Nor are long hours and underpayment the only ills from which factory workers suffer. In spite of laws and of inspectors, dangers and discomforts are still prevalent in many workplaces—especially in those where workers are ill paid. Many instances may be gathered from a single year’s Report of the factory inspectors; and of course the inspectors neither discover all the instances nor print all that they discover. Looking into the Report for 1905, we find, on p. 13, an account from Southampton of the tea-room “provided by a high class dressmaker employing about 60 females.” This apartment was “underground with concrete floor and walls and the ceiling only 6 feet high, with no ventilation and no natural light.” Not a few women employed by West-End firms may be found at the present day, not only eating, but also working, by artificial light, in basement-rooms that are little better than cellars, or in cramped upper rooms, from which there would be little hope of escape in case of fire. The law, in its wisdom, does not require a special fire escape except in places where as many as 40 persons are at work; and certain frugal employers are careful, therefore, to employ but 39. “In one such workshop,” writes Miss Squire, “the condition of the 39 women working there seemed one of grave danger; it is a large new rag sorting warehouse, so filled with bales that only narrow passages down which one person can pass are left. On the second floor the women rag sorters work, their tables ranged along a sort of gallery ... the centre of the building being open for the hoisting of bales; the only means of exit is a narrow wooden staircase with open treads, at one end of the spacious floor. Were a fire to break out below, all exit would be cut off very quickly. In this case the local authority reply they have no bye-laws and can do nothing, as less than 40 persons are employed.”[12]