COMPOUND FREE LABOUR. 517 



sheath that is larger still; and so on. A kindred mode of 

 composition obtains in the great glands. This analogy, like 

 the other analogies between a social organism and an indi 

 vidual organism, is necessitated by the requirements of co 

 operation. Manifestly, if the tens of thousands of fibres 

 composing a muscle were merely aggregated, a nervous 

 stimulus could not be so distributed among them as to cause 

 simultaneous contraction. But if a stimulus be sent through 

 some trunk nerve which divides, sub-divides, and sub-sub 

 divides, until its ultimate branches severally end in small 

 groups of fibres, it can make these all act together. Socially 

 it is the same. The conflicts between hordes of savages and 

 organized troops, show us that efficiency in war depends on 

 analogous grouping and re-grouping. Imagine a great Eu 

 ropean army suddenly becoming only a sw T arm of soldiers, 

 and its immediate defeat by an opposing army retaining its 

 regimentation would be certain. And, as we here see, indus 

 trial armies employed to execute large works have assumed 

 a kindred type of structure. I emphasize this truth because 

 w r e must bear it in mind when, hereafter, we consider the 

 plans of various social reformers. 



Let us note one more general truth. We lately saw that, 

 of necessity, free labour and contract take their rise to 

 gether: they are correlatives. Naturally, therefore, they 

 develop together, growing from small to large. The con 

 tractor in his first stage is a clever labouring man, who 

 undertakes some small piece of work at a price agreed upon, 

 and hires others like himself to help him : standing to them 

 in a relation analogous to that in which a &quot; butty &quot; or 

 &quot; ganger &quot; stands to his group in later days. Success brings 

 a small capital which enables him to contract for larger 

 works; and so on, step by step, if adequately sagacious, he 

 becomes in time a large contractor: the proof being that a 

 generation ago there were sundry such who could not write. 

 At a later stage, the practice in pursuance of which a com 

 pany formed to make a railway employed contractors, be- 



