[277] The _Times_ honoured these events by long descriptive reports from its “own correspondent,” then an unusual practice; see the issues from April 17 to 25, 1834. A good account is also to be found in the _Leeds Mercury_, April 19 and 26, 1834; see also the _History of the Marcroft Family_ (1889), pp. 1036. [278] _Trades Journal_, March 1, 1841; probably written by Alexander Hutchinson, general secretary of the Friendly United Smiths of Great Britain and Ireland. [279] _England and America: a Comparison of the Social and Political State of both Nations_, 1833, 2 vols. [280] _Poor Man’s Guardian_, March 12, 1831; Place MSS. 27791--246, 272. “There were seven Co-operative Congresses in the years 1830-5 in which the Trade Union and Labour Exchange elements were prominent” (Prof. Foxwell’s Introduction to _The Right to the Full Produce of Labour_, by Anton Menger, 1899). [281] See the volumes of the _Poor Man’s Guardian_, preserved in the British Museum. [282] Place MSS. 27797--290; see a similar account in the _Life of William Lovett_, by himself, p. 86. James Mill writes to Lord Brougham on September 3, 1832, as follows: “Nothing can be conceived more mischievous than the doctrines which have been preached to the common people.... The nonsense to which your lordship alludes about the right of the labourer to the whole produce of the country, wages, profits, and rent all included, is the mad nonsense of our friend Hodgskin, which he has published as a system, and propagates with the zeal of perfect fanaticism.... The illicit cheap publications, in which the doctrine of the right of the labouring people, who they say are the only producers, to all that is produced, is very generally preached, ... are superseding the Sunday newspapers and every other channel through which the people might get better information” (Bain’s _James Mill_, p. 363, 1882). The series of Socialist authors of these years, usually ignored, have been well described by Prof. Foxwell in his Introduction to the English translation of Menger’s _Right to the Whole Produce of Labour_, 1899; and more fully and philosophically in M. Beer’s _History of British Socialism_, 1919, vol. i. [283] “Owen’s chief merit was that he filled the working classes with renewed hope at a time when the pessimism, both of orthodox economists and of their unorthodox opponents, had condemned labour to be an appendage of machinery, a mere commodity whose value, like that of all commodities, was determined by the bare cost of keeping up the necessary supply. Owen laid stress upon the human side of economics. The object of industry was to produce happier and more contented men and women” (_The Chartist Movement_, by Mark Hovell, 1918, p. 45).