HISTORY OF VILLAGE LIFE 137 



common pasture. Food and all necessaries 

 were supplied and made by the village occu- 

 piers. Life was centralized round each Httle 

 community, and every individual shared in its 

 welfare and prosperity. But the Enclosure 

 Acts of the eighteenth and nineteenth cen- 

 turies wrought a severe change in the prospects 

 of rural workers. The village partnership in 

 the open field and common pasture was broken 

 up, and even when compensation was obtained, 

 all hope vanished of ever regaining a share in 

 the profits of the land they tilled. The out- 

 look was further blackened by the concen- 

 tration of trades into the large industrial 

 centres, consequent on the introduction of 

 machinery and the growing rapidity and 

 cheapness of transport. Besides the loss of 

 interest in the land, except as mere wage- 

 earners, rural workers could no longer depend 

 for an addition to their weekly earnings on 

 spinning, lace-making, woollen work, sack- 

 making, basket- and wicker-work, etc. Villages 

 drained of their local handicrafts and indus- 

 tries, which had hitherto fulfilled so important 

 a part in their internal history, were thus 

 reduced to communities entirely dependent 



