provided by the public school boom of the post-war years. Businessmen who had made sufficient money to qualify themselves for a higher social bracket sought to have their sons brought up as gentlemen. High fees did not deter them; there was such a demand that three new boys' public schools were founded in the 1920S. There was also a rapid expansion of private education for girls, an indication both that there was no shortage of money and that girls' education was at last being taken seriously.
Statistics of salaries and prices confirm that the middle-class standard of living rose between the wars. An average doctor in general practice would have earned about £4oo a year in 1910. By 1924 his salary stood at £75o, and by 1938 it had risen to £ 1,100. A bank clerk, at the lower end of the middle class, earned £140 in 19IO, £28o in 1924, and £370 in 1938. Prices, of course, had risen, but not steadily. In the early 1920's they stood at about twice the pre-war level, but by the mid-1930s they had fallen to sixty per cent above those of 1914. judging from the salaries of doctors and bank clerks, then, one can conclude that although professional people were no better off in the early 1920's than before the war their standard of living had risen by about seventy per cent by 1938.

Working class

For workers in regular employment the inter-war years saw an improvement in living standards which was not quite so marked as that of the middle class. Employees in the new industries naturally benefited most, while the conditions of miners and textile workers actually deteriorated. There was, of course, fluctuation of wage rates according to the state of trade. Wages had risen rapidly during the war and continued to rise in the post-war boom. They then fell, although not at a constant rate, between 192o and 1932. A slow improvement ensued, and most wages had reached the 1924 level again by 1937. Earnings were appreciably higher than before the First World War, although in the mid-thirties three-quarters of all families had weekly incomes of less than four pounds. Wage rates, of course, are meaningless unless related to the cost of living. Rises and falls in price levels during and after the war generally kept pace with wage fluctuations, with some significant exceptions. Real wages in the early 1920S were broadly comparable to those of 1910: that is, a fitter could buy the same goods with his £3. 2S. od. (£3.10) in 1923 as he could with his £1. 15s. od. (£ 1.75)

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