The proof that the great mass of the community is becoming more sober, and that the working classes are more sensitive than formerly on the question of drunkenness, is easily obtained, and the facts are quite apparent to any one who has moved about amongst, and associated with them for the last twenty years, as the author has done. Year by year the unions and societies of working men are deserting the public-house and its dangerous attractions in greater numbers, and are holding their meetings in schoolrooms and other places where intoxicating drink is not procurable. And round about the practice of meeting in such places there clustered a variety of old trade customs, the effect of which was to encourage, if not actually to necessitate, intemperance on the part of working men. Until the year 1872, the boiler-makers, a large and influential body of artisans, were allowed threepence each from the society’s funds to be spent at the public-house at which the branch held its meetings; but now, wherever the meetings may be held, intoxicating drink is forbidden. Many of the branches meet, as the author is told by Mr. Knight, the general secretary, in schoolrooms, halls, and private houses; and he adds, “I believe very many more would hold their meetings away from the public-house could they get convenient accommodation sufficiently near.” Another agency which is influencing the habits of the working classes is the introduction of machinery in place of manual labour. A very marked illustration of this exists in the case of the bakers. “Thirty years ago,” says the secretary of the Liverpool Bakers’ Union, Mr. Ritchie, in a letter to the author, “a branch of our trade, the ship-bread bakers, were very much given to excess in drinking, through having to work in a very hot atmosphere, and by double sets of men, night and day; but that is altered now by the introduction of machinery. Any man who becomes a confirmed drunkard is now compelled, owing to greater strictness in the matter of sobriety, to leave his trade, and take work at the corn warehouses or docks. The branch,” he adds, “to which I belong, numbering over two hundred members, have not held our meetings in a public-house for the last five years; and now we have bought a house for our own accommodation, and to let off to other societies. We could not have done that if the old habits had continued.” This writer attributes much of the drunkenness that does undoubtedly exist amongst the working classes to the encouragement which is given to it by the construction and management of public-houses, a view in which the author entirely concurs; for, as at present constructed, our public-houses and wine-rooms give facility for private and secret intemperance.