Speenhamland

Speenhamland Every culture and every society from biblical times to present day has been forced to confront poverty through the implementation of methods or programs designed to alleviate, reduce, or even completely end poverty. Men and woman in every discipline have designed these policies, programs, and theories. One of the most common methods is the idea of wealth distribution, which is the concept of equally distributing income amongst workers of an area, state, or even a nation. Although other societies in history had tried wealth distribution England in the late seventeen hundreds was the first with a well-documented case of true wealth distribution. The act has come to be known as the Speenhamland project, which was a direct result of poor laws known as the Elizabethan poor laws which also led to many other acts such as the Settlement act, Gilbert’s act, and the Roundsmen system. (Morales 87-91) To understand the implementation of the Speenhamland project one must understand the history of England during the Elizabethan period. During that time most people were employed as servants or farmers. The number of people who were unemployed was growing at a substantial rate. It was estimated that in rural areas 10% of the system, speenhamland, new, income, workers, project, even, zealand, under, poverty, higher, guaranteed, england, been, programs, poor, one, state, laws, every, class, working, welfare, wealth, understand, time, people, living, labor, elizabethan, economic, douglas, distribution, designed, act, wages