The middle classes have largely employed the principle of association.  No class has risen so rapidly, or done more by their energy and industry to advance the power and progress of England.  And why?  Because the most active have always been the most ready to associate, to co-operate, and to combine.  They have combined when they were attacked, combined when they had an abuse to destroy, or a great object to accomplish.  They have associated together to manufacture articles of commerce, to make canals, to construct railways, to form gas companies, to institute insurance and banking companies, and to do an immense amount of industrial work.  By combining their small capitals together, they have been able to accumulate an enormous aggregate capital, and to execute the most gigantic undertakings.

The middle classes have accomplished more by the principle of co-operation than the classes who have so much greater need of it.  All the joint stock companies are the result of association.  The railways, the telegraphs, the banks, the mines, the manufactories, have for the most part been established and are carried on by means of the savings of the middle classes.

The working classes have only begun to employ the same principle.  Yet how much might they accomplish by its means!  They might co-operate in saving as well as in producing.  They might, by putting their saved earnings together, become, by combination, their own masters.  Within a few years past, many millions sterling have been expended in strikes for wages.  A hundred millions a year are thrown away upon drink and other unnecessary articles.  Here is an enormous capital.  Men who expend or waste such an amount can easily become capitalists.  It requires only will, energy, and self-denial.  So much money spent on buildings, plant, and steam-engines, would enable them to manufacture for themselves, instead of for the benefit of individual capitalists.  The steam-engine is impartial in its services.  It is no respecter of persons; it will work for the benefit of the labourer as well as for the benefit of the millionaire.  It will work for those who make the best use of it, and who have the greatest knowledge of its powers.

The greater number of workmen possess little capital save their labour; and, as we have already seen, many of them uselessly and wastefully spend most of their earnings, instead of saving them and becoming capitalists.  By combining in large numbers for the purposes of economical working, they might easily become capitalists, and operate upon a large scale.  As society is now constituted, every man is not only justified but bound in duty as a citizen, to accumulate his earnings by all fair and honourable methods, with the view of securing a position of ultimate competence and independence.

We do not say that men should save and hoard their gains for the mere sake of saving and hoarding; this would be parsimony and avarice.  But we do say that all men ought to aim at accumulating a sufficiency—­enough to maintain them in comfort during the helpless years that are to come—­to maintain them in times of sickness and of sorrow, and in old age, which, if it does come, ought to find them with a little store of capital in hand, sufficient to secure them from dependence upon the charity of others.