Change in the Village

by George Sturt

3. Once or twice before I have mentioned, as characteristic of the peasant outlook, the fatalism which allowed the poor to accept their position as part of the unalterable scheme of the universe, and I associated the attitude with their general failure to think in terms of cause and effect. It would seem that this settled state of mind is slowly giving way under the political excitement of the last ten years. I cannot say, as yet, that anything worthy to be called hope has dawned upon the cottagers; but an inclination to look into things for themselves is discernible.

The change, such as it is, was begun—or, let us say, the ground was prepared for its beginning—by the distress of unemployment which followed the South African War; for then was bred that great discontent which came to the surface at last in the General Election of 1906. I well remember how, on the day when the Liberal victory in this division was made known, the labouring men, standing about with nothing to do, gladdened at the prospects of the relief which they supposed must at once follow, and how their hungry eyes sparkled with excitement. "Time there was a change," one of them said to me, "with so many o' we poor chaps out o' work." Then, as the months went by, and things worsened rather than bettered, reaction set in. "'Twas bad enough under the Conservatives, but 'tis ten times worse under the Liberals." That was the opinion I heard expressed, often enough to suggest that it was passing into a by-word. So, to all appearance, the old apathy was falling upon the people, as no doubt it had often done before after a momentary gleam of hope, confirming them in the belief that, whatever happened, it would not, as they said, "make much odds to the likes o' we."

This time, however, a new factor in the situation had been introduced, which tended to keep alive in village minds the possibility that Poverty, instead of being the act of God, was an effect of causes which might be removed. The gospel of "Tariff Reform" promised so much as to make it worth the people's while to pay a little attention to politics. Men who had never before in their lives tried to follow a logical argument began at last to store up in their memory reasons and figures in support of the fascinating doctrine, and if they were puzzle-headed over it, they were not more so than their leaders. Besides, in their case merely to have begun is much. Look at the situation. During six or seven years, there has been before the village a vision of better times to be realized by political action, and by support of a programme or a policy, and the interest which the people have taken in it marks a definite step forwards from the lethargy of stagnation in which they had previously been sunk. True, this particular vision seems fading now. Just when it ought to have been growing clearer and nearer, if it was to justify itself, it becomes dim and remote, and my neighbours, I fancy, are reverting to their customary attitude of aloofness from party politics; but I should be much surprised to find that it is quite in the old spirit. For the old spirit was one of indifference; it rested in the persuasion that politicians of either side were only seeking their own ends, and that the game was a rich man's game, in which the poor were not meant to share. That, however, is hardly the persuasion now. If the labourers hold aloof, keeping their own counsel, it is no longer as outsiders, but as interested watchers, ready to take part strongly whenever a programme shall be put before them that deserves their help.

I have suggested that the tendency of those who are influenced by the Church is towards a middle-class outlook, and that their interest centres in developments of taste and conduct rather than of intellect and opinion. Nothing so definite can be said as to the effects of newspaper reading and political excitement; nevertheless, I am conscious of effects everywhere present. The labourers whose interests turn in this direction seem to be treading in the footsteps of the skilled artisans in the town, towards ambitions not in all respects identical with those of the middle-classes. Of course the unskilled labourer earning eighteen shillings a week has not equal opportunities with the man who earns thirty-six; he cannot buy the newspapers and occasional books to which the other treats himself and his children, and in general he is less well informed. But the same grave and circumspect talk goes down with the one as with the other; to both the same topics are interesting.

And for me the probability of a development for our village labourers similar to that of the town artisans is heightened, by recollection of what artisans themselves were like, say a quarter of a century ago. I knew a few of these very well. As craftsmen they were as able as those of to-day; but their crafts had not taught them to think. While they worked by rule of thumb, outside their work they were as full of prejudices, and as unable to grasp reasons, as any of my village neighbours. The most of them, in fact, had been born in villages near the town, and retained a good deal of the rural outlook. Their gardens, and the harvest—yes, and odd scraps of very ancient folk-lore which they still believed—occupied an important place in their attention. They had quite the old attitude towards their employers; quite the old stubborn distrust of innovations in their work. When, however, you turn to their successors, you find a difference. I will not say that they are less able than their predecessors, or less trustworthy; but they have broken away from all that old simplicity of mind; they are thinking for themselves, and informing themselves, with an unresting and unhasting interest, about what the rest of the world knows. It fills me with shame, when I consider my own so much better opportunities, to find how much these hard-working men have learnt, and with what cool tenacity they think. Where they are most wanting is in enthusiasm and the hopes that breed it; or say, in belief that the world may yet change for the better—though here, too, political excitement is doing its fateful work. I find them very jealous for their children to do well: free education has not sapped their sense of parental responsibility, but has inspired them with ambitions, though not for themselves. For themselves they are conscious of a want of that book-learned culture which the practice of their skilled crafts cannot bestow, and this makes them suspicious of those who have it and diffident in conversation with them. But underneath this reticence and willingness to hear dwells a quiet scepticism which has no docility in it, and is not to be persuaded out of its way by any eloquence or any emotion. Missionary influences, like those of church and chapel, make but little impression on these quiet-eyed men. The tendency is towards a scientific rather than an æsthetic outlook.

