Charles Booth: Moralist or Social Scientist?

Abstract

T THIS note is prompted by Dr Brown's article 'Charles Booth and Labour Colonies, I 889-I 905' which appeared in a recent issue of this journal.1 That article is, in the words of the author, with one aspect of Charles Booth's work, his ideas on unemployment ... [and] More generally, it is an attempt to describe and explain some of the neglected assumptions behind the discussion of policy.2 The article is also intended as a contribution to a necessary revaluation of the climate of opinion in which the great social legislation of the I 905 Liberal government occurred'.3 The essence of the article, as I understand it, is that late Victorian and social policy was not, as is usually assumed, based upon non-doctrinaire empirical investigation; that in fact the investigations of Booth, and of those he influenced, are compromised by their unawareness of their own preconceptions and therefore they lapsed into attitudes which influenced their analyses of the problems under investigation. This, writes Dr Brown, has largely escaped the attention of historians, who tend to ignore problems surrounding the role of judgements.4 It is this neglected question of judgements, particularly with reference to Booth, that is to be considered here. I contend that Dr Brown fails to make the necessary distinction between value and moral judgements; that Booth is remarkably free from judgements; and that his suggestions on labour colonies are firmly rooted in his scientific approach. Nevertheless, by suggesting that Booth was not biased by unconscious assumptions one is not committed to denying that Edwardian social legislation was moulded by very distinctive assumptions.5 Far from it: it merely underlines the point that social scientists and politicians are subject to different pressures. Social scientists are free to suggest schemes on their supposed merit; politicians are obliged to consider the opinions of both pressure groups and the electorate. The continued Poor Law bias is not a mark of the influence of the social scientist over legislation, but the lack of it. As the distinction between moral and value judgements is a philosophical one, one wishes to treat it as briefly as possible. Briefly, moral judgement must assume, or imply, a genuine choice of action, whereas a value judgement need not. To state that someone is socially worthless is a judgement; for one may blame the environment, poor health, or even insanity for his condition, and not condemn the person morally at all. Free will is an essential component of responsibility. Value judgements become judgements only when it is assumed, or implied, that the persons concerned are in their condition through choice, and that they have rejected a better mode of life out of some form of deliberate perversity.