Excerpt from Werner Sombart's Modern Capitalism Vol. II (currently editing)

[k_a_nitz]

From Chapter 54, on workhouses:

The men who recommended the workhouses and called them into life saw in them both the general remedy against begging and idleness and the nurseries possibly for entire industries, above all because the workhouses were an important institution for educating the people in keeping busy and accustoming them to discipline and order; to bring forth “the genius for commerce and industry in the dispositions of the children who will hereafter comprise the people”.

 

Note how the same justification was subsequently (and still is) used for public education.