st. At the beginning of their great enterprise, their
works occupied about four acres of land; they now occupy over
thirty-six acres. The firm has imported not less than two hundred
thousand tons of iron; which have been converted by skill and labour
into 168 ships of 253,000 total tonnage. These ships, if laid close
together, would measure nearly eight miles in length.

The advantage to the wage-earning class can only be shortly stated.
Not less than 34 per cent. is paid in labour on the cost of the ships
turned out. The number of persons employed in the works is 3920; and
the weekly wages paid to them is 4000L., or over 200,000L. annually.
Since the commencement of the undertaking, about two millions sterling
have been paid in wages.

All this goes towards the support of the various industries of the
place. That the working classes of Belfast are thrifty and frugal may
be inferred from the fact that at the end of 1882 they held deposits in
the Savings Bank to the amount of 230,289L., besides 158,064L. in the
Post Office Savings Banks.[22] Nearly all the better class working
people of the town live in separate dwellings, either rented or their
own property. There are ten Building Societies in Belfast, in which
industrious people may store their earnings, and in course of time
either buy or build their own houses.

The example of energetic, active men always spreads. Belfast contains
two other shipbuilding yards, both the outcome of Harland and Wolff's
enterprise; those of Messrs. Macilwaine and Lewis, employing about four
hundred men, and of Messrs. Workman and Clarke, employing about a
thousand. The heads of both these firms were trained in the parent
shipbuilding works of Belfast. There is do feeling of rivalry between
the firms, but all work together for the good of the town.

In Plutarch's Lives, we are told that Themistocles said on one
occasion, "'Tis true that I have never learned how to tune a harp, or
play upon a lute, but I know how to raise a small and inconsiderable
city to glory and greatness." So might it be said of Harland and
Wolff. They have given Belfast not only a potency for good, but a
world-wide reputation. Their energies overflow. Mr. Harland is the
active and ever-prudent Chairman of the most important of the local
boards, the Harbour Trust of Belfast, and exerts himself to promote the
extension of the harbour facilities of the port as if the benefits were
to be exclusively his o