[...] The commonplace doctrine of employers in the 18th century was the simple one that only the lowest possible wages could enforce the poor to work: as Arthur Young declared, in 1771, "every one but an idiot knows that the lower classes must be kept poor, or they will never be industrious". Methodism in no way challenged this doctrine; indeed, it reinforced it with the conventional teaching of the blessedness of poverty. what it did was to provide an inner compulsion as well.