The labour market of China is undoubtedly enormous, but the supply does not respond as readily to the demand as in Europe, because the distances are great and the means of communication correspondingly few and difficult. However, the labourers living on the banks of the Yang-tsze, who are called ‘Water-fowls,’ constantly flock into Shanghai in search of work. They belong to that class of poor creatures who crowd the great Chinese cities, and whose only home is their sampang, in which an entire family accommodates itself in a space that would barely suffice for a single European. One can see their floating huts moored alongside the _arroyos_ that furrow the suburbs of Shanghai. Once they begin to earn a little, they build a hut on shore, using up the material of their old boathouse, until they can erect something better by way of a dwelling. Salaries are distinctly rising in Shanghai, and when I was there in 1898 the factories were wrangling over their workmen and women—who are in the majority—in consequence of certain enterprising but unscrupulous managers of rival firms intriguing, by offers of higher wages, to induce the most skilled to leave their employers and come to them. The quality of the labour at Shanghai appears to be satisfactory, at least, so say the different managers, and in the manufactories which I visited I noticed that everything was scrupulously clean and orderly, quite as much so as in any average European or American factory of the same class. The workgirls do not live, as in Russia and Japan, and, indeed, as they did formerly in England and in other manufacturing countries, in a building near the place of business set apart for the purpose, and at the expense of the firm, but at home with their own families. Many of them are married women, and a great number, instead of leaving their little girls over ten years of age at home, request that they may be employed, so as to remain under their supervision. They are usually engaged on very light work, such as shifting the cocoons in the boiling water for the weavers. In the silk factories I visited they were allowed half an hour every day for what was known as ‘school,’ during which some senior workwoman—the mother or the elder sister—taught them the rudiments of their work. This system is excellent, and the managers declare themselves highly pleased with it, as it is likely to train good workers.