If, at this point, any reader should pause to ask: “What, then, ought the Brothers Cheeryble to do? Ought they to leave the selling of safety pins to some less scrupulous persons? Or ought they to go on underpaying the cappers?” I reply that the worthy twins should follow neither of these courses, but should bend their minds to inventing or getting invented a machine that would cap the pins even more cheaply, because much more expeditiously, than the hand workers. The reduction in the cost of production would then allow the payment of decent wages to the operators. Mechanical operations should be done by machines, and hand work should be reserved for those which demand individual variation or peculiar and special perfection. The capping of safety pins, which falls under neither of these heads, is emphatically an operation to which the human brain and hand should not be put. Footnote 69: Industrial Co-operation. Edited by Catherine Webb, p. 242. These figures do not include middle class joint stock associations, such as the Army and Navy Stores. Footnote 70: Industrial Co-operation, p. 80. Footnote 71: In order to do so readers must address themselves to the Co-operative Union, 2 Nicholas Croft, High St., Manchester. It is much to be regretted that so valuable and informing a work should be published in a manner that almost restricts its influence to persons who are already convinced co-operators. The outer world of readers who badly need to understand the facts and meanings of the great co-operative movement have no opportunity of meeting with the one volume that compendiously explains the existing conditions. Footnote 72: Economy of high wages, p. 63. Footnote 73: Of course a minimum rate of wages and sometimes indeed a complete scale of wages has often been fixed by various local bodies or departments; but only when such bodies have been, directly or indirectly, employers of labour. Thus the duty of employers to pay a fair wage has been recognised, but not, as yet, the duty or the right of the State to enforce the payment. Footnote 74: It may be worth noting here—though the point lies outside the scope of this chapter—that an expansion of trade when wages do not rise leads to the extraordinary state known as overproduction, in which producers complain that they cannot find a market for their wares, at the same time that hundreds of fellow citizens are seen to be in crying need of these same wares. Footnote 75: Mr Charles Booth’s tables show that in 1889, out of a population of 891,539, in East London, there were no less than 47,225 members of various Friendly Societies. Footnote 76: This explanation of the impracticability of a Consumers’ League is reprinted, with the alteration of a few words, from the Supplement to the _Guardian_, the Editor of which has given me leave to reproduce it in this chapter. Footnote 77: