choice of future apprentices. They hope to employ some of the summer half-holidays in visiting different factories to which we may be able to introduce them.

We propose that it should be put upon us as a part of our ordinary duty to make arrangements for receiving into the Company's charge, to lie at interest, or to be paid out at any time on demand, any part of the wages of our people which they may wish so to put away, in however small separate sums. We are aware that this opening of a private savings' bank for which the Company will be responsible, although a trifling and perfectly safe thing at first, might bring very evil consequences hereafter, unless arranged with all the caution which such a possibility of future evil points out as necessary. But the responsibility incurred and caution required by such a measure are not a tenth part so great as the responsibility incurred and caution required in the Company's daily business; so that this is no sufficient reason against the proposal.

But in our case the first savings must often be single pennies and other sums not exceeding sixpence, for many of our boys have an understanding with their mothers that threepence or sixpence a week is the most that they can afford to let them keep for their own purposes out of their wages.

That the boys will be ready to avail themselves of facilities for saving has already been proved in the factory. We have known as much as £37 in the hands of one man, the savings of the boys in his part of the work, they having confidence in him, and he being always at hand at wages time; and a good deal is done in smaller sums in this way of men persuading boys about them to save, and the boys making them their bankers to help them to do so. We have also received small sums in the school-room. But these little private plans are all defective and quite insufficient.

We propose in all parts of the Factory where regularity of time is of importance, to secure this by an annual money reward of moderate amount, to those only, however, whose conduct has been good in other respects also. This will make more hearty work than the dread of fines, or of dismissal, and, moreover, will show whatever fines or other punishment may still be necessary, to be so manifestly right, as to make, not only the Factory in general, but the delinquent himself, sensible of this, and so prevent his mind rising against them. This is a point of more delicacy and importance than a person not led by circumstances constantly to watch Factory feelings would at first suppose; for there is nothing in the exercise of the authority over him against which a man's mind rises so instantly and so strongly, as a fine imposed either upon himself or upon a fellow workman, unless he can clearly see both its justice and necessity; and as strong prejudices and fellow feeling are the spectacle glasses through which he begins to look for these, they often require to be made what the master thinks most unnecessarily plain before he can catch sight of them: and anger and soreness of mind, whether well founded or not, are quite as troublesome guests in a factory as irregularity of time. Money fines and stoppage of time are two of the first points pitched upon by clap-trap speakers about factory labour,

for a man is then caught hold of by his good side, his sense of justice. He would work more cheerfully for fifteen shillings a week, than for a pound a-week with a shilling fine of doubtful propriety. We propose that in all cases of men being obliged to pay fines to the sick-fund, the Company should pay to it an equal amount in addition, not in order to do away with ill-feeling about any fines now imposed, for happily no such feeling exists, but in order to carry higher the happy state of good feeling, and so to enable us to exercise greater strictness, and to feel less fear of putting on all fines of the propriety and advisability of which we ourselves feel certain. The amount so paid by the Company will be trifling.

The first objection will probably be, that we are an Act of Parliament Trading Company, and that this fact binds the Directors, who are but trustees of the joint stock property, to keep strictly within the limits of the ordinary trade ideas of their time and country in their management of it, whereas some of these plans are manifestly at variance with these ideas.

We shall put our review of the progress of the trade into the imaginary frame-work of a Company, to make more evident the parallelism of its course to the course which we are now engaged in defending.

