There are, no doubt, two objections at least which may be raised against the adoption of any scheme founded on these hints: first, one on the score of increased expenditure; secondly, one condemning increased centralization. With regard to the former, my answer is that health, especially the health of the aggregate mass of the body politic, cannot possibly be bought too dear; and that nothing really is so costly to any community as pestilence and death. As to the latter, I have no other defence to urge than my firm conviction that, much as it is railed against, centralization is as nearly an unmixed good as it is possible for anything in this sublunary (and marvellously complex) sphere to be. Everybody knows how inadequate the very best isolated efforts are to exterminate any widespread evil; and even organizations which are independent of, and do not radiate from or gravitate to, a common centre, frequently cross each other's paths, and to some extent defeat each other's purposes; occasioning a great waste of wholesome energy, which, well directed, might achieve marvellous results. As cosmos is greater than chaos--as a well-spliced rope is stronger than its separate strands--so is centralization and cohesion greater and stronger than individualism and segregation. Pocket. Many a vigorous arm has applied the axe to that dense and matted jungle, the indigence of the lower orders; but little more has been accomplished than the blunting of the hatchet and the exhaustion of the pioneer who wielded it. This being the case, it would be the height of folly for me, with my far feebler frame and my puny weapon, to attempt to do more than to peer cautiously around the deep shades, and try to find out, as a dweller _within_ those murky woods, if here a little path and there a little opening, into which a gleam of sunlight penetrates at times, be not discoverable, half hidden, perchance, by clumps of brushwood, which it will cost but little trouble to clear away. I shall therefore restrict myself to indicating such of these openings as I see, or fancy I see, from whence operations might, according to my notion, be directed towards the demolition of portions at all events of this swart and gloomy forest. One of the largest of these clearings is undoubtedly, I think, _Co-operation_, of which there are two kinds--viz., combinations between masters and men in the shape of limited partnerships, a per-centage on profits, &c.; and combinations amongst the wage-earners themselves for certain specified purposes. With regard to the first named, I am rather inclined to doubt the probability of its ever becoming an important factor in the sum of human progress, on account of the unlikelihood of its being generally adopted either in the near or distant future, and I am still more sceptical as to its efficacy as a panacea, even if it were universally reduced to practice, especially in these days of commercial disasters.