I am not myself a manufacturer, and I do not feel competent either to praise or to criticize this particular solution of particular industrial problems. I know that John Stuart Mill in his “Political Economy” vaguely hints at some such ultimate evolution of the wage-worker; and I know also that in many cases the coöperative idea, in actual practice, has succeeded very well indeed. In my own mind, knowing the habits of a plutocracy, I cannot help doubting whether widespread coöperation between wage workers and capital, particularly between the lower orders of the wage workers and the larger masters of capital, would not simply afford to dishonest, disreputable, or unprincipled captains of industry a fuller opportunity than they now enjoy to hold down the wages and profits of wage workers. Yet I would but express this doubt as a personal feeling of my own, rather than as a conviction founded upon research or upon broad knowledge of the subject. It is not germane to my theme to enter upon a detailed discussion either of this possible reform or of any other. I would simply point out as illustrations two or three of the greater reforms that I hear month by month discussed more and more among the people of my class. Personally, I am a bit tired of reform; for Society, as I have said, will plunge _en masse_ through any door that has a reform label sticking on it anywhere. Often, as I think of the long list of reforms advocated by distinguished individuals, churches, educators, civic associations, politicians, and societies, I wonder what would happen if they all succeeded. I won’t be here to find out; but if, in some future existence, no matter what my destination, I hear that it has come to pass, I am quite sure that I shall be glad to be away. In passing from this subject I cannot refrain from reiterating the note of warning contained in an earlier paragraph. To my charitable friends of the upper classes whose heads are full of reforms and alms-giving I would say, give not at all if, in giving, or in supporting reforms, you hope or expect thereby to gain the favour of the mob. Remember that in Rome the masses were a race of parasites who could be fed or crushed as the occasion demanded. In America, on the contrary, the masses are the producing elements of the nation, and you are the parasites. Between the cry of the Roman multitude for coin and the demand of the working American for wages there is an intensity and seriousness as much different as between the humming of the mosquito and the thunder of an earthquake.