We will suppose a candle company in existence a moderate number of years back. One of the then ordinary trade ideas was, that candles should be made without expensive machinery, by causing raw tallow to congeal upon a clumsy mass of unprepared cotton. Great capital was required; that of our Company would not have been at all too large; but the trade idea said that nearly the whole ought to be in floating stock, in candles, that is, made long before use, and stored, in order to get rid by lapse of time of some of the abominations incidental to their imperfect manufacture. Now, the Directors of such a Company, if good men for their place, instead of resting contented with the ordinary trade ideas of their time, would have found their professional instincts grieved and offended by the barbarous state of things around them. In this state of mind, they would have made careful observation of the effect of the introduction of science and machinery into other trades, and much cautious consideration and experiment of the best mode of introducing them into their own. They would presently have felt their way sufficiently to decide upon the withdrawal of some of the capital from the safe form of floating stock (in which it could always be realised and returned to the proprietors, in case of anything going wrong with the trade), and the sinking it in machinery, unrealisable, and indeed of little value, except in the hope afforded by it of future profits. They would have continued to lay out in this way one ten thousand pounds after another, until they had increased the amount of sunk capital to at least a hundred times that sanctioned by ordinary trade ideas. They would have quadrupled the labour and fuel expended upon each ton of material, and would have complicated so much the previously simple and inexpensive process, that each particle of the material would have to be brought into the state of invisible gas, and back again, once at least, often twice, in its passage from the

cask to the mould. And finally, they would have had the hardihood to assert, that all this expenditure was a part of their simple duty of managing the trade of the Company as prudently and economically as possible; and that they staked their character as men of business, that the result would be the production of candles of less cost than before, and of double value, and a consequent enormous pecuniary gain to the Company. The result would have proved them to be right; but, until it came, some of the proprietors would have shaken their heads, and would have thought that there was a great deal too much deviation here from ordinary trade ideas.

This case, constructed out of the experience of the past, is in strict analogy with our recommendations for the future, for in each there is one only reason for, and one only reason against the course in question; the affirmative reason in both cases being confidence in the strong conviction of those in the best position for forming a right judgment, and the reason against in both cases being contrariety to 'ordinary trade ideas.'

We must, however, state that in using the words strictest trade principles' we do not mean that the definition of these should be sought in a dictionary of political economy, but in actual life; by examining trading establishments, and by judging by plain common sense, which of them are in the highest state as to present, and promise of future, trading efficiency, especially in their human machinery and at what comparative expenditures of money, the various degrees of efficiency have been attained. We feel certain that this exami nation would prove that all such things as we are proposing are, so far as trade results are concerned, neither more nor less than the adoption into trade of the principle of high farming. In the one, an apparently extravagant amount per acre, in the other an apparently extravagant amount per man, is expended, and in each case with the same result, that of bringing back again, not in the first year perhaps, but in a series of years, all the amount expended, and a large profit on it besides. And at their first commencement they were alike scouted, the one by all received farming, the other by all received trading ideas; and their originators were held to be visionary persons, and extravagant, forfeiting their character as prudent practical men, and their right to the confidence of such men.

The expenditure proposed should be viewed in relation to the other sums with which our concern has to deal, and not in its mere absolute amount. Suppose one of our Proprietors, not conversant with the business, were to be told, after the end of the year, but before the balance was declared, that we had lost from 800 to 1000 tons of the palm oil bought in the course of the year; that is, that the weight of candles and oil produced was this much short of the weight of palm oil paid for; and that the money amount of this loss was near £30,000; he might think that a business in which £500 a week was being wasted, must be going headlong to ruin. Yet this is the real amount of the aggregate of trifling losses, by the small quantity of impurity in each cask, added to the quantity of material which we find it profitable positively to destroy on account of the additional value given by the same process to the remainder. If we want 4000

tons of produce, we could make it out of 4000 tons of material, but it would be poor stuff when it was made; so, as we want the best produce we can get, we buy not only the 4000 tons absolutely necessary, but 800 more, which we were under no necessity to buy, and which, to any person not understanding the circumstances, would appear to be sheer waste. Now, as we want annually £30,000 value of labour, and, as we believe the best to be the cheapest, we propose to lay out not only the £30,000 absolutely necessary,but something more besides, and which, being unnecessary, would have an appearance of waste to any one not understanding the circumstances.

