If village social organisation inhibits experiment, so does village culture, - `culture' in the sense of a stock of inherited and acquired knowledge and experience. In I955, there were still only two forms of new enterprise established. One, motor transport - obvious, profitable (at least at first), and a development of a traditional activity; the other, flour milling - even closer to traditional rural business enterprise. Neither required much specialist knowledge. But talk of poultry farms and small textile mills or workshops remained talk, because people lacked the knowledge and experience to be sure of success. It is lack of a tradition and of experience rather than of capital that inhibits spontaneous enterprise.
The strength of village society, and the fact that villagers see their personal future in terms of the village and not of the nation, accounts for the strong attachment to farming, and the almost unanimous dislike which migrant labourers, even the most highly skilled, expressed for their occupation. Prestige and power in the village were tied with landowning and with permanent residence, not with wandering about the country, however profitable this might be.
If village social organisation limits and shapes economic behaviour, the changing economy has great effects on traditional social organisation. Some details of these changes will form part of later chapters. But in general, the main change is the multiplication, for most adult male villagers, of a new private set of more or less impersonal social relations with employers, fellow-workers, officials, and buyers and sellers, different for each individual, all leading out of the village into the national society. A generation ago, such external relations were the prerogative of village leaders, and even for them were far fewer and less impersonal. This change inevitably opens the structure of village society, and lessens the authority of its leaders.