The workpeople are also thrifty.  They invest their savings in the Penny Bank and Saving’s Bank; whilst others invest in various building societies, gas companies, and other lucrative undertakings.  In fact, they seem to be among the most favoured of human beings.  With every convenience and necessity, as well as every proper pleasure provided for them,—­with comfortable homes, and every inducement to stay at home,—­with fishing clubs, boating clubs, and cricket clubs,—­with schoolrooms, literary institutions, lecture-hall, museum, and class-rooms, established in their midst; and to crown all, with a beautiful temple for the worship of God,—­there is no wonder that Saltaire has obtained a name, and that Sir Titus Salt has established a reputation among his fellow-men.

There are large numbers of employers who treat their workpeople quite as generously, though not in such a princely manner, as Sir Titus Salt.  They pay the uniform rate of wages; help and encourage the employed to economize their surplus earnings; establish Savings Banks and Penny Banks for their use; assist them in the formation of co-operative associations for the purchase of pure food at a cheaper rate; build healthy cottages for their accommodation; erect schools for the education of their children; and assist them in every method that is calculated to promote their moral and, social improvement.

Mr. Edward Akroyd, formerly M.P. for Halifax, is another manufacturer who has exercised great influence throughout Yorkshire, by his encouragement of habits of thrift amongst working people.  In his own district, at Copley and Haley Hill, near Halifax, he has built numerous excellent cottages for his workmen, and encouraged them to build their own houses by investing their spare earnings in building clubs.  He has established co-operative clubs, to enable the men to purchase food and clothing at cost price.  He has built excellent schools at his own expense, and provided them with a paid staff of teachers.  He has built and endowed the very fine church of “All Souls” (Sir Gilbert Scott, architect), to which a large district, inclusive of the works, has been assigned.  He has provided for his workpeople, both at Haley Hill and Copley, a Literary and Scientific Society, a Mutual Improvement Society, a Working Men’s Library (to which he has presented more than five thousand books), a Working Men’s Club and Newsroom, a Choral Society, supplied with an excellent library of music; a Recreation Club, provided with a bowling green; and a cricket ground, with quoits, and gymnastic apparatus, Mr. Akroyd has also allotted a large field to his workmen, dividing it into small gardens varying from a hundred to two hundred and forty square yards each.  The small rent charged for each plot is distributed in prizes given at an annual flower-show held in his grounds, for the best growers of flowers, plants, and vegetables.  Hence the Haley Hill Horticultural and Floral Society, one of the most thriving institutions of the kind in the neighbourhood.  In short, Mr. Akroyd has done everything that a wise and conscientious master could have done, for the purpose of promoting the moral and spiritual welfare of the four thousand persons employed in his manufactories, who have been virtually committed to his charge.