iniquitous and capricious deductions from the price given for the work. Deductions are also made for short returns of fibre or bristle sweepings, where these have to be returned to the shop. The material is weighed out and weighed in. It is calculated that if the material weighed so much, the clippings or sweepings ought to weigh so much; but the worker is never told _how_ much, and has no means of checking the calculation; yet if the amount is short, she either ‘gets the sack’ or has to pay for the deficiency. The rate of payment varies with the number of holes and the quality of brush, bristles always commanding a higher rate than fibre. Coarse fibre scrubbing brushes fetch anything from 3½d. to 1s. a dozen. One woman will make brushes with 145 holes for 10d., while another will get 9d. for brushes with only 100. There is no uniformity of payment; it all depends, they tell you, on the shop you work for.... The fibre drawers rarely make more than 7s. to 8s. for a week of seventy-two hours. Taking into consideration the various lets and hindrances to which they are subject, and the time wasted at the shop, 6s. would fairly represent the average during the season when it suits the masters to keep them regularly employed.... It is only by seeing the homes of the brush drawers that it is possible to realise all that is implied in the carrying on of a trade and of the travesty of family life in one single room, or the misery of these lives of endless toil, where the tragedy which endures on is so much more pitiful than the tragedy to which death brings rest from labour.” Tooth brushes, of which it is estimated that a worker can make four in an hour, are paid at the rate of 4d. a dozen, and best hair brushes at 2d. each, or ¾d. for 100 holes.