Newspapers And Magazines For The Working Classes example essay topic

As it is highlighted in table 1, In 1801 the population of England and Wales was in 1801 just under 9 million; by 1851 it was almost 18 million. From the end of the 18th century, this population increase confronted the rulers of British society with urgent questions of social and political control and gave rise to a much increased interest in the place of education in society. The number of schools offering basic education for the growing numbers of 'the poor' increased substantially. Many of these were Sunday schools but, from the beginning of the 19th century, these were augmented and then overtaken by the networks of voluntary schools.

These schools contributed to an increasing literacy, estimated in 1840 "o at the time of the first official survey by the registrar-general "o to be 67% of adult males, and 51% of adult females. This, in turn, gave rise to a new appetite for printed material and a new commercial market for it. From the 1790's, partly in response to a growing amount of radical literature, there had been a huge increase in the volume of religious tracts for the newly literate working classes, illustrating the then dominant view of what was considered suitable for them to read. With restricted leisure time and limited leisure facilities "o Preston was, for example, the only town in Lancashire in the 1840's which had a municipal park, and spectator sports and the music hall did not develop until the later 19th century "o reading was one of the few opportunities for working people to participate in leisure and cultural activity, apart from the public house.

The provision of literature and opportunities for reading or attending readings, through the spread of coffee houses, libraries, mechanics institutes and also at public houses and even some workplaces, grew enormously during the 1820's and 1830's. Reading had come to be recognised both by governments and both middle and working class radicals as a means to inform and influence large audiences, as well as to entertain them. The tory-Anglican view, which was the dominant one during at least the first two decades of the century and the one informing the governments of those years, was represented by the output of the tracts and other literature produced by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK), by the Religious Tract Society (RTS) and by the methodists. By the 1830's, the RTS and the methodists were producing millions of tracts aimed at the literate working-classes and, to augment its work in this field, the SPCK began publishing The Saturday Magazine in 1832, price one penny and therefore accessible to a working class readership. The radical democratic view was represented from the 1790's by the publications of the political corresponding societies and, from the early 19th century, by the newspapers and magazines of journalist-publishers like Cobbett, Carlile and Woolen, who began to articulate criticisms of the ruling class and the corrupt government's inability to recognise or deal with the extreme problems of poverty, migration, bad housing and vulnerability to the new economic 'laws' of 'laissez-faire' capitalism, in any way which was not simply repressive. By the 1830's, working class radicals were publishing unstamped newspapers to defy the law in an attempt to secure removal of the stamp tax, which had been introduced to price newspapers out of the reach of the working classes.

The radicals insisted newspapers and magazines for the working classes, such as the Chartist Circular [1839-42], must have a political content and that the working classes should be able and encouraged to construct their own political solutions to the problems which faced them through, for example, participation in the Chartist movement.