On the whole, the story of the British cotton trade—a trade, be it remembered, the very existence of which is surprising—is the story of one of the most amazing developments in industrial history. Raw material that can only be grown in distant countries is brought, naturally enough, at first, to a land of coal and iron, the cradle of the factory system. By and by, other countries, including some in which the raw material can be produced, begin, in their turn, to adopt the factory system and to manufacture cotton. What would naturally follow? Surely, the absorption of the English trade by the foreign competitor whom nature favours. Moreover, Britain, already handicapped by nature, had further handicapped herself by restricting hours of work and by imposing high and expensive standards of sanitation and safety. Yet what is seen to occur? England’s trade goes on steadily expanding, year by year; wages rise, both nominally and, to a greater degree, really; and in the course of last year (1905) not only was all the available adult labour employed, but it was not possible to get enough of it, so that there was actually some increase in half time labour, which previously had steadily declined. Nor is the contrast less if we consider the mills themselves or the men and women connected with them. In the first third of the last century, the mills were, in general, dirty, ill ventilated, ill provided with sanitary accommodation, frequently overcrowded, the machinery unguarded and the temperature unregulated, so that the operatives suffered from extremes both of heat and of cold. At the present day, there must be a certain cubic space for every worker, there must be proper sanitary accommodation, moderate temperature and—most important of all, perhaps, in this industry—there must be proper ventilation for carrying off the dust and fluff by which the lungs of so many cotton operatives have been injured. The old mills were full of overworked, underpaid children, stunted, wizened, and, if their contemporaries are to be credited, precociously vicious; children who dropped asleep at their looms, and had to be dragged, crying with sleepiness, from their beds to begin work again in the morning, while another relay of little serfs were actually waiting to enter the beds left vacant. The mills ran till late at night, sometimes all night long. Diseases of many kinds, especially phthisis and spinal deformities were rife; while drunkenness and immorality seem to have been rampant. The masters, many of whom were self made men, of little education, vowed that their profits were not large, and that any restriction of the hours of labour would inevitably land them in the Bankruptcy Court. The operatives, however, persisted in clamouring for relief; parliament granted it; and strange to say, instead of being ruined, the trade grew better and better. The workers, seizing their chance, developed strong trade unions that included both men and women,