capital and became a fairly prosperous concern. During the whole of this time it gave employment at fair wages to several thousand workmen. Which had the best of it in these two cases, capital or labour, and where would the workmen have been on any communistic or co-operative system? In fact it will be apparent to any one who will study dispassionately the statistics of any line of inquiry, such as the scale of wages, the price of provisions, the accumulations of savings banks and provident societies, &c., for the last twenty years, that the working classes have had the lion’s share of the vast increase which has taken place in the wealth and income of the nation. I am glad that it is so, for it is better, both morally and politically, that the condition of the masses should be improved, and their standard of living raised, than that capital should accumulate too exclusively in large masses. Still there is a good deal to be said for such large accumulations. Let us go to the United States of America for an illustration, where everything is on a large scale, and colossal fortunes have been made in a few years. The _modus operandi_ by which most of these fortunes have been made may be described according to the way we look at it, either as railway jobbing or as pioneering the way in useful enterprise. The construction of the first railway across the continent to California is a typical instance. A clique or syndicate of wealthy speculators make surveys and estimates of a line across deserts and over mountain ranges, and ascertain pretty accurately what it will cost. They form a company with a capital of double that cost, and by subventions from the Government, grants of land, and sale of mortgage bonds, raise the half really required, and hold the other half in shares as profit in paper. The line is made, and if the traffic turns out well, and there is a period of speculation in the money market, the paper is turned into dollars, and, if the line really costs, say, 10,000,000_l._ or 20,000,000_l._, the promoters realise an equal amount as profit.