one wage-earner to ask, or
another to proffer, assistance in working for wages. As well might one
shopkeeper propose to wait on another's customers for him. Employers
would not have it; still less would those who are employed. A man may
be fainting at his job, but none dare help him. He would resent, he
would fear, the proposal. The job is, as it were, his property; as long
as he can stand and see he must hold it against all comers, because in
losing hold he loses his claim upon the world's supplies of the
necessaries of life.

In spite of all the latent good-will, therefore, and in spite of the
fact that the cottagers are all on the same social level, intimacies do
not thrive amongst them. If there was formerly any parochial sentiment
in the village, any sense of community of interest, it has all been
broken up by the exigencies of competitive wage-earning, and each family
stands by itself, aloof from all the others. The interests clash. Men
who might be helpful friends in other circumstances are in the position
of rival tradesmen competing for the patronage of customers. Not now may
their labour be a bond of friendship between them; it is a commodity
with a market value, to be sold in the market. Hence, just as in trade,
every man for himself is the rule with the villagers; just as in trade,
the misfortune of one is the opportunity of another. All the maxims of
competitive commerce apply fully to the vendor of his own labour. There
must be "no friendship in business"; the weakest must go to the wall.
Each man is an individualist fighting for his own hand; and to give as
little as he can for as much as he can get is good policy for him, with
precisely the same limitations as those that govern the trading of the
retail merchant, tormented with the conflicting necessities of
overcharging and underselling.

It follows that the villagers are a prey to jealousy and suspicion--not,
perhaps, when they meet at the public-house or on the road, but in the
presence of employers, when any question of employment arises. At such
times one would think that labouring men have no critics so unkindly as
their own neighbours and equals. It is true those who are in constant
work are commended; but if you ask about a man who is "on the market"
and open for any work that may be going, his rivals are unlikely to
answer generously. "So-and-So?... H'm!... He do's his best; but he don't
seem to get _through_, somehow." "Old Who-is-it? Asked _h