The greater part of Joseph Chamberlain's political career considered itself with the social welfare and equality of the working classes of the United Kingdom. However, during the first ten years Chamberlain served in the cabinet, he came to realize the growing importance of colonial affairs in the new imperialist era. His attitude was that the colonies were underdeveloped estates which, properly managed, could be beneficial to both their inhabitants and to Britain. Chamberlain devoted his political career to Imperial affairs, but most prominently dedicated his work to the equality and welfare of the working classes. Joseph Chamberlain was born on 8 July 1836 and spent his first eighteen years of his life in London. Chamberlain's mother taught him to read at a very young age and began his own formal education at the age of eight at a small school in Camberwell Grove. The school was kept by Miss Charlotte Pace and noted that young Chamberlain "didn't take things easily; he went deeply into them, and was very serious for a boy. 1 In 1846 the Chamberlains left Camberwell for Highbury in rural north London and Joseph was sent to a day school in Canonbury Square directed by Reverend Arthur Johnson, an Anglican clergyman. At the age of fourteen, Chamberlain was advised by his headmaster to enroll in a higher institution, admitting that the boy knew more mathematics than himself. Joseph studied at the University College School, headed by Dr. Thomas Hewitt Key, who demanded high standards of scholarship and disregarded athletic achievements. During his two years at the School, Chamberlain experienced substantial academic accomplishments, acquiring honorable mentions in Mathematics, Mechanics, and Hydrostatics. Chamberlain's education came to abrupt end in 1852 when his father obliged him to work for the family's wholesale boot and shoe. During his couple of years in the family business, Chamberlain was exposed to the world and the ordinary working men and women that peopled it, while also being introduced to progressive ideas from Radicals and Chartists who resented the 1832 Reform Act, which failed to deliver a genuine democracy. When Joseph turned eighteen in 1854, his own father offered him an exclusive business opportunity in Birmingham after his uncle, John Sutton Nettefold, bought the rights on a patent for new woodscrews, and asked Joseph to represent the Chamberlain family in Birmingham.2 Nettefold's company prospered within a few years of Chamberlain's supervision, as one cashier stated: "Money was made very rapidly after Mr. Joseph came. 3 Nettefold had essentially bought the modern screw manufacturing process of the United Kingdom, and by 1864, the company was exporting screws to a number of countries including Russia, the United States, Italy, and France. The company also established a market at home with the Admiralty and the Great Western Railway, although coming at an inevitable cost for many small manufactures of old-fashioned blunt ended screw.4 Chamberlain's prestige prospered so much that he was given the right to join the Birmingham Liberal Association as a Radical in 1865. Radicals stressed doctrines of inter-nationalism, anti-colonialism, and non-intervention,5 but the Liberal party as a whole concerned itself with an electoral reform. The public demonstration for reform in 1866 led to the passing of the Reform Bill of 1867 and opened the way for an extension of democracy to the poorest classes. The amendment proposed household suffrage, which nearly double the electorates and enfranchised almost a third of the adult male population of the United Kingdom. Chamberlain's active role in the Liberal Association won the party the majority vote at the General Election of 1868. Chamberlain continued to play a vital role after the election, becoming a prominent figure in the campaign to support Gladstone's Irish Church Disestablishment Bill, the policy of ˜justice for Ireland' and the disestablishment of the Irish Church. Chamberlain attacked the House of Lords in a rational and challenging speech: All over the country the people had approved Mr. Gladstone's Irish Party; yet the Peers were waiting, and their Conservative friends professed themselves dissatisfied.. after the time was come and the case was proved, action was still to be deferred though in this case justice deferred was justice denied.6 After his well-known speech, Chamberlain was elected to the council for St. Paul's ward, thus beginning a career in municipal politics. Chamberlain truly believed proper schooling would ensure a triumphant culture and debacle anarchy,7 so not surprisingly he dealt with education first. In 1867 Chamberlain published his own views on educational reform enlisting a set of principles in the document he entitled, ˜the National Society for the Promotion of Universal Compulsory Education League': That it is as much the duty of the State to see that the children are educat