hat it is more a matter of fineness in possessions than in
personal qualities. It cannot be maintained without a costly apparatus
of dress and furniture, and of drudges to do the dirty work; and
consequently it demands success in that competitive thrift which gives a
good money-income. Without that the employers are nowhere. They are
themselves driven very hard; they must make things pay; to secure the
means of civilization for themselves, they must get them out of the
labourer with his eighteen shillings a week. In vain, therefore, are
they persuaded by their newest ideas to see in him an Englishman as good
as themselves: they may assent to the principle, but in practice it is
as imperative as ever to make him a profitable drudge. Accordingly,
those relations of mutual approval which were not uncommon of old
between master and man cannot now be maintained. If it is impossible for
the village folk to understand the town folk, it is equally impossible
for the town folk to understand the village folk. They cannot afford to
understand. The peasant outlook is out of date--a cast-off thing; and
for cleaving to it the labourer is despised. If he could be civilized,
and yet be made to "pay," that is what would best suit the
middle-classes; and that is really the impossible object at which they
aim, when they try to "do him good." They want to make him more like
themselves, and yet keep him in his place of dependence and humiliation.

It must be said that amongst a section of the employers there is no
desire to "do good" even on these terms. While the labouring people, on
their side, betray little or no class feeling of hostility towards
employers, the converse is not true, but jealousy, suspicion, some
fear--the elements of bitter class-war, in fact--frequently mark the
attitude of middle-class people towards the labouring class. It seems to
be forgotten that the men are English. One hears them spoken of as an
alien and objectionable race, worth nothing but to be made to work. The
unemployment which began to beggar so many of my village neighbours
after the South African War was actually welcomed by numerous employers
in this district. "It will do the men good," people said to me; "it will
teach them their place. They were getting too independent." The election
of 1906, when the Conservative member for the division was unseated,
brought out a large crop of similarly malevolent expressions. "Look at
the class of people who hav