The WORKING MAN is sold in London by THE CO-OPERATOR, 1d. Monthly,

W. Campbell, 12, Mackworth Street, FLOUR, WARRANTED FREE from

Whites, for pastry, 10s. 4d. per bushel. Fine households, 9s. 8d. per Agents willing to sell the WORKING MAN are bushel. Quantities not less than one peck sent requested to send their names and addresses forth-carriage free to any part of London. Address, with.

FOR Good, Cheap, and Fashionable price 2a., or in monthly parts, price 8d., post free. Those

CLOTHING, order from WM. TURNBULL, the booksellers, can have it direct through the post from 39, Maddox-street, Regent-street, W.C.

TH Political, social, and L. SENTINEL: address a good Silk Pocket Handkerchief, on receipt (in

CO-OPERATION IN LONDON.

HE Delegates representing the various branches of the Co-operative Movement in and about London, acting in conjunction with the Committee of the Working Man, have held their regular weekly sittings at our office during the past month; during which they have received Messrs. Hooson and Greenwood, the Delegates from Rochdale, and discussed the modus operandi best calculated to promote the passing of Mr. Slaney's Bill, and various other matters, which, if adopted, and we sincerely trust they will be, will most materially affect the wellbeing of Co-operation in the metropolis. A permanent committee has been formed, with Mr. B. Blitten, of the "West-end Pioneers," as its Secretary, pro tem.; and already a new life unto righteousness infused amongst London Co-operators. Our efforts, we feel confident, will not have been made in vain, nor our aims misapprehended, when we next report progress, we shall have to announce that the Co-operative mind of London has been welded together and become a solidarity. A month ago, and Co-operation for good, was fragmentary -isolated-straggling-unknown to itself. Croydon, Bow, Camden Town, Ealing, Hanwell, Twickenham, Richmond, Rotherithe, St. James's, Notting-hill, The British, The West-end Pioneers, The West London Trading Company, the Great Northern, Spitalfields, and yarious other societies, have been drawn together into one focus, and by

seems to be

the clash of sentiment and exchange of ideas, the necessary forces will soon be evoked, and when demonstrated, as sure they will be, Cooperation will become an institution of development, and “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." A central agency store, or purchasing power, is the one thing needful just now. All feel it-see it-know

it to be so-they will it, and the thing shall be done. In future, the Delegate Permanent Committee will meet at our office on the first and third Wednesdays in the month, until further notice, and we call upon all societies to adopt the pass word of the committee-Co-operationand visit us.

SOCIAL SCIENCE.

No. III.-THE RENTAL SYSTEM.

THE system of rents is a species of usury, and should be replaced by a system of payments in instalments, so that every occupant of a house will in time become the owner of it.

The possession of a house, which a man can call his own, is one great source of happiness and prosperity; it is the most important guarantee of stability and success in life. Fully half of the men who now fail in their honest endeavours, and end their days prematurely in poverty, disappointment, and misery, leaving a family of children to the cold charities of the world, would have succeeded if they had had a home to begin with, as a foundation on which to stand, which every man in every civilized country ought to have and has a right to possess. There is no certainty for any man, especially if he has a young family, unless the HOME is secured.

"The domestic feeling is fast vanishing among the working classes of this country; nor is it wonderful: the HOME no longer exists. Give men homes, and they will have soft and homely notions."-Disraeli's "Sybil."

A man in moderate circumstances pays £100 a-year for the rent of a house; at the end of ten years he has paid the full cost of the house, but does not own it: he has paid £1,000 to the landlord, who keeps it for ever. Thus, rent is use against absolute ownership. The use of £1,000 for one year is equal to the use of £100 for ten years: it follows that if A. lends B. £1,000 for one year, or rents him a house worth that sum, and B. pays him down immediately £100 for the same, A. should return to B. his £100 at the end of ten years, deducting only for dilapidations, if any, or paying for improvements, if any. This would be justice: one party has had the use of £1,000 for one year, the other £100 for ten years. Here is an equation; but habit so blinds men that they do not perceive the most obvious truths; they do not perceive that to give property for ever, for the temporary use of property, is not only unjust, but a mathematical absurdity.

How can working men accumulate property when they are constantly giving away for ever their money for the use of money, and spend half their lives in paying for something they never own?

This system of rents gives capitalists or landlords immense power and opportunity of acquiring wealth without labour, while the majority around them, who labour hard, continue poor.

