Take a mining townlet like Woodhouse, with a population of ten thousand people,and three generations behind it. This space of three generations argues acertain well-established society. The old “County” has fled from the sight ofso much disembowelled coal, to flourish on mineral rights in regions stillidyllic. Remains one great and inaccessible magnate, the local coal owner:three generations old, and clambering on the bottom step of the “County,”kicking off the mass below. Rule him out.
A well established society in Woodhouse, full of fine shades, ranging from thedark of coal-dust to grit of stone-mason and sawdust of timber-merchant,through the lustre of lard and butter and meat, to the perfume of the chemistand the disinfectant of the doctor, on to the serene gold-tarnish ofbank-managers, cashiers for the firm, clergymen and such-like, as far as theautomobile refulgence of the general-manager of all the collieries. Here thene plus ultra. The general manager lives in the shrubberied seclusion ofthe so-called Manor. The genuine Hall, abandoned by the “County,” has beentaken over as offices by the firm.
Here we are then: a vast substratum of colliers; a thick sprinkling oftradespeople intermingled with small employers of labour and diversified byelementary schoolmasters and nonconformist clergy; a higher layer ofbank-managers, rich millers and well-to-do ironmasters, episcopal clergy andthe managers of collieries, then the rich and sticky cherry of the localcoal-owner glistening over all.
Such the complicated social system of a small industrial town in the Midlandsof England, in this year of grace 1920. But let us go back a little. Such itwas in the last calm year of plenty, 1913.
A calm year of plenty. But one chronic and dreary malady: that of the oddwomen. Why, in the name of all prosperity, should every class but the lowest insuch a society hang overburdened with Dead Sea fruit of odd women, unmar