Why did Beatrice Potter become critical of charitable efforts to reduce poverty?

Beatrice Potter (later Beatrice Webb) became critical of charitable efforts to reduce poverty because she concluded that they were inadequate to address the root causes of the issue.1

Her perspective shifted as she engaged in social work in London and collaborated with her cousin, the social reformer Charles Booth, on his extensive study of the lives of the working class. Through these experiences, she realized that private charity could not solve systemic economic problems. Consequently, she turned her attention toward understanding the organizations the working class had created for themselves, such as labor unions, and eventually advocated for structural reforms. This commitment to systemic change culminated in her influential Minority Report (1909), which laid the groundwork for the modern welfare state.12