In London in 1881 the number of women and girls occupied in industry was 593,226. Of these, more than 40 per cent. were indoor domestic servants, more than 12 per cent. were engaged in charing, washing and bathing service and hospital and institution service, 16 per cent. in dressmaking, millinery, stay-making, shirt-making and needlework; and of the remaining miscellaneous trades a large proportion are purely women’s trades; even in those where men are employed women and girls are rarely to be found doing the same work as men. Of domestic servants and charwomen there is no need to speak here. Of the laundresses a considerable proportion belong to the first group already discussed, but the ironers generally belong to the second group. An inquiry into their position with regard to wages, hours and sanitary conditions of work is about to be made, and the proposal to bring them under the Factory Acts cannot be considered until the results have been given us. Of the wages and hours of work of dressmakers and shop-assistants surprisingly little information is at present available. But one fact is too common to be denied: these girls accept wages which would not be enough to support them if they had not friends to help them; and they endure hard work, long hours, and close rooms because they believe that they are only filling up a brief interval before marriage. The better off their parents may be, the less heed do they give to securing anything but pocket-money wages. These girls are constantly coming in contact with the rich, and have ever before their eyes the luxury and comfort of those who have money without working for it. They are taught to think much about dress and personal appearance, and are exposed to temptations never offered to the less attractive factory girls. They have naturally a higher standard of living, their parents cannot be relied upon to help them after the first few years, and, failing marriage, the future looks intensely dreary to them. There would be little harm in the high standard of comfort of single men in the middle and upper classes which makes them regard marriage as involving self-denial, if working women all along the line were also earning enough to make them regard it in the same light. In a class more than any other liable to receive proposals of a dishonouring union, which may free them from badly paid drudgery, the greatest effort should be made to secure good wages. Combination is nowhere so much needed, and perhaps is nowhere so unpopular. And yet the difficulties of foreign competition which make attempts to raise wages among factory girls so unsafe, and which make it most undesirable for outsiders, ignorant of trade circumstances, to spread the “doctrine of divine discontent,” are entirely absent here; skilled hands are not so plentiful that they could easily be replaced, and the girls, if assisted by their friends, could well afford to bide their time quietly at home until they had secured good terms.