Hall myself; and we will have a lecture,
or a conference-meeting. Subject, 'Work and Wages.' I'll have some
posters out too. Every one will know what we mean, that we are honest
men and true; and you will be spared this everlasting palaver. Then we
will have some rules, or by-laws, or something, for the workmen. Talk to
Mr. Winston about it. He would make a capital speaker, with his glib
tongue."

Darcy thought it an excellent plan, and they set about it immediately.

"But you'll have to post me," confessed Winston. "The only co-operation
I ever was in was a building-association, and our treasurer ran off with
our funds."

Maverick promised to "coach" him. Indeed, it was the doctor who gathered
up statistics, and put them in a compact and telling form.

They had a large audience,--men and women. "Robert Winston, Esq.," was
the orator of the evening. He was a fluent speaker, and had a good deal
of humor. He began about the early Anglo-Saxon guilds, and the banding
together of craftsmen when towns grew large and prosperous, and labor
was performed in the workshops, instead of at home; of the importance of
the woollen-manufacture in the days of Elizabeth, not only in England,
but on the Continent, when kings did not disdain to borrow money of
these corporations; of their final overthrow, and the causes leading to
it; of the growth of trades-unions, and the views of conflicting writers
on the subject. The workman's necessities so often compelled him to
accept what he felt to be inadequate returns, because he could not
wait,--it was work or starvation with him,--so that in dull times he was
not only at the mercy of the employer, but every other starving workman.
On the other hand, so few workmen ever informed themselves concerning
the employer's perplexities and dangers, they had no broad and vital
interest in the business until they all became leagued together, as in
co-operation. Then they shared one another's burdens and prosperity. It
was not the one great fortune, but the many comfortable incomes. It was
the fruit of the noblest thought and the truest philanthropy. As a
producer it had done its best work in France; and he went briefly over
the work of the masons at Paris, and the Association Remquet, which,
after carrying on printing business for ten years, divided among its
members an average of over ten thousand francs; the cloth-factory at
Vienna, with its flour-mill, bakery, grocery, coal-yard, and farm; the
dif