We lately said a word on Rich Folks, hinting that so far from being the monsters of iniquity which moralists and preachers have for ages denounced them, they are, taken all in all, public benefactors; for without the accumulation of wealth, by means of thrift and honest enterprise, the world would still have been in a deplorably backward condition. Riches are of course comparative. An artisan who by savings and diligence in his calling has insured for himself a competence for old age, is doubtless rich and respectable. Doing his best, and with something to the good, he is worthy of our esteem. What he has laid aside in a spirit of economy goes to an augmentation of the national wealth. In a small way he is a capitalist—his modicum of surplus earnings helping to promote important schemes of public interest.

Great Britain, with its immense field for successful industry and enterprise, excels any country in the capacity for saving. In almost every branch of art there is a scope for thrift beyond what is obtainable elsewhere. Thriftiness, however, among the manual labouring classes was scarcely thought of in times within living remembrance. Savings-banks to receive spare earnings came into existence only in the early years of the present century. Now, spread in all directions, and established in the army and navy, they possess deposits amounting to nearly thirty millions sterling. Besides these accumulations, much is consigned to Friendly Societies; and it is pleasing to observe that within the last twenty years, the artisan classes have expended large sums in the purchase of dwellings purposely erected for their accommodation. All this looks like an advance in thrifty habits—a stride in civilisation.

But after every admission of this kind has been made, it is too certain that vast numbers live from hand to mouth, save nothing whatever from earnings however large, and are ever on the brink of starvation. In this respect, the working classes, as they are usually styled, fall considerably below the peasantry of France, who, though noted for their ignorance, and for the most part unable to read, have an extraordinary aptitude for saving; of which there is no more significant proof than their heavy loans to government when pressed to pay an enormous war indemnity to Germany. As the thrift of the French agriculturists sinks to the character of a sordid parsimony, which is adverse to social improvement, no political economist can speak of it with unqualified admiration. It only shews what can be done by two or three things—the economical use of earnings, the economical use of time, and the strict cultivation of temperate habits. From each of these predominating qualities a lesson might be judiciously taken. Though a lively race, fond of amusement, the French peasantry, and we may add, the peasantry of Switzerland, know the value of time. In them the 'gospel of idleness,' so pertinaciously preached up by indiscreet enthusiasts, has no adherents. In all our experience, we have never seen such assiduity in daily labour from early morn till eve, as among the French and Swiss rural population. They would repudiate any dictation of a hard and fast line as to hours. Time is their beneficent inheritance, to make the most of for themselves and families.

Pity it is that in our own country time is so unthriftily squandered. Obviously there is a growing disposition among the operative classes to diminish the daily hours of labour, to the detriment of individual and general prosperity. When we began life, ten hours a day, or sixty in the week, were considered a fair thing. Then came a diminution to nine, to eight hours, along with whole and half-holidays, but no lowering of wages. How this is to go on, we are unable to explain. We fear that unless something like common-sense intervene, a degree of individual and national disaster will ensue scarcely contemplated by the votaries of 'St Lubbock.' In his late speech at the opening of the Manchester Town-hall, Mr Bright adverted to the awkward consequences of indefinitely shortening the hours of labour. He is reported to have said: 'We have for many years past been gradually diminishing the period of time during which our machinery can work. We are surrounded by a combination whose object is not only to diminish the time of labour and the products of labour, but to increase the remuneration of labour. Every half an hour you diminish the time of labour, and every farthing you raise the payment of labour which is not raised by the ordinary economic and proper causes, has exactly the same effect upon us as the increase of the tariffs of foreign countries. Thus we often find, with all our philanthropy in wishing the people to have more recreation, and with our anxiety that the workman should better his condition through his combination, that we are ourselves aiding—it may be inevitably and necessarily—but it is a fact that we are aiding to increase the difficulties under which we labour in sending foreign countries the products of the industry of these districts; and we must bear in mind that great cities have fallen before Manchester and Liverpool were known; and that there have been great cities, great mercantile cities on the shores of the Mediterranean, the cities of Phoenicia, the cities of Carthage, Genoa, and Venice.' Such sentiments are worth taking to heart. The preaching up of recreation, otherwise idleness, has gone rather too far. We begin to perceive that wages can be paid only in proportion to work done, and that if people choose to amuse themselves, there must correspondingly be a new adjustment of payments.

At the late meeting of the British Association, there was some profitable discussion on work, wages, and thrift. One speaker emphatically pointed out that unthrift was more concerned in producing poverty in families than a deficiency in wages. He said, that where there was a deficiency of food 'it would mostly be found that what was wanted had been consumed in drink.' Adding, 'As a matter of fact, the large families did the best, and the greatest men in science and as statesmen were mostly members of large families and younger sons upon whom early struggles for mental growth had produced brilliant results.' This corresponds with ordinary experience. Within our own knowledge, the greater number of persons distinguished in literature, the arts, and in commerce have been the sons of parents whose means of bringing up their families did not exceed a hundred, in some instances not eighty, pounds a year. Yet upon these slender resources, through the effects of thrift—as, for example, the case given by the late Sir William Fairbairn—families of six or seven children were respectably reared, and attained prominent places in society.