And just as, amongst the skilled craftsmen, there are individuals representing every stage of the advance from five-and-twenty years ago until now, so the earlier stages at least of the same advance are represented, one beyond another, by labouring men in this village. I could not find any labourers who are so far forward as the forwardest artisans; but I could find some who have travelled, say, half the way, and many who have reached different points between that and the stagnation which was the starting-point for all. Hence I cannot doubt that the villagers in general are moving on the route along which the town artisans have passed a generation ahead of them. They are hindered by great poverty; hampered by the excessive fatigues of their daily work; entrammelled by remnants of the peasant traditions which still cling about them; but the movement has begun. The first stupefying effect of their eviction from the peasant life is passing away, and they are setting their faces towards the future, to find a new way of life.

It may be urged that, along with the Church, the newspaper and politics, education should have been named, as a fourth power affecting the village destinies. A moment's consideration, however, will discover that it does not come into the same category with those three influences, if only for this reason, that it is forced upon the village children from outside, while the older people have no chance to interest themselves in it as they have in the Church teachings or in the daily paper. No spontaneous movement, therefore, such as I have outlined in the other cases, can be traced in regard to education; but I had a stronger reason than that for omitting mention of it. To be quite plain, I do not think it is making anything like so much impression on the village life as it ought to make, and as it is commonly supposed to be making. It is not quite a failure; but it is by no means a great success. In so far as it has enabled the people to read their papers (and it has not done that very well) it has been serviceable; but neither as a cause of change nor as a guide into happier ways of life has it any claim to especial mention in these chapters. I am not saying that it is unworthy of attention: on the contrary, there is no subject relating to the village that demands so much. If, as I believe, it is one, and the foremost, of those activities which are largely abortive because they have not got into touch with the spontaneous movement of the village life, the matter is of the utmost seriousness. But this is not the place for entering into it; for I have not set out to criticize the varied experiments in reform which are being tried upon the labouring people. My book is finished, now that I have pointed to the inner changes going on in the village itself.

As to the future of those changes, I will not add to what I have already said, but there is evidently much room for speculation; and those who best know the villagers—their brave patience, their sincerity, the excellent groundwork of their nature—and those who see how full of promise are the children, generation after generation, until hardship and neglect spoil them, will be slow to believe what leisured folk are so fond of saying—namely, that these lowly people owe their lowliness to defects in their inborn character. It is too unlikely. The race which, years ago, in sequestered villages, unaided by the outer world at all, and solely by force of its own accumulated traditions, could build up that sturdy peasant civilization which has now gone—that race, I say, is not a race naturally deficient. There is no saying what its offspring may not achieve, once they get their powers of intellect awake on modern lines and can draw freely upon the great world for ideas.

At any rate, the hope is great enough to forbid the indulgence of any deep regret for what has gone by. The old system had gone on long enough. For generations the villagers had grown up and lived and died with large tracts of their English vitality neglected, unexplored; and I do not think the end of that wasteful system can be lamented by anyone who believes in the English. Rather it should reconcile us to the disillusionments of this present time of transition. They are devastating, I admit; for me, they have spoilt a great deal of that pleasure which the English country used to give me, when I still fancied it to be the scene of a joyful and comely art of living. I know now that the landscape is not peopled by a comfortable folk, whose dear and intimate love of it gave a human interest to every feature of its beauty; I know that those who live there have in fact lost touch with its venerable meanings, while all their existence has turned sordid and anxious and worried; and knowing this, I feel a forlornness in country places, as if all their best significance were gone. But, notwithstanding this, I would not go back. I would not lift a finger, or say a word, to restore the past time, for fear lest in doing so I might be retarding a movement which, when I can put these sentiments aside, looks like the prelude to a renaissance of the English country-folk.

Note.—In the preceding chapters no reference is made either to the new Insurance Act or to recent labour unrest. The book was, in fact, already in the publishers' hands when those matters began to excite general attention; and it hardly seems necessary now, merely for the sake of being momentarily up to date, to begin introducing allusions which after all would leave the main argument unchanged.

December, 1911.