's churches: and
it is an imperative duty to provide such things. Nor, indeed, should we
stop at giving breathing places to crowded multitudes in great towns. To
provide cheap locomotion, as a means of social improvement, should be
ever in the minds of legislators and other influential persons. Blunders
in legislating about railroads, and absurd expenditure in making them,
are a far greater public detriment than they may seem at first sight.
Again, without interfering too much, or attempting to force a "Book of
Sports" upon the people, who in that case, would be resolutely dull and
lugubrious, the benevolent employer of labour might exert himself in many
ways to encourage healthful and instructive amusements amongst his men.
He might give prizes for athletic excellence or skill. He might aid in
establishing zoological gardens, or music-meetings, or exhibitions of
pictures, or mechanics' institutes. These are things in which some of
the great employers of labour have already set him the example. Let him
remember how much his workpeople are deprived of by being almost confined
to one spot; and let him be the more anxious to enlarge their minds by
inducing them to take interest in any thing which may prevent the
"ignorant present," and its low cares, from absorbing all their
attention. He has very likely some pursuit, or some art, in which he
takes especial pleasure himself, and which gives to his leisure, perhaps,
its greatest charm: he may be sure that there are many of his people who
could be made to share in some degree that pleasure, or pursuit, with
him. It is a large, a sure, and certainly a most pleasurable
beneficence, to provide for the poor such opportunities of recreation, or
means of amusement, as I have mentioned above. Neither can it be set
down as at all a trifling matter. Depend upon it, that man has not made
any great progress in humanity who does not care for the leisure hours
and amusements of his fellow-men.

While we are upon this matter, I will mention something which borders
closely upon it, though it applies to the consumer rather than the
manufacturer. Most men would think it much, if it were brought home to
them, that from any carelessness of theirs, some person had suffered
unnecessary imprisonment, if only for a day. And yet any one, who
encourages unreasonably late hours of business, does what he can to
uphold a system of needless confinement, depriving thousands of that
healthful