derable fortunes. He may have come from humble origins, but his wealth would have allowed him to move up the social ladder.
             He is very business-minded and reputation-conscious. He shows this by the way he talks to Gerald Croft about his engagement to his daughter, Sheila,
             "Your father and I have been friendly rivals in business for a while now... and now you've brought us together". It seems that the marriage has served to join the two companies rather than the happiness of the couple engaged, which rather sums Birling up. At the end of the speech, he says, "-for lower costs and higher prices!" His exploitative, capitalist views are expressed. This helps support Priestley's message, about the upper classes exploiting the lower classes, and not caring what their standard of living was like, as long as they made money.
             He shows more of his capitalist views while during a very 'manly' discussion with Eric and Gerald,
             "A man has to make his own way, has to look after himself...but the way some of these cranks talk now, you'd think everybody has to look after everybody else". This is a year after James Ramsay MacDonald has been elected as leader of the left wing Labour party; these are probably the "cranks" he is referring to. He is just about to go on, but he is stopped by the arrival of the Inspector, whose time of entrance is probably significant to the subject of the conversation, as Priestley socialist beliefs meant the world should be a community, with everyone helping each other.
             When Birling is first questioned about the girl, he shows no compassion and denies any responsibility for her suicide, because to him, all he did was sack her for being a troublemaker and demanding too much money,
             "We were paying the usual rates and if they didn't like those rates, they could go and work somewhere else". He then says: "still, I can't...