So much being done to promote among the adults increasing intelligence and good feeling, there remains the most essential thing, the cornerstone of the whole system. It has been the practice of this master to promote weekly discussion--meetings among the operatives in his employment. Topics of the day, opinions of the press, the state of trade, questions concerning competition, discoveries on practical science or mechanics, especially such as affect the cotton-trade; and, lastly, the conduct and discipline of their own mill, provide plenty of matter for the free play of opinion. The master takes every possible opportunity of being present at these meetings; and, from what he has heard in them concerning his own mill, the Preston manufacturer declares that he has derived substantial advantage. It will, very often, he says, happen that the men may fancy themselves to be suffering under a grievance which does not really exist, and which a very little explanation will at once remove. Sometimes, too, a real grievance may be in existence, which the employer needs only to be informed of to remedy. In some mills, this master adds,--such is the fear of the consequence of being thought a grumbler,--that the men will often draw lots to determine who shall be the bearer of a complaint which may have been long seeking expression. With one extract we will sum up the result of the adoption of this system. “I confess,” says the Preston manufacturer, “that, at the time, having control of a large establishment, I cultivated a habit of meeting and discussing questions with my workmen, both questions affecting the public concernment, and questions relating to our business. I confess that I derived quite as much benefit from these discussions as they did; and how much that was, may be inferred from the fact that, after the institution of that habit, I never had a dispute with my operatives. And I will here say that, at those meetings, I have heard an amount of sound and various information, expressed with a native strength and eloquence such as would have surprised any one not conversant with the Lancashire population. It was from those meetings that I derived the settled conviction which I now entertain, that the operatives do not lack the power, but only the means, of forming sound and independent opinions.” We believe that we employ ourselves more usefully at this juncture in setting forth general principles like these than in any attempt, by arbitration as third parties in a special case, to introduce that which the Preston manufacturer declares to be only a fresh element of discord. THE HALL OF WINES.