at they
should have been scrupulous at all was to their credit. All their
circumstances constrain the people to be selfish, secret about their
hopes, swift to be first in the field where a chance occurs. And it is
surprising how vigilant a lookout is kept, and how wide a district it
covers. By what routes the news of new employment travels I do not know,
but travel it does, fast and far. Men rise early and walk many miles to
be before others at some place where they have heard of work to be had;
and one gets the impression, sometimes, of a population silently but
keenly watching to see what opportunity of well-being may suddenly fall
to them, not in general, but individually.

Do what they will to be neighbourly, competition for the privilege of
earning wages separates them sooner or later. There were two men I knew
who maintained a sort of comradeship in work during several years, so
that one of them would not take a job unless there was room for the
other, and if either was paid off, the other left with him. They were
amongst the ablest labourers in the parish, used to working long hours
at high pressure, and indifferent to what they did, provided that the
pay was good. I heard of them from time to time--now at railway work,
now at harvesting, now helping where a bridge was being built, and so
on. It was the depression of the winter of 1908-09 that finally broke up
their comradeship. During those miserable months even these two were
unemployed, and went short of food at times; and now they are working
separately--competing one against the other, in fact.

XI

HUMILIATION

Still more than the relations of the villagers with their own kind their
relations with other sorts of people have suffered change under the new
thrift. To just that extent to which the early inhabitants of the valley
were peasants, they formed, as it were, a separate group, careless of
the outer world and its concerns. They could afford to ignore it, and to
be ignored by it. To them, so well suited with their own outlook and
customs, it was a matter of small importance, though all England should
have other views than theirs, and other manners. And the outer world, on
its side, was equally indifferent. It left the villagers to go their own
queer way, and recognized--as it does in the case of other separate
groups of folk, such as fishermen or costermongers--that what seemed
singular in them was probably justified by the singularity of the