Other deductions are in the nature of punishment; and of these it may safely be said that the master or foreman who cannot keep order without the use of them does not know his business. One of the best employers and kindest men whom I ever knew said, indignantly, when I asked him whether there were fines in his factory: “If I could not run a factory without fines I should be ashamed to run one at all.” My real reason for the question was that an employer of a very different stamp had within the same week defended himself against an accusation of excessive fining by a public declaration that unless he inflicted fines his factory would be a “bear-garden.” The contrast between these two men—carrying on industries not at all dissimilar—between the two factories, and, above all, between the manners, morals, and appearance of the young women working for the one and of those working for the other, formed one of the most instructive object lessons which it has ever been my lot to receive. Deductions for lateness are sometimes made a source of profit to the employer. Men who pay a penny for an hour’s work will sometimes deduct threepence for an hour’s absence; and piece workers—who, of course, lose pay for the time of absence, are sometimes made to pay in addition. I have seen the wage-book of an umbrella-coverer, which showed that in the course of two years she had paid in fines (to the same employer) nearly £6, chiefly for coming late in the morning. The case was particularly flagrant, because she was a piece worker, and was not using a power machine, and because work in this workshop was so irregular that when she did come early she was often kept sitting unoccupied, while, if orders happened to come in of an afternoon, the women were kept late to fulfil them. Thus, although there might be no work for them, they were fined if they came late; being piece workers, they were paid nothing for the time spent in waiting for work, and they were paid at no extra rate for work done late. Worst of all, there are factories—though I hope but very few—in which piece workers, when they have succeeded in making up a total slightly better than usual, are liable to have the surplus deducted. I have in my mind a factory where the foreman frequently deducted 1s. or 2s. from a week’s payment, on the ground that the girl who should have received it had “earned too much.”