rancs a-year. Now, let us make the addition. I employ one hundred
and forty-six married workmen, who pay together, for their wretched
holes, thirty-six thousand five hundred francs; I employ also one
hundred and fifteen bachelors, who pay at the rate of seventeen thousand
two hundred and eighty francs; the total will amount to about fifty
thousand francs per annum, the interest on a million."'

"Dear me, M. Agricola! what a sum to be produced by uniting all these
little rents together!"

"You see, mademoiselle, that fifty thousand francs a-year is a
millionaire's rent. Now, what says our speculator: To induce our workmen
to leave Paris, I will offer them, enormous advantages. I will reduce
their rent one-half, and, instead of small, unwholesome rooms, they
shall have large, airy apartments, well-warmed and lighted, at a
trifling charge. Thus, one hundred and forty-six families, paying me
only one hundred and twenty-five francs a-year, and one hundred
and fifteen bachelors, seventy-five francs, I shall have a total of
twenty-six to twenty-seven thousand francs. Now, a building large enough
to hold all these people would cost me at most five hundred thousand
francs.(31) I shall then have invested my money at five per cent at the
least, and with perfect security, since the wages is a guarantee for the
payment of the rent.'"

"Ah, M. Agricola! I begin to understand how it may sometimes be
advantageous to do good, even in a pecuniary sense."

"And I am almost certain, mademoiselle, that, in the long run, affairs
conducted with uprightness and honesty turn out well. But to return to
our speculator. 'Here,' will he say, 'are my workmen, living close to
my factory, well lodged, well warmed, and arriving always fresh at
their work. That is not all; the English workman who eats good beef, and
drinks good beer, does twice as much, in the same time, as the French
workman,(32) reduced to a detestable kind of food, rather weakening than
the reverse, thanks to the poisonous adulteration of the articles he
consumes. My workmen will then labor much better, if they eat much
better. How shall I manage it without loss? Now I think of it, what
is the food in barracks, schools, even prisons? Is it not the union of
individual resources which procures an amount of comfort impossible to
realize without such an association? Now, if my two hundred and sixty
workmen, instead of cooking two hundred and sixty detestable dinners,
were to unite to