make them legal under a law all their
own, enable them to bring disputes before a
magistrate, and summarily punish any one
among them who should act dishonestly
towards the rest."

"And these Industrial Associations, what do
the workmen want with them?"—"Well, I'll
tell you. Look at my case. Once I worked
as journeyman to a rich man, who established
with his capital a large shop, and bought for
himself a country-house. He lives in his
country-house, and seldom sees his shop; he
pays wages to a large number of workmen,
receives their work, and sells it to the public
at a price which enables him to pay a manager
for overlooking us, and live at ease upon the
surplus, doing nothing. That made us think
that if some of us, who were steady, clubbed
together to maintain a shop, we might sell
our work in it ourselves, and so divide among
ourselves the profit of our labour; it goes
now to a master who does nothing, and whose
sole advantage over us is that of having
capital."

"But your Associations might not answer?"
—"Perhaps not; but what we say is, that the
law gives to a rich man power to use us, and
compels us to be used. It is at our own peril if
we club our work together and try to get the
entire value of our labour for ourselves; no
law protects us against one cheat among a
hundred companions. We say that we are
not free men, if we have not a right to earn
our bread in any honest way we can. It's
very likely most of us would still prefer to
work for certain wages; and we'd be well
content to do so if we did so by our own free
choice; but we are not content because we
have not liberty of action."

"What do you want, then?"—"Why we
cannot now associate without making
ourselves a Joint-Stock Company, and coming
under a parcel of laws made for people who
can wrap up every penny we have in a five-
pound note. We want extended reading of
the Friendly Societies Act, so that we may
have liberty to combine our labours if we
please, and cheap protection, when we do so,
against one another. We want no special
advantages. We only want our arms untied;
free-trade in labour. Let us find out for
ourselves what is good for us; don't hinder us
from any fair attempt to turn our money to
advantage; don't compel us to work for a
master and put by our money in the Savings
Banks, or Three per Cents. It may be some
of you are right in saying that is best for us.
Perhaps it is. If it is, we shall find it out
also, never fear. But let us find it out; don't
dictate to us, leave us free to act; and then,
if we go wrong, we shall know it's our own
fault, or a thing that can't be helped; and
not put down a part of it to your denial of
our honest wishes. Fustian don't envy
Broadcloth; each lives best in the society to which
he has been born; but fettered men envy the
free. The way to spread content among the
working-classes, is to show them that you
look on them as men and not as children, and
to give them choice to earn their bread on
any path they like, that is an honest one.

"Do you think we ought to have what we
want?"—"Of course, I do. Whether the
plan of Industrial Associations would
succeed is, of course, yet uncertain, but it well
deserves a trial. More than that,—we ought
to have the right of trying it. Then, if we
fail, we should know who is to blame; and
those few (for there would not, at first, be a
large number probably) who commenced with
the experiment would go back to the old plan
of wages."

"But if they succeeded and this system
spread?"—"Then that would be a blessing to
this country. The class of middlemen who live
upon the work of others is now very large;
that would decrease, and the country would
be enriched by a far larger number of
producers. The loss of intermediate profit-takers
would also cheapen produce, and a more
extended sense throughout the country that
each man was working for himself would
impart to the whole body of the people a free
manly tone, and give to all a greater interest
in peace and order. I think, that although
the result may possibly not realise a sanguine
vision, yet, that it is unjust to forbid attempts
which point in a right direction. If we
neglect these wishes of the working-classes,
we cannot wonder if they say that rich men
make rights for themselves which do not fit
the uses of the poor, and give the poor man
no equivalent."

"What are they going to do about Savings
Banks?"—"Government says, it intends to
be responsible for their security, and that
will take away a prevalent impression that
they are unsafe. Possibly, as they are the
safest, so they are the best investment for
the savings of the working-classes, but we
have no right to drive them to this kind
of hoarding. The mere sense of so much
money being kept for them by other people,
out of their sight, has not so great a moral
hold upon their minds as would be had by
something which they every day could see
and use. If they invested savings in their
daily work, in cottages, or, better still, a piece
of ground, which they could call their own,
man is so constituted as to be more usefully
acted upon by that visible fruit of his
exertion than by the abstract idea of possessing
its equivalent in money. That is truer of a
man the more you find him unsophisticated.
I would, therefore, have the workman's labour
and the money, or the fruit of it, to be his
own, and remove all removable impediments
to his free use of either."

"You think much of investment in a
cottage or a piece of land?"—"Yes, all
experience abroad, and all we know of history,
and all we see doing about us, show how
beneficial such investments are."

"All this being the case, what do you mean