358 Canadian Record of Science. 
Neither can this agency be dispensed with and got out of 
‘the world; our material culture would then contemporane- 
ously come to an end, for machine power alone has rendered 
available to the many commodities which were formerly 
only the privilege cf a favoured few. Repression or even 
limitation of its influenee involves, pari passu, a reversion 
to our pre-civilized state. 
In these circumstances there remains but one way out of 
the difficulty. 
Instead of confiding to the capitalist the sole mastery and 
control of this enormous power, upon the right wielding of 
which the destinies of the race depend, we ought to render 
it equally serviceable to all, as a beneficent working agent. 
The common supply to the whole working community of 
this all-producing mechanical energy at its proper cheap 
rate is the solution which the author now proposes for some 
of the social problems which lie before us in the form of 
dissatisfaction with present conditions of life in manufactur- 
ing centres, and the consequent result of political disaffec- 
tion and socialism. 
That the writer does not overestimate the advantages to 
be obtained by a general adoption of such a scheme for the 
encouragement, or indeed creation, of the small or home 
industries, he will endeavour to show by describing the 
conditions of life of the factory hard, and then contrasting 
with them those of an independent workman or small 
employer. 
Consider the case of a workman in a mill or factory. 
When a young workman he sees no prospect of being able 
to compete as an independent employer with the large 
establishments producing the commodities he helps to 
make; he accordingly never dreams as a rule of saving his 
earnings for the purpose of establishing himself in business ; 
but, on the contrary, uses the same to minister merely to 
his pleasures, and frequents the society of men who, like 
himself, naturally il] content with their conditions of life, 
indulge in noxious political talking, if nothing worse, 
When trouble, whether in,the form of illness, want of work, 
