'A charwoman told the wife of my informant that she knew one married couple who can earn seven pounds a week who often came to her on a Thursday to borrow a shilling, their money being all gone. They lived in two rooms, very badly furnished. A needle-woman also told the lady that she knew a couple who earned eight pounds a week, or even more, between them, who lived in two rooms wretchedly furnished, without even a cup or saucer, besides the two they used, to give a friend a cup of tea; that the woman would give four or five guineas for a dress, and had given as much as six guineas, which she would wear all day, from the first thing in the morning till it was shabby, when she would buy another as expensive, or even more so, according to the fashion. She never cooked their own dinner, but bought the most expensive things, took them to a public-house to be cooked, and dined there, eating and drinking afterwards. The "hands" in the trade of the place would often order, for one week, black tea at 4s. a pound, and green at 6s. Thy would also buy cucumbers at 1s. and 1s. 6d. apiece, beefsteaks for breakfast at 1s. 3d. a pound, and would only eat them fried in butter; salmon in like manner when it first came in at 3s. or 4s. a pound, and lamb at a guinea a quarter. For more light fare they would buy oysters at 2s. or 2s. 6d. a dozen, put down gold on the counter, and eat them as fast as a man could open them for them. My friend saw two men thus eat 10s. worth standing at a stall in the market-place. A man earning L.3 a week, paid on the Saturday evening, got into a row with the police on the Sunday, was fined 25s. on the Monday, and not one out of a hundred or more of his fellow-workmen could advance him the money to pay the fine with, and he had to borrow it of the foreman. Another was earning L.4 a week. His master told him he ought to lay by. "Oh," said he, "I can spend all I make." "But," said the master, "what shall you do, if the times are bad, with your wife and children?" "Let 'em go to the Union," said he. The master himself told my friend this. Mr Baker, the Inspector of Factories, in one of his Reports, stated that a moulder, his wife, and boy on an average earn L.5, 10s. 6d. a week. He mentions a case of a moulder, his wife, and three children earning L.8, 7s. 2½d. 'How can we wonder, with such facts as these before us, that Mr Sandford, Her Majesty's Inspector, stated in one of his Reports: "Out of 50 (lads) examined in nine different night schools, 29, or 58 per cent., could not read. These night scholars are certainly not the most untaught of the collier lads. 'There's none of them as can read in our pit,' I heard two young colliers say; 'no, nor the master neither.' And yet we wonder that our colliers do not invest their earnings wisely."'