Clothing is, frankly, a mystery. In the budgets of some women 6d. a week is set down opposite the item “clothing club” or “calico club.” This seems meant to provide for underclothing—chiefly flannelette. One shilling is down, perhaps, against “boot club.” Other provision in the most thrifty family there seems to be none. A patient visitor may extract information, perhaps, that the father gets overtime pay at Christmas, and applies some of it to the children’s clothes, or that he is in a paying-out club which produces anything from 13s. to 26s., or thereabouts, at the end of the year. But in the great number of cases there is no extra money at Christmas, or at any other time, to depend upon. In the poorer budgets items for clothes appear at extraordinary distant intervals, when, it is to be supposed, they can no longer be done without. “Boots mended” in the weekly budget means less food for that week, while any clothes which are bought seem to be not only second-hand, but in many instances fourth- or fifth-hand. In the course of fifteen months’ visiting, one family on 23s. a week spent £3 5s. 5½d. on clothes for the mother and six children. Half the sum was spent on boots, so that the clothes other than boots of seven people cost 32s. 9d. in fifteen months—an average of 4s. 8d. a head. Another family spent 9d. a week on boots and 9d. a week on clothes in general. There were four children. Some families, again, only buy clothes when summer comes and less is needed for fuel. The clubs to which extra careful women, or women with more money for housekeeping, subscribe, are generally run by a small local tradesman. Whether they work for the benefit of their clients, or whether, as seems far more likely, they are run entirely in the interests of the proprietors, has not been a subject of research for the investigation. They fill a want. That is evident. Women bringing up a family on 20s. or even more a week need to have a definite expenditure in order to know where they are. They like to buy the same things week after week, because then they can calculate to a nicety how the money will last. They like to do their saving in the same way. So much a week regularly paid has a great attraction for them. If the club will, in addition to small regular payments, send someone to call for the amount, the transaction leaves nothing to be desired. A woman who can see her way towards the money by any possibility agrees at once. Payment by instalment fascinates the poor for the same reason. It is a regular amount which they can understand and grasp, and the awful risk, if misfortune occurs of losing the precious article, together with such payments as have already been made, does not inflame their imaginations. If people living on £1 a week had lively imaginations, their lives, and perhaps the face of England, would be different.