ot Hugo
V. Twelfth Century
VI. Monk Samson
VII. The Canvassing
VIII. The Election
IX. Abbot Samson
X. Government
XI. The Abbot's Ways
XII. The Abbot's Troubles
XIII. In Parliament
XIV. Henry of Essex
XV. Practical-Devotional
XVI St. Edmund
XVII The Beginnings

Book III--The Modern Worker

I. Phenomena,
II. Gospel of Mammonism
III. Gospel of Dilettantism
XV. Happy
V. The English
VI. Two Centuries
VII. Over-Production
VIII. Unworking Aristocracy
IX. Working Aristocracy
X. Plugson of Undershot
XI. Labour
XII Reward
XIII. Democracy
XIV Sir Jabesh Windbag
XV. Morrison Again

Book IV--Horoscope

I. Aristocracies
II. Bribery Committee
III. The One Institution
IV Captains of Industry
V. Permanence
VI. The Landed
VII. The Gifted
VIII The Didactic

Summary

Book I--Proem

Chapter I

Midas

The condition of England, on which many pamphlets are now in the
course of publication, and many thoughts unpublished are going on
in every reflective head, is justly regarded as one of the most
ominous, and withal one of the strangest, ever seen in this
world. England is full of wealth, of multifarious produce,
supply for human want in every kind; yet England is dying of
inanition. With unabated bounty the land of England blooms and
grows; waving with yellow harvests; thick-studded with
workshops, industrial implements, with fifteen millions of
workers, understood to be the strongest, the cunningest and the
willingest our Earth ever had; these men are here; the work
they have done, the fruit they have realised is here, abundant,
exuberant on every hand of us: and behold, some baleful fiat as
of Enchantment has gone forth, saying, "Touch it not, ye workers,
ye master-workers, ye master-idlers; none of you can touch it,
no man of you shall be the better for it; this is enchanted
fruit!" On the poor workers such fiat falls first, in its rudest
shape; but on the rich masterworkers too it falls; neither can
the rich master-idlers, nor any richest or highest man escape,
but all are like to be brought low with it, and made 'poor'
enough, in the money-sense or a far fataller one.

Of these successful skillful workers some two millions, it is now
counted, sit in Workhouses, Poor-law Prisons; or have 'out-door
relief' flung over the wall to them,--the workhouse Bastille
being filled to bursting, and the strong Poor-law broken asunder
by a stronger.* They sit there, these many month