year 1858, when he died at the age of
eighty-seven.

Mr. Holyoake, author of "The History of Cooperation in England,"
attributes to the teaching of Robert Owen the general establishment in
Great Britain of cooeperative stores, which have been successful. As time
goes on it is probable that other parts of his system, may become
available; and, perhaps, in the course of time, it may become possible
for men to live an associated life in communities such as he suggested.
But they will never do it until they can get Robert Owens at their head,
and learn to submit loyally and proudly to the just discipline essential
to success where a large number of persons work together.

JOHN SMEDLEY,

STOCKING-MANUFACTURER.

I wonder men in a factory town should ever have the courage to strike;
it brings such woe and desolation upon them all. The first few days, the
cessation from labor may be a relief and a pleasure to a large number--a
holiday, although a dull and tedious holiday, like a Sunday without any
of the alleviations of Sunday--Sunday without Sunday clothes, Sunday
bells, Sunday church, Sunday walks and visits. A painful silence reigns
in the town. People discover that the factory bell calling them to work,
though often unwelcome, was not a hundredth part as disagreeable as the
silence that now prevails. The huge mills stand gaunt and dead; there is
no noise of machinery, no puff of steam, no faces at the windows.

By the end of the first week the novelty has passed, and the money of
some of the improvident families is running low. All are upon short
allowance, the problem being to prolong life at the minimum of expense.
The man goes without his meat, the mother without her tea, the children
without the trifling, inexpensive luxuries with which parental fondness
usually treated them. Before the end of the second week a good many are
hungry, and the workers begin to pine for employment. Their muscles are
as hungry for exercise as their stomachs are for food. The provision
dealers are more and more cautious about giving credit. The bank
accounts, representing months or years of self-denying economy, begin to
lessen rapidly, and careful fathers see that the bulwarks which they
have painfully thrown up to defend their children against the wolf are
crumbling away a hundred times faster than they were constructed. If the
strike lasts a month, one half the population suffers every hour, and
suffers more in mind than in b