They were not the aristocracy. The decline of the aristocracy, with its ancient titles, its huge estates, and its huge debts, began over a century ago. The old middle class began life as the aristocracy's executors and ended as its heirs. The pattern of life in the old middle class was shaken by World War I, but it existed relatively unchanged in 1939. The class was the butt of the bright young playwrights of the twenties and has received the acid attentions of Mr. Somerset Maugham. It supported Munich and Chamberlain, and it sent its sons away to die in 1939. As a group, the class was well educated. The majority of the men had been to a public school and a university. Both men and women bought and read books and responsible newspapers. They traveled abroad, they knew something about the world. Some had inherited wealth. Others invested their savings. Beneath this upper stratum of the old middle class was a lower middle class that sought to rise into it. This was made up of shopkeepers, small manufacturers, the more prosperous farmers, the black-coat workers in business, and the industrial technicians. The future welfare of these two groups is the political problem that the Conservative Party must face. Since the decline of the Liberal Party, the Tories have counted upon the support of this class. There were many defections in the election of 1945, but it is probable that a more important reason for the Tory defeat that year was the party's failure to win the support of a new middle class that was then arising as a factor in British politics. The chief reason why the old middle class is defecting from the Tory standard is that it believes that the Conservative governments since 1945 have not done enough to halt the drain on its incomes. Prices have risen sharply in the years since Chamberlain went to Munich. One estimate is that the 1938 income of £1,000 a year for a married man with two children would have to be raised to £4,000 to provide the same net income today. But in this class the number of men whose incomes have quadrupled or even doubled since 1938 is small. What do the figures mean in terms of a family's life? They mean that to send the children to a public school, which the majority of this class regards as indispensable from a social and even occasionally from an educational standpoint, the father and mother must do without new clothes, books, the occasional visit to the theater. Instead of two regular servants, the family must "make do" with a daily cleaning woman. The family vacations in some quiet French or Italian seaside resort must be abandoned. The father and mother are unable to save and are increasingly worried about their future. They see a future decline in the family's social standards and economic health.