Middle Class DBQ Essay

Words: 1603
Pages: 7

With enough money to spend and save, some middle class people were able to affect society; they gave a portion of their money to charities. Middle class benefactors developed into a middle class elite that had power not only within managing the charities but also in displaying their potential for future social activities. The people making up this elitist division were from all parts of the middle class; those that started out as manual laborers and those who attended Oxford could all be in the charitable elite. Some scholars said that the generous middle class was genuinely altruistic in trying to help the lower classes. However, others were convinced that the charities were utilized only to make the donors look good. Whether or not the …show more content…
The combination of gaining more money and wanting more rights led to more people being able to vote. In 1832, a reform act was passed in Britain in an attempt to eliminate some of the corruption in the election process and increase the overall franchise. However, to be able to vote under this new act people had to assent to clause 27. This clause required that “all local and assessed taxes needed to be paid by all electors prior to their voter registration” along with a £10 registration fee. Because the voter registration had to be redone every year, it was not easy to enlist with the required expenses and the given time constraints. Despite this obstacle, from 1832 to 1864, the number of electors increased by 72.3%. The Reform Act of 1832 did not largely affect the voting of the upper class or working class because upper class members could easily fulfill these monetary requirements and the working class could not. However, the middle class was now able to fulfill these requirements, so their increased ability to register for voting was demonstrated by the large growth of electors in Britain. As the population of middle class voters grew over the mid-1800s, the middle class could vote for what bettered themselves, and this was due to their growing incomes that came with the better jobs of the Industrial