As only one-third of these unmarried women are domestic servants, even if we suppose that all the unmarried men belong to Classes G and H, there are obviously not enough men for all the women to be able to marry. Such being the case, we can afford to dispense with mutual recrimination. The women who find it less dishonouring to enter the labour market than an overstocked marriage market are taking the more womanly course in putting aside all thought of marriage. The men who remain unmarried are perhaps in the position of Captain Macheath, overwhelmed by an _embarras de richesses_, and should be forgiven if they fear to make a choice of one which may seem to cast disparagement on so many others of equal merit. These statistics have been called startling and alarming. They may be startling to men, but can hardly be so to women of the upper class, and I fail to see why they should alarm anyone. If all these spinsters had to be shut up in convents the outlook would be gloomy. But as things are, if only we can secure good pay and decent conditions of life, the lot of all women may be immensely improved by this compact band of single women. It would be difficult to overrate the industrial effect of a number of well-instructed, healthy-minded, vigorous permanent spinsters. A man’s work is not interrupted but rather intensified by marriage; but in the case of women, not only is the wages question very much affected by the expectation of marriage, but much organised effort on their part, whether for improvement of wages or for provision against sickness and old age, must be wasted unless there be a considerable number of single women to give continuity to the management of their associations. Mr. Llewellyn Smith has pointed out that, as mobility of labour increases, actual movement may, other things remaining the same, diminish; and so also I should be inclined to say that it is not marriage that is such a disturbing element in the women’s wages question so much as the expectation of or desire for marriage. In the middle classes, where it is impossible to earn a sufficient income without a long training and years of practical apprenticeship, nothing is so injurious to women’s industrial position as this ungrounded expectation of marriage, which prevents them from making themselves efficient when young, and makes them disappointed, weary, and old when their mental and physical powers should be in their prime.