Just like the story about carrying water and building pipelines said, while John, the water carrier, squandered money in taverns and enjoyed happy times, Pablo, another man in the same trade, worked hard. During the day, he set aside part of his time to carry water, then used the rest of his time and his weekends to build his pipeline.
Some people became rich not because they speculated or cut corners, but because they had a different vision and good habits.
In the 1850s, opium addiction and alcoholism were widespread among lower-class workers. Mr. Salt and his wife, who had been among the first to grow wealthy in the textile industry, decided to guide those workers away from such bad habits.
They built a town by the River Aire, in the fields near Liverpool. Unlike the filthy city center, where many workers at the time lived in poorly ventilated row houses packed so tightly together that there was barely any room for fire engines to pass.
Mr. Salt let those workers live in detached houses, like the ones on Spinner's End.
In addition, he built parks, hospitals, schools, gymnasiums, billiard rooms, libraries, reading rooms, and even lecture halls. He showed a rare degree of enlightenment in social welfare, and before him, no capitalist had ever provided manual laborers with such luxurious opportunities for self-improvement.
Many workers truly seized that opportunity. James Waddington went from being an illiterate wool sorter in Salt's factory to a world-class linguistic authority and the leader of the Irish Academy of Music.
Capitalism had once had its own golden age. People could not spend all their time hoping to gain something for nothing, praying to gods and Buddhas while waiting for great fortune to fall on their heads. Opportunities had to be seized for oneself.
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