We would entreat the Proprietors to look at the amount in this way, not as an absolute but as a relative one, and to admit into their minds as a principle, for our benefit, and that of all their future managing directors, that there is no reason beforehand for suspecting of extravagance any plans involving an expenditure of not more than a certain moderate proportion of the whole amount paid for labour; but that on the contrary, instead of it being thought that the manager who should propose such plans was going too fast, the presumption would rather be, that one who did not propose any, was going too slow, and thus missing the opportunity of making outlays which would bring a profitable return.

On this view, of looking not at the absolute amount of ali such expenditure, but at its amount relatively to the magnitude of the business, we should be disposed, were the factory our own, to place every year to a separate account, headed charges incidental to the employment of labour,' a certain fixed proportion of the whole amount of the wages account, or a fixed sum per ton of raw material, or an amount varying in some other such way with the variations of the business; and out of this amount to pay such charges as we are now considering, and also all educational and other such charges."

We trust that no reader of this Review will hold that we have inserted these extracts, condensed even as many of them are, at too considerable a length. We believe them of first importance; the Proprietors of the Company ordered several thousand copies to be printed, and we earnestly hope that all who read this paper will give the suggestions of Mr. Wilson the fullest consideration.

Mr. Wilson has wisely proposed that his Company shall identify the interests and the prosperity of the Factory with the welfare and improvement, in mind and body, of those in its employment. They are to be men-freemen not serfs. Mr. Wilson is no esprit d'escalier; he proposes no schemes which he is not prepared to carry out. The Christian Managing Director of the Candle Company to-day, is but applying to the workers of his Factory, the truth which, in old times, the pagan Pliny applied to agricultural labor done by slaves, when he wrote, "Coli rura ab ergastulis pessimum est; et quicquid agitur, à desperantibus.'

The cost of all these new proposals amounted to almost £500 per annum; and although fully agreeing with Mr. Wilson in all his views, the Board thought it advisable that the consent of the Proprietors should be obtained before so large an outlay should be made. At a meeting of the Proprietors, held on the 16th of December, 1852,-66 Proprietors being present, it was resolved, with only two dissentient voices, that Mr. Wilson's plan should be carried out the two dissentients were quite willing to vote with the majority if the resolution were confined to one year as a trial : many proprietors, residing at a distance from London, wrote approving the proposals. So far we have written of the manner in which the Proprietors received Mr. Wilson's proposals. What, it may be asked, was the conduct of the workers? it was worthy of them, it was worthy of English

men :

"When the result of the Proprietors' Meeting was known in the Belmont Factory, the men arranged among themselves, without any suggestion by the managing Directors, to hold a meeting upon it; and accordingly, on the following Saturday evening, the 18th December, 1852, upwards of 500 of the workpeople in that factory came together. Mr. Craddock, foreman of the Candle-makers, was called to the chair, and the meeting proceeded as follows.

The Chairman said, that the Meeting was called to consider a letter written by the Managing Directors, and cordially agreed to, first by the Board, and then by a General Meeting of the Proprietors, called on the previous Thursday, for that special purpose. He was fully convinced that the Meeting would feel it incumbent upon it to show, by the adoption of certain resolutions, that they were sensible of the kindness they had hitherto experienced from the Company, and could fully appreciate the boons which the Company so spontaneously proposed on Thursday last, to confer upon their workpeople, for their comfort and welfare. When it was considered that the proceedings of the Company were almost, if not quite, unprecedented, it was certainly of the utmost importance that acts which were likely to benefit thousands of the working classes, by the adoption of similar ones in other factories, should be properly responded to. He was sure, from past experience, that the Company would be amply rewarded for what it had done, as every additional act on its part to promote the welfare of its workpeople, was an additional motive, if such were necessary, for every person to do all in his power to promote the prosperity of the concern. He concluded by reading the several propositions passed at the Meeting of the Proprietors, each of which was received with the most enthusiastic cheering.

Mr. PUNCH, Engineer, in moving the first resolution, agreed with the Chairman in the great importance of the Meeting, as it was to