atter what a man's trade or profession--linen-draper, or
saddler, or baker, or lawyer, or banker--he found it worth while to
watch the harvests, and to know a great deal about cattle and sheep, and
more than a great deal about hops. Some of the tradesmen were, in fact,
growing wealthy as hop-planters; and one and all identified themselves
with the outdoor industries of the neighbourhood. And though some grew
rich, and changed their style of living, they did not change their
mental equipment, but continued (as I myself remember) more "provincial"
than many a farmer is nowadays. All their thoughts, all their ideas,
could be quite well expressed in the West Surrey and Hampshire dialect,
which the townspeople, like the village folk, continued to speak.

Meanwhile, the work required by these employers ran, as yet, very much
on antiquated lines. Perhaps it was that the use of machinery had
received a setback, twenty years earlier, by the "Swing Riots," of which
a few memories still survive; at any rate haymaking, harvesting,
threshing--all the old tasks, indeed--were still done by hand; thatch
had not gone out of use for barns and stables; nor, for house-roofs, had
imported slates quite taken the place of locally made tiles. The truth
is, the town, in its more complex way, had not itself passed far beyond
the primitive stage of dependence on local resources and local skill. It
is really surprising how few were the materials, or even the finished
goods, imported into it at that time. Clothing stuffs and metals were
the chief of them. Of course the grocers (not "provision merchants"
then) did their small trade in sugar and coffee, and tea and spices;
there was a tinware shop, an ironmonger's, a wine-merchant's; and all
these necessarily were supplied from outside. But, on the other hand, no
foreign meat or flour, or hay or straw or timber, found their way into
the town, and comparatively few manufactured products from other parts
of England. Carpenters still used the oak and ash and elm of the
neighbourhood, sawn out for them by local sawyers: the wheelwright,
because iron was costly, mounted his cartwheels on huge axles fashioned
by himself out of the hardest beech; the smith, shoeing horses or
putting tyres on wheels, first made the necessary nails for himself,
hammering them out on his own anvil. So, too, with many other things.
Boots, brushes, earthenware, butter and lard, candles, bricks--they were
all of local make; cheese