asily become capitalists. It requires only
will, energy, and self-denial. So much money spent on buildings, plant,
and steam-engines, would enable them to manufacture for themselves,
instead of for the benefit of individual capitalists. The steam-engine
is impartial in its services. It is no respecter of persons; it will
work for the benefit of the labourer as well as for the benefit of the
millionaire. It will work for those who make the best use of it, and who
have the greatest knowledge of its powers.

The greater number of workmen possess little capital save their labour;
and, as we have already seen, many of them uselessly and wastefully
spend most of their earnings, instead of saving them and becoming
capitalists. By combining in large numbers for the purposes of
economical working, they might easily become capitalists, and operate
upon a large scale. As society is now constituted, every man is not only
justified but bound in duty as a citizen, to accumulate his earnings by
all fair and honourable methods, with the view of securing a position of
ultimate competence and independence.

We do not say that men should save and hoard their gains for the mere
sake of saving and hoarding; this would be parsimony and avarice. But we
do say that all men ought to aim at accumulating a sufficiency--enough
to maintain them in comfort during the helpless years that are to
come--to maintain them in times of sickness and of sorrow, and in old
age, which, if it does come, ought to find them with a little store of
capital in hand, sufficient to secure them from dependence upon the
charity of others.

Workmen are for the most part disposed to associate; but the association
is not always of a healthy kind. It sometimes takes the form of Unions
against masters; and displays itself in the Strikes that are so common,
and usually so unfortunate. Workmen also strike against men of their own
class, for the purpose of excluding them from their special calling. One
of the principal objects of trades-unions is to keep up wages at the
expense of the lower paid and unassociated working people. They
endeavour to prevent poorer men learning their trade, and thus keep the
supply of labour below the demand.[1] This system may last for a time,
but it becomes ruinous in the end.

[Footnote 1: On the 31st January, 1875, a labourer in the employment of
Messrs. Vickers, Sheffield, who had not served an apprenticeship, was
put on to turn one of the l