A working man’s wife in receipt of a regular allowance divides it as follows: Rent; burial insurance; coal and light; cleaning materials; clothing; food. A short experience in helping her to sort her items on paper shows the investigator how to prove their accuracy. Rent is easy. There is always the rent-book if the family deals direct with the landlord; and if the rooms are sublet from the real tenant, the woman who sublets them is only too anxious to explain either that rent is owing or that it is paid regularly, and how much a week it is. Burial insurance is easy. The insurance-book tells the whole story. With regard to such items as coal, gas, soap, and food, experience enables an intelligent investigator to compare accounts of women who do not know of one another’s existence in such a manner as to know, almost before the woman has spoken, what she is likely to be spending. If a woman says that she is buying 1 cwt. of coal a week in the winter, and paying 1s. 6d. for it, dozens of other accounts of which she knows nothing corroborate her. If she says she is burning 1¾ cwt. in the winter, and spending 2s. 7½d., the price is known to be correct; it only remains to question the quantity. In one case the reason is that the rooms are basement rooms, very damp and very dark. In another there are eight children, with a very large copper fire to be kept going on washing-days. In a third no gas is laid on, and all the cooking has to be done by the stove. All these conditions are there to be seen. With regard to food the same test applies. Is the budget peculiar, or does it bear out thirty others, allowing, of course, for difference in size of family and in size of income? If it is peculiar, why? The explanation is generally simple and obvious. In cases where there is no explanation—of which there have been two only—the family is not visited any further. As a matter of fact, the budgets have borne out each other in the most striking manner. There seems to be so little choice in the manner of keeping a family on 20s. a week. The women were with one consent appalled at the idea of keeping accounts. Not that they did not “know it in their heads,” as they anxiously explained; but the clumsy writing and the difficult spelling, and the huge figures which refused to keep within any appointed bounds, and wandered at will about the page, thoroughly daunted them.