[Sidenote: Co-operation.] Such facts touched him deeply and set him pondering and writing on how best they could be changed. Co-operation seemed to him to be the cure for these ills; he felt that it would bind together the interests of the capitalists and the working men, and would ultimately do away with the friction between them. An article he published on this subject attracted the notice of George Eliot, and his proposals were put into practice at a colliery near Leeds. CHAPTER XII THE SCHOOLS OF THE POOR Need of Non-Sectarian Education—Charity and Pauperism—Friendship with Working Men—The Voice that linked. [Sidenote: Need of Non-Sectarian Education.] But co-operation without intelligence and education in all classes was impossible. Fawcett felt keenly the need of non-sectarian national education, especially for the rural population. Schools would enlighten the workman so that he could learn how to make his work more profitable to himself and others, and how to make the best of his free hours, and so work out his independence. [Sidenote: Charity and Pauperism.] To the argument that compulsory school attendance, when the schooling was not gratuitous, would impose additional burdens upon the poor, he replied that the wages of labourers were determined not by open competition, but by what was absolutely necessary to keep soul and body together. The payment for schools would therefore not come out of their pockets, but be made up in their wages. The employer would be reimbursed either by a reduction of his rent or, it might be confidently hoped, by the increased efficiency of labour. A man considers himself repaid for keeping his horses in good condition, whilst he leaves his labourers in a state of semi-starvation. Fawcett held that whatever would give and stimulate the best in men was good, but he abhorred all that tended to restrict the independence and freedom of action of the poor. This latter principle made him a strong opponent of any form of State regulation of the lives and labour of the adult poor. It seemed to him that charity unsafeguarded which inevitably increases pauperism. He realised that tyranny always tries to justify itself; his interest in America made him familiar with the doctrine that slavery is best for the slave. ‘Interference may be tyranny in disguise even when it is really based on the best motives.’ He wrote sternly against State socialism and the nationalisation of the land. These plans, he said, regarded the State as a kind of supernatural milch cow, a body capable of making something out of nothing, of directly commanding supplies of manna from the heavens and water from the rocks; whereas, in point of fact, these were simply schemes for taking money from the prudent and handing it over to the idle.