Take a mining townlet like Woodhouse, with a population of ten thousand
people, and three generations behind it. This space of three generations
argues a certain well-established society. The old "County" has fled from
the sight of so much disembowelled coal, to flourish on mineral rights in
regions still idyllic. 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 the dark 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 chemist and the disinfectant of the doctor, on to the
serene gold-tarnish of bank-managers, cashiers for the firm, clergymen
and such-like, as far as the automobile refulgence of the general-manager
of all the collieries. Here the _ne plus ultra_. The general manager
lives in the shrubberied seclusion of the so-called Manor. The genuine
Hall, abandoned by the "County," has been taken over as offices by the
firm.

Here we are then: a vast substratum of colliers; a thick sprinkling of
tradespeople intermingled with small employers of labour and diversified
by elementary schoolmasters and nonconformist clergy; a higher layer of
bank-managers, rich millers and well-to-do ironmasters, episcopal clergy
and the managers of collieries, then the rich and sticky cherry of the
local coal-owner glistening over all.

Such the complicated social system of a small industrial town in the
Midlands of England, in this year of grace 1920. But let us go back a
little. Such it was in the last calm year of plenty, 1913.

A calm year of plenty. But one chronic and dreary malady: that of the odd
women. Why, in the name of all prosperity, should every class but the
lowest in such a society hang overburdened with Dead Sea fruit of odd
women, unmarried, unmarriageable women, called old maids? Why is it that
every tradesman, every school-master, every bank-manager, and every
clergyman produces one, two, three or more old maids? Do the
middle-classes, particularly the lower middle-classes, give birth to more
girls than boys? Or do the lower middle-class men assiduously climb up or
down, in marriage, thus leaving their true partners stranded? Or are
middle-class women very squeamish in their choice of husbands?