After the advance of civilization and knowledge beyond a certain period, the ambitions and necessities of a people will furnish abundant incentives to keep society in a state of activity. The energies of life are stimulated, not so much by the large occasional rewards which come to a few, like prizes in a lottery, as the steady and certain remuneration of each day’s output of action to all. The ability to obtain from industry a considerable margin beyond the daily expenses of life is sufficient to keep alive the mental and physical energies, and is certain to bring about that general state of hopefulness, which more than anything else promotes thrift and stimulates ambition. It may be somewhat at variance with your views of political economy, to believe that any reduction of the power and value of capital will not in a corresponding degree depress labor. You must bear in mind, however, that the stationary state, as exemplified by our society, differs from your progressive condition, not in the lesser abundance of capital, but in its better diffusion, more dependent relations, and smaller comparative profits. It follows from this as a matter of course, that it requires the possession of a larger amount of the products of labor to bring about that condition of life known as a competency than it does with you. But by a well determined arrangement in all ways in favor of those who toil, by which a fair margin is secured between income and expense, the coveted independence is always within reach. Under our system, capital becoming diffused among the masses in comparatively small portions, and having no such extraordinary uses, nor such high rates of interest as with you, it assumes its natural place as an adjunct to all the enterprises of labor. All our factories are consequently carried on by co-operation. No such a thing is known on our planet as the owner of a manufacturing establishment depressing at his will and pleasure the pay of perhaps a whole community of working people. When an establishment is required for the manufacture of some product in demand, our workmen undertake it as a business belonging wholly to themselves, and there is never any lack of means among them to do it. The utter helpless condition of your workmen, as a class, is not entirely owing to their enforced scant share in the profits of industry. Whoever among them, by greater abstinence or otherwise, succeeds in saving any considerable portion of his earnings, hastens either to change his situation for that of employer, where self-interest inclines him to favor low wages, or to seek among the greater encouragements outside a change of occupation. By this process capital and labor are constantly being divorced, and the ranks of your workmen are left to contain only those whose necessities hold them there.