But you find the same cry among the working classes of every grade.
Mechanics and tradesmen insist on all applicants for admission to their
calling serving long apprenticeships. If the apprenticeships are not
served, then "Keep them out!" is the word. Shoulder to shoulder they
exclude the applicants for leave to toil. "Knobsticks" are pelted. They
must join the union--must be free of the craft--must conform to the
rules--subscribe to the funds--pay the footings, and so on; otherwise they
are kept out with a vengeance.

In the circles of fashion the same cry is frequent. A new man appears in
society. "Who is he?" "Only So-and-so!" He is a retired grocer, or as
Cobbett called Sadler, "a linen-draper;" and the exclusive class
immediately club together for the purpose of "Keeping him out." He is
"cut." Even the new man of high-sounding title is accounted as nothing
among the old families who boast of their "blue blood." Wealth goes a
great way, but still that does not compensate for the accident of birth
and connections among these classes.

Every class has its own standard. The money classes have theirs too. Even
tradesmen and their wives go in sets, and there is always some class
outside their own set, which they contrive to "keep out." The aristocratic
contagion thus extends from the highest to the verge of the lowest class
of society in England. Is not monopoly the rule among us, whenever we can
find an opportunity of establishing it? Monopoly or exclusivism in art, in
theology, in trade, in literature, in sociology. Look at the forty Royal
Academicians setting their backs up against every new-comer in art, and
combining with one accord to "Keep him out." That is the monopoly of art;
and people at large call it a humbug; but they are not more tolerant or
wise when their own craft comes to be dealt with. Each in his turn is
found ready to combine with somebody else, to "keep out" all intruders on
their special preserves. The "Flaming Tinman," in Lavengro, pummels and
puts to flight the poor tinker who intrudes upon his beat; the costers
combine to keep out freshmen from theirs; English navvies band together to
drive Irish navvies off their contracts; and Irish tenants pick off, from
behind a hedge, the intruders upon their holdings. Even the searchers of
the sewers maintain a kind of monopoly of their unholy calling, and will
recognize no man as a brother who has not been duly initiated in the
mysteries of the search. T