The human freight brought in by the later trains is more exotic, and on the whole less robust; though whether the work, in which the girls who arrive between nine and ten are employed, is more sedentary, or the girls themselves come of a more refined and delicate stock, I cannot say; but certainly the employees in the large, well-lighted, and airy shops, factories, and public buildings, though they may have a lower social status, work under more healthy conditions than those in the smaller offices. It used to amuse me to notice the books these girls read on their way to and from town. At one time I kept a list during several months, and found that, apart from the little penny English papers, like _Home Notes_ and _Home Chat_, Mrs. Henry Wood topped the list; then came, oddly enough for people who could not know his world, Dickens; and, still more odd, Thackeray. In the dressmaking trade, at which many of these girls are employed, there is, as in all other recognized trades, a fixed minimum wage of half a crown a week for beginners—with a fixed rate of increase—so that it is impossible for an employer to use a girl without any payment under the pretence of teaching her, and then dismiss her when the time comes for her to receive an adequate wage. Indeed, the work-girl is most carefully protected, and her hours regulated in accordance with her age. In the tailoring trade the wages of female pressers and buttonhole makers average 21s. a week. Dressmakers’ assistants, or ordinary hands, get 26s. a week; the woman in charge anything from £2 to £7; and ordinary machinists, 21s. As in all countries, the makers of underclothing, or white workers, are the least well paid, averaging only 16s. a week, the people who wash the clothes after they are made having far the best of it, as a fair laundry-hand, or ironer, can easily command £1 a week. Women working in the straw-hat factories are paid from 20s. to 30s. a week, and so are the pressers in the dye-works; knitting machinists, from 20s. to 28s.; printers’ feeders (female), £1 a week; box-makers, 22s. to 25s. Factory wrappers and packers average from 15s. to 22s. a week; match-makers, 17s. 6d.; and warpers in the woollen factories, 25s. Over four employees of either sex constitute a factory, the room in which they work being then under factory laws and the supervision of the factory inspector. On the other hand, the employment of but one Chinese also constitutes a factory, and I cannot help thinking that this is rather a mean little law; though in its own way far-seeing in the interests of Australia, for, of course, no laundry proprietor who wishes to engage, say, one or two hands to help herself and her family, is likely to engage a Chinaman, however quick, clean, and hard-working, when it means all the trouble of being registered as a factory, and the constant irritation of official inspection and interference.