And so Cobden took possession of the mill at Sabden. Six hundred workers were employed, and there was not a school nor a church in the village. The workers worked when they wanted, and when they did not they quit. Every pay-day they tramped off to neighboring towns, and did not come back until they had spent their last penny. In an endeavor to discipline them, the former manager had gotten their ill- will, and they had mobbed the mill and broken every window. Cobden's task was not commercial: it was a problem in diplomacy and education. To tell of how he introduced schools, stopped child labor, planted flowerbeds and vegetable-gardens, built houses and model tenements, and disciplined the workers without their knowing it, would require a book. Let the simple fact stand that he made the mill pay by manufacturing a better grade of goods than had been made, and he also raised the social status of the people. In three years his income had increased to ten thousand pounds a year. "At thirty," says John Morley, "Cobden passed at a single step from the natural egotism of youth to the broad and generous public spirit of a great citizen." Very early in his manhood Cobden discovered that he who would do an extraordinary work must throw details on others, and scheme for leisure. Cobden never did anything he could hire any one else to do. He saved himself to do work that to others was impossible. That is to say, he picked his men, and he chose men of his own type--healthy, restless, eager, enthusiastic, honest men. The criticism of Disraeli that "Cobden succeeded in business simply because he got other people to do his work," is sternly true. It proves the greatness of Cobden. * * * * * And so we find Richard Cobden, the man who had never had any chance in life, thirty years old, with an income equal to thirty-five thousand dollars a year, and at the head of a constantly growing business. He had acquired the study habit ten years before, so really we need shed no tears on account of his lack of college training. He knew political history--knew humanity--and he knew his Adam Smith. And lo! cosmic consciousness came to him in a day. His personal business took second place, and world problems filled his waking dreams. These second births in men can usually be traced to a book, a death, a person, a catastrophe--a woman. If there was any great love in the life of Cobden I would make no effort to conceal it--goodness me! But the sublime passion was never his, otherwise there would have been more art and less economics in his nature. Yet for women he always had a high and chivalrous regard, and his strong sense of justice caused him to speak out plainly on the subject of equal rights at a time when to do so was to invite laughter.