institutes of the century before, took their high status as well as their important social position. With the aids of experience and good taste, they became as elegant as they were comfortable. Each hotel had usually one or more great halls of common association; and these, comfortably warmed and brightly lighted, were the cheerful resource of all the company, and usually the scene of much rivalry of varied programme for the evening's recreation. We have already noticed the fact of the old public-house, under its coarse and ungainly aspect of the nineteenth century, having virtually disappeared from our social life in the course of the twentieth. This was chiefly due to the universal rise of these mechanics' hotels, whose bright and home-surrounded halls proved far the more attractive resort for the tired, and rest and recreation-seeking worker.
When some experience and success had smoothed the general way, and more especially the financial way, with this co-operative houses' system, the intending tenants were able, with much comparative advantage, to deal directly with the builder or the capitalist. Indeed, it became no uncommon thing for some hundreds or even thousands of families, after agreeing amongst themselves for a co-operation of this kind, to make terms direct with the builder, and, in those prompt times, to be comfortably housed in their completed edifice, all within a few weeks of the first step in the cause. Thus, under the economies of this system, amounts of daily or weekly earning, previously quite inadequate to support healthful life, were now even more than sufficient; and society was thus permanently secured against the difficulties and
