Arguing that ’the reciprocal duties of employers and employed, as such, are comprised within the limits of their covenant,’ the writer goes on to say, that nevertheless there remains a relation of ‘fellow-citizenship and of Christian neighbourhood,’ by virtue of which the employer owes service to his work-people, seeing that ’every man owes service to every man whom he is in a position to serve.’  Let not the Pharisaic fundholder and lazy mortgagee suppose that the great employers of labour are thus under a peculiar obligation from which they are exempt.  The obligation is assumed to be equal upon all who have power and means; and it only lies with special weight at the door of the employer of multitudes, in as far as he is in a situation to exercise influence over their character and conduct, and usually has greater means of rendering aid suited to their particular necessities.

Before proceeding to expound the various duties thus imposed upon the employer, the writer lays down a primary duty as essential to the due performance of the rest—­namely, he must see to making his business succeed; and for this end he must possess a sufficient capital at starting; and he must not, for any reasons of vanity or benevolence, or through laxness, pay higher wages than the state of the labour-market and the prospects of trade require.  Of the secondary duties which next come in course—­and which, be it remembered, arise not from the mastership, but from the neighbourship—­the first is that of ’making his factory, and the processes carried on there, as healthy as care and sanitary science can render them.’  ’This is the more incumbent upon him, as it is little likely to be thought of or demanded by his workmen.  It is a topic on which his cultivated intelligence is almost sure to place him far ahead of them; and out of the superiority, as we have seen, springs the obligation.’  Our reviewer adds the remark, that, ’in the minor workshops, and especially in the work-rooms of tailors and seamstresses, the employers are still, for the most part, unawakened to the importance and imperativeness of this class of obligations.  The health of thousands is sacrificed from pure ignorance and want of thought.’

One mode of serving those who work for him, which the circumstances render appropriate, is to provide them with decent and comfortable dwellings.  Much has been done in this way.  ’In almost all country establishments, and in most of those in the smaller towns, the employers have been careful to surround their mills with substantial and well-built cottages, often with gardens attached to them, containing four rooms—­kitchen, scullery, and two bedrooms:  cottages which are let for rents which at once remunerate the owner and are easy for the occupier.’  Even in large towns, where there are great local difficulties, something has been done by the building of Model Lodging-houses, and by the efforts of Societies for improving the