r wives to spend L.8 upon a fine china tea-service. There being
a copious production of cotton-thread by machinery, but no machinery
to make it into cloth, was the cause of the high wages then given to
weavers. Afterwards came the powerloom; and weavers can now only
make perhaps 4s. 6d. per week, even while working for longer hours
than is good for their health. The result is most lamentable; but it
cannot be otherwise, for the public will only reward services in the
ratio of the value of these services to itself. It will not
encourage a human being, with his glorious apparatus of intelligence
and reflection, to mis-expend himself upon work which can be
executed equally well by unthinking machinery. Were the poor weavers
able so far to shake themselves free from what is perhaps a very
natural prejudice, as to ask what do we do to entitle us to any
better usage from the public, they would see that the fault lies in
their continuing to be weavers at all. They are precisely as the
innkeeper would be, if he kept his house open after the railway had
taken all his customers another way.

There are many cases in the professional walks of life fully as
deplorable as that of the weavers. Few things in the world are more
painful to contemplate than a well-educated and able man vainly
struggling to get bread as a physician, an artist, or an author. It
is of course right that such a man should not be too ready to
abandon the struggle as hopeless; for a little perseverance and
well-directed energy may bring him into a good position. But if a
fair experiment has been made, and it clearly appears that his
services are not wanted, the professional aspirant ought undoubtedly
to pause, and take a full unprejudiced view of his relation to the
world. 'Am I,' he may say, 'to expect reward if I persist in
offering the world what it does not want? Are my fellow-creatures
wrong in withholding a subsistence from me, while I am rather
consulting my own tastes and inclinations than their necessities?'
It may then occur to him that the great law must somehow be
obeyed--a something must be done for mankind which they require, and
it must be done where and how they require it, in order that each
individual may have a true claim upon the rest. To get into the
right and fitting place in the social machine may be difficult; but
there is no alternative. Let him above everything dismiss from his
mind the notion, that others can seriously help him. Let h