To sum up then: workers in factories and workshops, although they are, on the whole, better off in respect of hours, and although their lives cannot at the worst, be so horribly monotonous as can that of the home worker, are frequently exceedingly ill paid, even in trades demanding considerable skill: not a few of them are employed in places that are uncomfortable, unwholesome, or even actually dangerous; their poor wages are apt to be docked by irritating fines and deductions; they have no choice as to the companions with whom they spend their days, and they share with the home worker the constant dread of being left without employment and without means to pay for lodging or food. These are the conditions in which hundreds and hundreds of young women in this country are earning what it is customary to call “their living,” although all of us are aware that no young woman can really live, in a large town, the life of a civilised human being upon ten shillings a week or less. CHAPTER III SHOP ASSISTANTS, CLERKS, WAITRESSES The daily life of the shop assistant—Her bedroom—“No pictures, photos, etc.”—“Anything so left”—The dining-room—Meals—Impossibility of ever being alone—Long hours—Fines and rules—Examples—Some notes on health—Baths—Payment—“Premiums” and “intro” goods—“Taking the book”—Diminished salary with commission on sales—Case of a milliner’s assistant—The dictum of a draper—Why not domestic service?—The social grade—Assistants who do not “live in”—Some Scotch cases—Trade expenses of waitresses—Breakages—Clerks and bookkeepers—Salaries offered to a competent young woman—Some shops in fiction—The question of morals.