to spend their evenings, if they chose, at the club and their nights in sleep. But, at the week’s end, every girl had done much less work, and being paid at the usual piece work rate, received considerably less than her weekly average. Thereupon, they represented to their employer their hard case. The inspector had forbidden them to work at night, and they could not live upon the proceeds of their work by day. Would he therefore be pleased to raise their pay; otherwise, they would be obliged to seek work elsewhere. The employer did raise their wages, paying them at a rate per dozen which, while still but a very few pence, was yet somewhere between 40 and 45 per cent. higher than he had paid before. Nor was this all. Finding that seven girls were now unable to accomplish all his work, he enlarged his workshop and took on six more. There were now therefore thirteen girls at work instead of seven, and all thirteen were receiving wages a shade higher for ten hours’ work than the seven had received for about fifteen hours. Nor did the retail selling price of the goods advance by so much as the fraction of a penny. In such ways as this do legal checks tend to impede the course of free competition and to prevent the extremity of underpayment. It is not, however, only by preventing undue hours of labour but also by insisting upon reasonable sanitary conditions that the law promotes better wages and improved trade. An employer who can no longer either overwork or overcrowd his “hands” is driven to seek other channels of saving. He demands some method of getting more work done in an hour, and finds it worth his while to pay for the best possible machinery. All sorts of improved processes are introduced, some of which may demand increased skill and attention from the workers. The workers as soon as they have leisure enough to think, and health enough to develop initiative, begin to insist upon better payment, and because they are better paid are able to respond to demands for better work. The improved methods of production, where introduced, lead to an increase of production which renders possible a lowering of selling price, while the rise in wages at the same time increases the buying power of the workers. Trade expands and finds a ready outlet.[74]