When the half-peasant men of the valley began to enter the labour market as avowed wage-earners, a set of conditions confronted them which we are apt to think of as established by a law of Nature, but which, in fact, may be almost unknown in a peasant community. For the first time the importance of a "demand for labour" came home to them. I do not say that it was wholly a new thing; but to the older villagers it had not been, as it is now to their descendants, the dominating factor in their struggle for life. On the contrary, in proportion as their labour was bestowed immediately on productive work for their own uses, the question whether there was a demand for labour elsewhere did not arise. The common was indifferent; it wanted none of them. It neither asked them to avail themselves of its resources, nor paid them money for doing so, nor refused employment to one because another was already engaged there. But to-day, instead of going for a livelihood to the impartial heath, the people must wait for others to set them to work. The demand which they supply is their own no longer, and no longer, therefore, is their living in their own hands. Of all the old families in the village, I think there are only two left now who have not drifted wholly into this dependent state; but I know numbers of labourers, often out of work, whose grandfathers were half independent of employers.

In theory, no doubt the advantage ought to be with the present times. Under the new system a far larger population is able to live in the parish than could possibly have been supported here under the old; for now, in place of the scanty products of the little valley and the heaths, the stores of the whole world may be drawn upon by the inhabitants in return for the wages they earn. Only there is the awkward condition that they must earn wages. Those limitless stores cannot be approached by the labourer until he is invited—until there is "a demand" for his labour. Property owners, or capitalists, standing between him and the world's capital, are able to pick and choose between him and his neighbours as the common never did, and to decide which of them shall work and have some of the supplies.

And as a consequence of this picking and choosing, competition amongst the labourers seeking to be employed has become the accepted condition of getting a living in the village, and it is to a great extent a new condition. Previously there was little room for anything of the kind. The old thrift lent itself to co-operation rather. I admit that I have never heard of any system being brought into the activities of this valley, such as I witnessed lately in another part of England, where the small farmers, supplying an external market, and having no hired labour, were helping one another to get their corn harvested, all being solicitous for their neighbours' welfare, and giving, not selling, their labour. Here the conditions hardly required such wholesale co-operation as that; but in lesser matters both kindliness and economy would counsel the people to be mutually helpful, and there is no reason to doubt that the counsel was taken. Those who had donkey-carts would willingly bring home turfs for those who had none, in return for help with their own turf-cutting. The bread-ovens, I know, were at the disposal of others besides the owners. At pig-killing, at thatching, at clearing out wells (where, in fact, I have seen the thing going on), the people would put themselves at one another's service. They still do so in cases where there is no question of earning money for a living. And if the spirit of friendly co-operation is alive now, when it can so rarely be put in practice, one may readily suppose that it was fairly vigorous fifty years ago.

But no spirit of co-operation may now prompt 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 he to come and help me, have ye? Well, you'll judge for yourself; but I don't hardly fancy he'll suit." Or, again: "Well, we all knows how 'tis with What's-his-name. I don't say but what he keeps on work right enough; but he'll have to jump about smarter 'n what I've ever knowed 'n, if he's to work 'long o' me." So, too often, and sometimes in crueller terms, I have heard efficient labourers speak of their neighbours. Certainly it is not all envy. An active man finds it penance to work with a slow one, and worse than penance; for his own reputation may suffer, if his own output of work should be diminished by the other's fault. That neighbour of mine engaged at hop-drying doubtless had good grounds for exasperation with the helper sent into the kiln, when he complained to the master: "Call that a man you sent me? If that's what you calls a man, I'd sooner you let me send for my old woman! Blamed if she wouldn't do better than that feller!" Detraction like this, no doubt, is often justified; but when it becomes the rule, the only possible inference is that an instinctive jealousy prompts men to it, in instinctive self-preservation.

Yet there are depths of dishonour—depths not unknown amongst employers—into which the village labourers will rarely condescend to plunge, acute though the temptation may be. Not once have I met with an instance of one man deliberately scheming to get another man's job away from him. A labourer unable to keep up with his work will do almost anything to avoid having a helper thrust upon him—he fears the introduction of a possible rival into his preserve. But this is not the same thing as pushing another man out; it has no resemblance to the behaviour of the hustling capitalist, who opens his big business with the definite intention of capturing trade away from little businesses. That is a course to which my impoverished neighbours will not stoop. The nearest thing to it which I have known was the case of those men mentioned in an earlier chapter, who applied for Bettesworth's work during his last illness. They came, however, believing the place to be vacant; and one and all, with a sincerity I never doubted, deprecated the idea of desiring to take it away from him. In fact, the application was distasteful to them. Nothing, I believe, would have prevailed upon them to make it, short of that hunger for constant employment which many of the men feel now, under their new competitive thrift. That 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.