THAT was a grand moment for Ben and Tom when the shuttle of the goit at Co-op Mill was drawn, and the water from the dam began to stream into the wheel-race and catch the buckets of the great wheel, transmitting its revolutions to the main shafting and machines. Little enough stock of wool and dye wares had they, and few indeed the engines for transforming by multiple processes the greasy, clotted fleeces into warp and weft and good broad pieces. But both knew every branch of the manufacturer's art, and each was more than willing to take his part, and more than his part, at scouring, dyeing, scribbling, or weaving. They employed very few hands, and each of these thoroughly understood that he was to be paid not only a fair day's wage for a fair day's work, but also a share of the profits; and it did not take long for Yorkshire shrewdness to discover that the better, the more thoroughly, each one worked, the better for one and all. There was no scamping the work, no idling. And there was no breaking time for sprees, no "laiking" because a chap felt Mondayish, and wanted an off-day or two to get over the effects of Saturday's and Sunday's debauch. Every hand at Co-op Mill began in a very brief time to shake off the enervating consciousness of the subservience of a hired labourer. He would not only not idle himself, he would tolerate no idling in a fellow labourer. There are tricks in every trade, or every trade is solely maligned. There are ways of shirking work, of making time pass in merely _seeming_ labour that one would think one as irksome in the long run to the operative as they are undoubtedly unjust to the employer. There was none of that at Co-op Mill. Set a thief to catch a thief, and a man who shirks and dawdles at his work steals the time that is indeed money. But let the man who works by your side be personally interested in the work you do, and the way you do it; there is no room there for shirking and dawdling. The lever of labour is, after all, self-interest, and so ingrained is self-interest that the only thing that can be asked of average human nature is that self-interest should not impinge on the self-interests of another.