The word sweating also covers cases where workers are subjected to overwork, and unduly long hours; and therefore under this head I mention the influence of the strain of long shop hours. The improvement has been great of late in this respect, but still there are restaurants and special shops where the strain on girls is very heavy. And the result is that after work is over they are fit for nothing but walking about the streets in search of diversion. Many indeed who live in hostels have almost no choice between walking in the streets or going to bed. There is no need to say more. First girls are rendered nervously weary and yet eager for fresh air and movement, and then they have to face all that street life may mean. The recreations offered them in cinemas and music-halls are often calculated to give them just the wrong sort of excitement. And so first they are bored by monotony and long hours, and then played upon by rather low forms of suggestive art. It is here that girls' clubs and troops of girl guides meet the real needs of girls; and they probably constitute the finest influence of the right sort which modern life offers them. _Luxury_ One of the most serious evils in the modern world is that a great many men and women have far more money than is good for them, and that of these a considerable number are not under any necessity to work. Nothing in all the wide world is worse for a man than to have lots of money and nothing to do. It is among these men that the patrons of expensive vice are to be found. Of necessity such men are bored by ordinary life. For life without work in it is always boring. It follows that they must seek excitement, and a very short time suffices for them to get all the excitement possible out of innocent recreations. Wherefore in pursuit of something to stir them they take to the diversions that are not innocent, and often try to exploit their own passions to give color to life. Their expensive and luxurious ways of life constitute one of the worst moral forces in the community. They keep in existence to pander to their desires large numbers of subordinates whose lives are also worthless and without any productive value. It is because of them that the life of a courtesan seems to offer golden prizes to some, and the hope of reaping such prizes deludes many. Because this is a materialistic age their money gives them powers to which they have no moral right, and no more wholesome thing could happen to the whole community than that the necessary changes should be worked out which would make such noxious drones impossible in the future. It is for these people that sweated workers drudge and sweat. And then, under our curious and indefensible laws of inheritance, it is possible for wealth thus created to be passed on from generation to generation, creating for each in turn the worst possible conditions for true life. It is utterly unreasonable to hope