little enterprises he rose with the sun, went to bed at dusk; he laid down his tools preoccupied with the task in hand and what he would begin on the morrow. He worked at home in a little booth, with his family around him. He lived like a snail in its shell, in a lodging made exactly to his measure ;there was nothing to induce him to modify this state of things, which was indeed harmonious enough. The family life unfolded itself in a normal way. The father watched over his children in the cradle and later on in the workshop: effort and gain succeeded one another peacefully within the family order and in this the family found its profit. Now when this is so, society is stable and likely to endure. That is the story of ten ages of work organized within the family unit ;and the story too of every past age up to the middle of the nineteenth century.