Life Insurance,- Savings Banks, Etc. 33 



more of making a living and less of making a fortune, and 

 society will be the healthier for it. 



One would think that the combination of capital might secure 

 the monopoly of the cutlery market — that it would be impos- 

 sible for a man without capital to maintain himself against 

 Sheffield and Meriden and Shelburne Falls; yetF. A. Seaver and 

 son of Lake Mills. Jefferson County, in this state, carrying their 

 steel and wares back and forth overland seven or fourteen miles, 

 with next to nothing for capital, can make a living, and have a 

 nice little margin to spare, on the single article of butcher knives. 

 The reason is because they bring to every piece that leaves their 

 hands an amount of personal care and skill that cannot be 

 secured in the great establishments 



Within six months a tinner has come to the suburb of Chicago 

 in which I reside — the last place where you would have said 

 such an artisan could get a living — and has been more than busy 

 every day since his arrival. Personal facileness in his art is the 

 secret of his success. 



Mass capital and lose genius in manipulation is the rule. 



The civilization that depends on massing its capital and is not 

 alert to foster native talent, sporadic in its appearance as it may 

 be, goes to the wall. 



It will take only a little more loading cloth with starch, earths, 

 gums and dyes, on the part of the factories to make it profitable 

 to bring the old hand looms out of the garret to make cloth once 

 more that would go from year to year, if not from generation to 

 generation. 



Capita], in its combinations, has pushed out so far in many 

 directions that it can sustain itself only by fraud, and fraud is an 

 inverted pyramid. 



When ninety-four per cent, by weight of silk is dye to six per 

 cent, of fibre, it will become profitable and popular to wear hand- 

 made cloths instead of such silks ; and the process of making 

 them will be as fashionable as worsted work, perhaps even as 

 fashionable as painting in water-colors. 



I believe the remedy of our present industrial stagnation is to 

 be found in just the opposite direction from that we have been 

 3 



