Some witnesses had noticed that the usual manifestations of lessened vitality and anaemia were not so general as in pre-war days, and this is naturally attributed to the better feeding and consideration obtainable at the present time. My attention was drawn several times to the desirability of increased care during the critical years of early adolescence through an extension of the medical service under the National Insurance Act to all industrially employed persons. Some Welfare Workers found that constant attention was needed to prevent a widespread deterioration in health during the first period of employment, and their efforts were frequently hampered by lack of facilities for medical attention. Some witnesses, notably those from the Hebden Bridge clothing trade, as well as from some of the miscellaneous trades investigated, state that girls are put to easier and lighter work when they first leave school and that they take their ease at it, so that no falling-off in health accompanies the transition stage, but a deterioration in physique with increased sickness shows itself at 16 or 17, when they begin to work at a high pressure. The special problem of half-time labour in the cotton and worsted industries, dealing as it does with the employment of children as distinct from adolescents, does not concern us here, so that we will review only the taking up of full-time employment at 13. Where girls come straight from 6 hours' work at school to the full working-day of 10 hours the change involves a considerable strain, even when, as tenters and learners, they are not worked hard. Opinions vary as to the stress of work during the first few months of employment, some witnesses declaring that the children take their ease at first. This may be the case when they are earning a time-wage as back-tenters in the card room or as tenters in the weaving shed, provided they are working for kindly, considerate persons, but where they are put on piece-work the more general opinion is that the anxiety for earnings is as strong an incentive to young as to adult workers, and that all alike work at top speed. These witnesses lay stress on the inevitable deterioration which sets in at this time, and they attribute it mainly to the strain of factory life coming at the same time as the onset of puberty. This opinion is reinforced by the examples often quoted of girls who have not taken up industrial work until 15 or 16; these soon settle down without any falling-off in health. The comparison between girls who go to the mills at 13 and those who go to the secondary schools is even more striking. In most of the cotton towns, particularly in north-east Lancashire, the majority of the pupils at the secondary schools are drawn from the same class and come from the same type of homes as the girls who go to the mills, so that the different circumstances of their lives after they leave the elementary schools must be responsible for the differences in health and physique