The owner of the house, in the case above supposed, receives at the end of ten years enough to build a second house; with the two, he receives in five years enough to build a third; in about three years to build a fourth; and so on until, like some of our large capitalists, he can build a new house every month and every day. Houses build houses, just in the same way as money makes money-viz., by fraud.

Ground Rentals.-By this system a rich "lord" is enabled to realize an immense income, merely because the land on which certain houses are built are said, by a fiction in law, to belong to him. And after a certain number of years the houses themselves, by the same law, become his property; and he forthwith proceeds to grant fresh leases of them at increased rents, especially if the occupants have made any improvements. Nor is the lease granted without the payment of a beavy "fine," as well as a "fee" to know the terms. The occupier of a small house in Oxford-street was recently charged £3 16s. for being made acquainted with the landlord's stipulations. They were these: he might pay £400 as a fine, build a new house worth £1,000 on the site of the old one, and pay as ground-rent £80 a-year; or, he might pay £200 as a fine, build a house worth £1,000, and pay £120 a-year as ground-rent!-the house, of course, to become the property of the ground landlord after a certain number of years. From these and other causes the house rents of London have more than doubled within the present century.

How can men, who do nothing useful, in peace of mind erjoy those immense incomes, to which they must know they have not the absolute right to, so much as a single farthing? A. C. C.

RADICAL REFORM.-WHAT IS IT?

BY HENRY H. WILTSHIRE.

(Continued from page 37.)

These are only a few from an almost perplexing host of facts of the same nature, hastily summarised from the masterly array of information contained in the speech of Mr. Edward Baines. Let them speak for themselves, and they will do so forcibly. Will any one say that if thirty years ago the £10 house-holders could be enfranchised without injury to the State; nay, as is now admitted with considerable advantage; that, judging from the instances here given, we need fear anything from the most thoroughly radical reform it is possible to effect.

But radical reform is an innovation, and on that account alone is sure to meet with much opposition and yet, without constant and everrecurring innovation how would the world go on? The "let well alone" adage would have kept us in a state of perpetual cannibalism. Just go back one hundred years, and imagine the " very well as we are" theory in full force, among what a happy state of things would it not plant us of the present generation. That bright idea of “it

was my father's custom," &c., would tolerate every folly, support every superstition, consolidate every abuse, and stultify all improvement under the sun. There never was a good effected yet but the whole tribe of sensation-seers joined in an unholy chorus to chaunt their dismal ditty of a speedy coming woe. When Catholic emancipation was effected we were to have his Holiness the Pope and all the attendant evils of popery rampant in this right, tight, little island; when the corn laws were repealed the British farmer was going fast to Hong-Kong; when gas was invented we were all to make an impromptu assent to another and a better world; as soon as railways were becoming likely, among innumerable evils, delapidated post-boys were to be the order of the day; and to return to this old question of the suffrage, it is a literal fact that a banker of high standing in Birmingham asserted, in 1832, that if the ten pound householders were enfranchised he should shut up his bank, realize his effects, and leave the country as speedily as possible, for neither life nor property would be safe. The frenzied fear that we are told, seized on the poor countrymen, who, assured that the world was coming to an end, went home and died after seeing the quiet of his village disturbed by one of " them awful, wicked things," a steam engine is typical of the consternation with which our rulers regard the extension of the suffrage to those whom they vaguely describe as the "working classes." It seems not at all to matter in their estimation if a poor man be respectable in his ordinary walk of life, the simple fact of his being poor disqualifies him from the possession of a vote. It is not, mind, on account of his ignorance, for the house a man may happen to rent can be surely no guarantee of his mental qualifications, but his poverty, that excludes him from participation in the allotment and distribution of the common fund to which he has largely contributed, for his own and the common good. Were the exclusion based on ignorance the question would assume quite a different aspect, if a question of any moment it should continue to be; but so long as the system of recognising a man's possessions as the primary thing we do not say they are not to be considered at all, we will leave that a moot question-but undoubtedly so long as a method is in practice which solely and absolutely recognises only the money and takes no notice whatever of the man, so long will it continue to be a stumblingblock in the way of the progress of the nation it belongs to, a neverending source of discord to any form of government, and a stigma to the people who tolerate its being. And yet at the same time that so much anxiety is shown least the poor man should begin to trouble his head about his own affairs, and ultimately take their guidance into his own hands, he is by no means considered disqualified for many really most important posts; he may guard our lives and property and keep the peace at home; no one ever hesitates to trusting him with his own life or the lives of those near and dear in the ship that gladly bounds over the surface of the ocean; these same men may march almost to the death across the burning sands of India to maintain our honour or