If the street is a bad playground for the boy it is worse for the girl. She runs greater risks and her ignorance is as vast as his. When she goes to work new perils beset her. Her choice of occupation is more restricted, and her wages, though they may not be less in the first instance, do not increase in the same ratio as she grows to youth and womanhood. Whatever may be said for the higher education of women it is out of reach of the many. Most girls have the idea that some day they will be married; and they are often right. When this idea is present it is bound to affect their actions. Marriage means for a man the holding on to his work; for a woman it implies the giving up of her employment--at any rate, in Scotland most men who marry try to keep their wives at home. Among the poorer labourers this is not always possible; but it remains true that the great majority of married women are not industrially employed. They have quite enough to do at home, and sometimes more than enough; but the fact that the home is to be their permanent sphere of work, or the hope of this, makes many girls and women careless as to the choice of their occupation meanwhile. It also prevents combination among workers, to a large extent, and tends to keep wages low. How some of them live on their earnings is a mystery, but they do; and keep themselves in a condition of health and fitness which will compare favourably with that of many of the scientific people who prove by figures and standards that they don't. There is grave risk in it, however; risk that they should not be asked to run. If they were not members of a family, each contributing earnings to a common pool, and each undertaking a share of the household work, many could not exist on the wages they receive. That any large number of them are directly driven to the street by the low rate of their wages is not, in my experience, true. Complaints have been made that the children of well-to-do people accept lower wages and make it hard for those who have to earn their living to obtain reasonable pay. This may be true in a few cases, but it is not of general application. These people do not compete at all in many occupations; their parents are not foolish enough to let them do much for nothing; but they do sometimes exercise an injurious influence on the other girls by their presence. Girls are at least as vain of their appearance as lads, and they are quite as much given to personal adornment. Indeed, I think men will readily admit that women pay more attention to their dress and are keener on ornaments than they are. Certainly when one gets a new kind of hat-pin or "charm," others must obtain something to balance it. If a girl has a fund to draw upon apart from her earnings she is likely to dress more expensively than her neighbours, and the weaker sisters are sometimes tempted to adopt extraordinary measures to keep pace with her.