itions is not to be denied. Especially we may note two
unpleasing features of modern wage-earning which had not then made their
appearance.

In the first place, the work itself was interesting to do, was almost
worth doing for its own sake, when it still called for much old-world
skill and knowledge, and when the praises of the master were the
praises of an expert who well knew what he was talking about. On these
terms, it was no mean pleasure that the able labouring men had in their
labour. They took a pride in it--as you may soon discern if you will
listen to the older men talking. I have heard them boast, as of a
triumph, of the fine flattering surprise of some master, when he had
come to look at their day's work, and found it more forward, or better
done, than he had dared to hope. The words he said are treasured up with
delight, and repeated with enthusiasm, after many years.

As for the other point, it has already been touched upon. Harsh the
employers might be--more callous by far, I believe, than they are now;
but in their general outlook they were not, as yet, so very far removed
from the men who worked for them. Their ideas of good and bad were such
as the peasant labourer from this valley could understand; and master
and man were not greatly out of touch in the matter of civilization. It
made a vast difference to the labourer's comfort. He might be hectored,
bullied, cheated even, but he hardly felt himself degraded too. It was
not a being out of another sphere that oppressed him; not one who
despised him, not one whose motives were strange and mysterious. The
cruellest oppression was inhuman rather than unhuman--the act, after
all, only of a more powerful, not of a more dazzling, personage--so that
it produced in him no humiliating sense of belonging to an inferior
order of creation. And, of course, oppression was exceptional. Employers
were obliged to get on comfortably with their work-people, by the
conditions governing the supply of labour. I have in my mind several
cases mentioned to me by people long ago dead, in which men for various
faults (drunkenness in one instance, theft in another) were dismissed
from their employment again and again, yet as often reinstated, because
the master found it easier to put up with their faults than to do
without their skill. It may be inferred, therefore, that ordinary men
got along fairly well with their masters in the ordinary course.

This state of things, howev