The second event, which evoked much comment, was a strike by the _employés_ of eleven cotton-spinning mills as a protest against a reduction in wages. So far as can be gathered from official records, this was the first strike of any magnitude that occurred in the industrial area, and seems to have been the earliest effort of the labour-population to test their powers of combination. The police had to be concentrated in the affected area, in order to guard mill-property and quell possible disorder: but the mill-workers at this date were quite unorganized and no disturbance occurred. The action of these mill-hands, however, carried the germ of the disorders which have since caused periodical damage to the industry and have interfered frequently with the normal duties of the police force. It is convenient at this point to refer to the problem of European prostitution, which has repeatedly formed the subject of comment in more recent years. Before the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, the foreign prostitute from eastern Europe was practically unknown in Bombay, and such immorality as existed was confined to women of Eurasian or Indian parentage. Once, however, the large European shipping-companies had established regular steamer-communication with India, and Port Said had become a port of call and an asylum for the riff-raff of Europe, the Jew procurer and “white-slave” trafficker gradually included India within the orbit of a trade, which was characterized by a fairly regular demand and by large and easily earned profits. The Foreigners Act III of 1864, under the provisions of which the Bombay Police arrange for the deportation of foreign pimps, as well as of prostitutes whose conduct demands their expulsion, was apparently not used frequently before the last decade of the nineteenth century, except against troublesome Pathans and Arabs, belonging respectively to the transfrontier region or to the territory of Indian Princes. But the immigration of foreign women must have begun tentatively during the _régime_ of Sir Frank Souter and continued to expand under the auspices of the international procurer, until by the last years of the nineteenth century these unfortunates had secured a strong foothold in certain houses situated in Tardeo, Grant road and other streets of the Byculla ward.