Conclusion
This concluding chapter returns to the ‘enigma’ raised at the beginning of the chapter — whether or not this study of six hundred-odd autobiographies has shed any light on why decades of robust economic growth failed to lift all out of poverty. It explores the survival of poverty in an increasingly prosperous society through a new lens — the working-class autobiographies. These sources are not often used by economic historians, but the chapter proposes a mingling of life and social histories with statistical records and modern economic theory to better explain how the economy grew and who benefited from it. After all, there can be no denying that Victorian economic growth had vastly increased the wealth of the nation by the outbreak of war in 1914. Yet whilst industrial capitalism could create wealth, it was itself unable to distribute it in such a way that most of society could benefit from it.