one great working class,
working with brains, or hands, or both, who should therefore act in
harmony--the brain-workers and the hand-workers--for the equal rights of
all, without distinction of color, condition, or religion. Holding that
capital is accumulated labor, and wealth the creation of capital and
labor combined, he thought it to be the wise policy of the large
capitalists and corporations to help in the process of elevating and
advancing labor by a proffered interest."

These were the opinions of a man who had had long experience in all the
grades, from half-frozen apprentice to millionaire manufacturer.

He died in 1868, aged seventy-one years, leaving an immense estate;
which, however, chiefly consisted in his wire-manufactory. He had made
it a principle not to accumulate money for the sake of money, and he
gave away in his lifetime a large portion of his revenue every year. He
bequeathed to charitable associations the sum of four hundred and
twenty-four thousand dollars, which was distributed among twenty-one
objects. His great bequests were to institutions of practical and homely
benevolence: to the Home for Aged Women and Widows, one hundred thousand
dollars; to found a hospital and free dispensary, the same amount;
smaller sums to industrial schools and mission schools.

It was one of his fixed convictions that boys cannot be properly fitted
for life without being both taught and required to use their hands, as
well as their heads, and it was long his intention to found some kind of
industrial college. Finding that something of the kind was already in
existence at Worcester, he made a bequest to it of one hundred and ten
thousand dollars. The institution is called the Worcester County Free
Institute of Industrial Science.

ELIHU BURRITT,

THE LEARNED BLACKSMITH.

Elihu Burritt, with whom we have all been familiar for many years as the
Learned Blacksmith, was born in 1810 at the beautiful town of New
Britain, in Connecticut, about ten miles from Hartford. He was the
youngest son in an old-fashioned family of ten children. His father
owned and cultivated a small farm; but spent the winters at the
shoemaker's bench, according to the rational custom of Connecticut in
that day. When Elihu was sixteen years of age, his father died and the
lad soon after apprenticed himself to a blacksmith in his native
village.

He was an ardent reader of books from childhood up; and he was enabled
to gratify