After the terrible national crime of deadly employments it is almost an anti-climax to enumerate the vast mass of dishonesty and falsehood that pervades our commercial system in every department. Almost every fabric, whether of cotton, linen, wool, or silk, is so widely and ingeniously adulterated by the intermixture of cheaper materials that the pure article as supplied to our grandparents is hardly to be obtained. Of this one example only must serve. Calicoes have been successively dressed with such substances as paste and tallow; then with the still cheaper china clay and size; and in some cases from 50 to 90 per cent. of these latter materials have been sold as calico for exportation to countries inhabited by what we term savages. These people only found out the deception when the need for washing or exposure to tropical rains reduced the material to a flimsy and worthless rag, as I have myself witnessed in some parts of the Malay Archipelago.[56:A] [56:A] These facts are given in the Ninth Edition of the "Encyclopædia Britannica." In recent editions the article _Adulteration_ is limited to food and drugs. In "Chambers' Encyclopædia," cotton, linen and woollens are included among adulterated fabrics. Even worse is the adulteration of almost every kind of prepared food—including the showy sweetmeats which tempt our children—with various chemicals, which are often injurious to health, and sometimes fatal; while even the drugs we take in the endeavour to cure our various ailments are frequently so treated as to be useless or even hurtful. Along with this form of dishonesty is what may be termed simple cheating in the description of goods sold, especially as to quantity. Threads and fabrics are generally shorter or narrower than stated, giving a larger profit when sold in enormous quantities in our great retail shops. Then, again, there is a widespread system of bribery of servants or other employees in order to obtain more customers or to secure contracts; and though these are all criminal offences, and a great host of inspectors and official analysts are employed to discover and convict the offenders, yet so few people are willing to take the trouble and lose the time and money involved in putting the law into motion, that a very large percentage of these offences go undiscovered and unpunished.