II. “I hope that you will live to see Fors and everything printed without steam: it’s the very curse and unmaking of us. I can see it dreadfully in every workman that I come across. Since I have been so happily mixed up with you these eighteen years, great changes have taken place in workmen. It was beginning fearfully when I last worked as a journeyman. One instance among many:—The head foreman came to me at Messrs. Bakers’, and threatened discharge if he caught me using a hand bow-saw to cut a little circular disc, which I could have done in ten minutes. I then had to go and wait my turn at the endless steam saw—or, as commonly called, a band saw. I had to wait an hour and a half to take my turn: the steam saw did it in perhaps three minutes; but the head foreman said, ‘We’ve gone to great expense for steam machinery, and what is the use if we don’t employ it?’ This little occurrence was by no means uncommon. What workpeople have been brought to is beyond conception, in tone of feeling and character. Here, as I have told you, we do all we can ourselves, indoors and out; have no servant, but make the children do: and because we are living in a tidy-sized house, and a good piece of ground, the labouring people make a dead set against us because we are not dependent upon them, and have even combined to defeat us in getting a charwoman now and then. We ought, I suppose, to employ two servants, whether we can pay for them or not, or even obtain them (which we couldn’t). They have been picking hops here next our hedge: this is done by people in the neighbourhood, not imported pickers; and their children called over the hedge to ours, and said, ‘Your mother is not a lady; she don’t keep a servant, but does the work herself.’ I name this little incident because it seems so deep.” III. “My dear Mr. Ruskin,—I write to ask leave to come and enter my name on the Roll of Companions of the Company of St. George. [77] I have seen enough and read enough of the pace at which we are going, more especially in business matters, to make me long to see some effort made to win back some of the honesty and simplicity of our fathers. And although I am afraid I can be but of very little use to the Company, I would gladly do anything that lay within my power; and it would be a great help to feel oneself associated with others, however feebly, in a practical work.