possible price, and exploited the working powers of his employees to the utmost limits. Before the days of capitalism, night work was unknown, and, moreover, was quite unnecessary. But with the growth of capitalist production, there came into existence a number of industries which were carried on continuously night and day, if only for the reason that any interruption of the process of production would cause a great curtailment of profit. Night work is extremely injurious in its effects, it undermines the health (sleep during the day does not adequately compensate for loss of sleep during the night), morality, and the family life of the worker (who has no time to occupy himself with his family). All these dangers are even more serious in the case of women and children. As regards the diffusion of child-labour, those branches of manufacture which take the form of home-industry are by far the worst. The manual workers fight the machine-workers with the same weapons that these latter themselves employ. These weapons flay the hand-workers even more than the machine-workers, because the attempt is made to compete with the machine-labour by human over-exertion. This phenomenon becomes apparent in every branch of industry directly the use of machines begins. In agriculture, child-labour becomes a serious matter only when manufacturing industry comes to draw labour more and more from the country into the towns, so that a scarcity of labour begins to prevail in the country districts. Child-labour in agriculture is a necessary accompaniment of the small-holding system, because the small-holder is able transitorily to maintain his independence only through the use of cheap labour in the form of the utilisation of the working powers of all the members of his family. The widely celebrated patriarchal conditions which were reputed to exist in agriculture have completely passed away. When the condition of the labour market renders it possible, certain factory owners, even to-day, discharge men to replace them by the cheaper labour of women and children.