“God help the poor!” concludes one half-unintelligible complaint of swindling deductions, where, on investigation, “the workers were at first terrified to give me information,” says the inspector, “and I was met with entirely false statements.” “God help the poor!” is written over all this haunting and dolorous record. It is the record of prisoners: _sedentes in tenebris et umbra mortis_.[9] Gentility, again, is desirable. So is the supervision of the morals of young men and women. Both are enjoyed--in abundance it would seem--by the shop assistants, half a million of whom “live-in,” or are affected by the living-in system. Some twenty thousand of them, organised in a Trades Union, are endeavouring to climb into citizenship: with less moral supervision it may be, but with the individual development that comes from self-ordered life and some suggestion of freedom. The necessity for the receipt of wages of something like a pound a week, if these people are to choose their own lodgings and dwell at ease, is a necessity which offers a considerable barrier to reform. And with the prospect of financial disability laid upon them if the present system is abolished, there is small wonder that a number of employers are enthusiastic over its advantages. The “discontented” Unionists--discontented in the opinion of many of their employers, like the dog who went mad in Goldsmith’s elegy in order “to gain some private ends”--keep up the agitation bravely. On occasional bank holidays, when their less vigorous brethren are enjoying their four days a year of statutory idleness in the open air, they suddenly appear like fish attaining sunshine from deep waters: hold their “conferences,” pass their resolutions, then vanish again into the neat, obsequious serviceable men and women who attend to the whims of customers and encourage their tentative efforts towards purchase. Meetings of shop assistants are held in the big cities after darkness has fallen. A crowded company of unknown persons assembles to pass resolutions against “living-in” or in favour of short hours, then vanishes again, into the barracks or pleasant commercial “hotels” in which they reside. Evidence is obtained with difficulty even when a Government consents to interfere, and appoints a Commission to investigate. “Miss X----” does not wish to give her name. “If my name is published I get the swap,” she says, “and I have to go at a minute’s notice; and my employer would not mind spoiling my reference. He does not know that I have come here to-day.” “I was summoned to come yesterday,” says Mr. Y----wearily, “and I asked for a day off; but I suppose I shall be dismissed when I go back for taking two days, so that I do not suppose it will matter a great deal whether my name appears or not.” There are plenty of specific cases of ill-treatment and niggardly treatment against which no inspection can guard: of poor food and monotonous food, overcrowding in bedroom, squalor of