But this is perhaps not the most impressive case, because you, as an experienced woman, can tell me that charwomen do not do so badly for themselves; that they are hard to get; and that steady ones often have their pick of several jobs, and make a compliment of taking one. But think of the great industrial concerns which employ huge armies of casuals. Take the dock companies for example. The men who load and unload the ships are taken on by the hour in hundreds at a time; and they never know whether there will be an hour’s work for them or eight hours, or whether they will get two days in the week or six. I can remember when they were paid twopence an hour, and how great a victory they were supposed to have gained when they struck for sixpence an hour and got it. The dock companies profit; but the men and their families are nearly always living more or less on the rates. Take the extreme case of this. The ratepayers have to maintain a workhouse. If any man presents himself at that workhouse as a destitute person, he must be taken in and lodged and fed and clothed. It is an established practice with some men to live at the workhouse as ablebodied paupers until they feel disposed for a night of drinking and debauchery. Then they demand their discharge, and must be let out to go about their business. They unload a ship; spend all the money they earn in a reckless spree; and return to the workhouse next morning as destitute persons to resume their residence there at the ratepayers’ expense. A woman can do the same when there are casual jobs within her reach. This, I repeat, is the extreme case only: the decent respectable laborers do not do it; but casual labor does not tend to make people decent and respectable. If they were not careless, and did not keep up their spirits and keep down their prudence by drinking more than is good for them, they could not endure such worrying uncertainty. Now, as it happens, dock labor is dangerous labor. In busy times in big docks an accident happens about every twenty minutes. But the dock company does not keep a hospital to mend its broken casuals. Why should it? There is the Poor Law Infirmary, supported by the ratepayers, near at hand, or a hospital supported by their charitable subscriptions; and nothing is simpler than to carry the victim of the accident there to be cured at the public expense without troubling the dock company. No wonder the dock company chairmen and directors are often among our most ardent advocates of public charity. With them it begins at home.