In almost every large town is observed a painful but curious contrast in the administration of earnings. On one side are seen the families of small tradesmen making a manful struggle to keep up respectable appearances at a free revenue of not more than a hundred a year; while alongside of them are families earning two pounds a week and upwards, who make no effort at respectability, and are constantly in difficulties. The explanation simply lies in thrift and unthrift. In one case there are aspirations and enlightened foresight; in the other there is a total indifference to consequences. A few weeks ago, the Rev. F. O. Morris, of Nunburnholme Rectory, Hayton, York, communicated to the Times some remarkable revelations concerning unthrift. 'A gentleman of my acquaintance,' he says, 'living in a midland manufacturing town, gave me, two or three years ago, the following instances of the unthriftness, or rather the outrageous extravagance, of the artisans there; such cases being quite common, the exceptions only the other way. I must premise that many of them with families were at that time earning from eight to twelve pounds a week; a single man as much as five pounds a week, and yet, though paid on Saturday evenings, they would come on the following Monday night to ask the manager for an advance of the next week's wages. And this not for any legitimate expenditure, for even those who had families lived generally in one room, kept no servant, and only employed charwomen. Nevertheless, well they might be in want of ready-money, for often you would see a party setting out on a Sunday for an excursion to some place or other in a carriage with four horses, and dressed in the most extravagant manner, but at the same time with much taste, owing no doubt to their employment being in the lace-trade.

'A charwoman told the wife of my informant that she knew one married couple who can earn seven pounds a week who often came to her on a Thursday to borrow a shilling, their money being all gone. They lived in two rooms, very badly furnished. A needle-woman also told the lady that she knew a couple who earned eight pounds a week, or even more, between them, who lived in two rooms wretchedly furnished, without even a cup or saucer, besides the two they used, to give a friend a cup of tea; that the woman would give four or five guineas for a dress, and had given as much as six guineas, which she would wear all day, from the first thing in the morning till it was shabby, when she would buy another as expensive, or even more so, according to the fashion. She never cooked their own dinner, but bought the most expensive things, took them to a public-house to be cooked, and dined there, eating and drinking afterwards. The "hands" in the trade of the place would often order, for one week, black tea at 4s. a pound, and green at 6s. Thy would also buy cucumbers at 1s. and 1s. 6d. apiece, beefsteaks for breakfast at 1s. 3d. a pound, and would only eat them fried in butter; salmon in like manner when it first came in at 3s. or 4s. a pound, and lamb at a guinea a quarter. For more light fare they would buy oysters at 2s. or 2s. 6d. a dozen, put down gold on the counter, and eat them as fast as a man could open them for them. My friend saw two men thus eat 10s. worth standing at a stall in the market-place. A man earning L.3 a week, paid on the Saturday evening, got into a row with the police on the Sunday, was fined 25s. on the Monday, and not one out of a hundred or more of his fellow-workmen could advance him the money to pay the fine with, and he had to borrow it of the foreman. Another was earning L.4 a week. His master told him he ought to lay by. "Oh," said he, "I can spend all I make." "But," said the master, "what shall you do, if the times are bad, with your wife and children?" "Let 'em go to the Union," said he. The master himself told my friend this. Mr Baker, the Inspector of Factories, in one of his Reports, stated that a moulder, his wife, and boy on an average earn L.5, 10s. 6d. a week. He mentions a case of a moulder, his wife, and three children earning L.8, 7s. 2½d.

'How can we wonder, with such facts as these before us, that Mr Sandford, Her Majesty's Inspector, stated in one of his Reports: "Out of 50 (lads) examined in nine different night schools, 29, or 58 per cent., could not read. These night scholars are certainly not the most untaught of the collier lads. 'There's none of them as can read in our pit,' I heard two young colliers say; 'no, nor the master neither.' And yet we wonder that our colliers do not invest their earnings wisely."'

Loud and prolonged has been the denunciation of public-houses as the cause of crime and misery—so easy is it to mistake secondary for primary causes. While admitting that public-houses scattered in profusion are the cause of many evils, we go a little farther, and looking for what produces the cause, find that it consists in depraved tastes, want of self-respect, unthrift. To a man of elevated tendencies and intelligent foresight, the number of public-houses is a matter of no importance. He passes by the whole with indifference. Their allurements only excite his pity. He scorns their temptations. It is to this pitch of fortitude we should like to see the weak-minded brought, through education and the habitual cultivation of self-respect, along with a deep consciousness of responsibilities. In therefore so exclusively attacking public-houses as the cause of intemperance, we are in a sense beginning the process of cure at the wrong end. We are expending energies on secondary causes, leaving the seat of the disease untouched. Under infatuations of this kind, the misdirection of moral power is pitiable. The subject is wide, and might be expatiated on to any extent. We here confine ourselves to the remark, that the thing to cultivate is Thrift—not only as regards the expenditure of money but expenditure of time, and in saying this we fear that those who have systematically, though with good intentions, advocated a degree of recreation that must be deemed excessive and dangerous, have not a little to answer for in promoting habits of unthrift.

W. C.