The opposition to the Factory Acts by the workers themselves was actually harder to overcome in some ways than that of the employers, because the employers, when they were forced by law to try the experiment, found that extreme sweating, like killing the goose that laid the golden eggs, was not the best way to make business pay, and that they could more than make up for the cost of complying with the very moderate requirements of the Acts by putting a little more brains into their work. Even the stupid ones found that by speeding up their machinery, and thus making their employees pull themselves together and work harder, they could get more out of them in ten hours than in twelve. The Intelligent Woman, if she has travelled, may have noticed that in countries where there is no Shop Hours Act, and shops remain open until everyone has gone to bed, the shopkeepers and their assistants are far less tired and strained at nine in the evening than the assistants in a big shop in a big English city are at five in the afternoon, though the shop closes at six. Impossible as it may sound, in the ginning mills of Bombay, before any factory legislation was introduced, the children employed went into the factory, not for so many hours a day, but for months at a time; and there are such things in the world as Italian cafés that are open day and night without regular night and day waiters, the employees taking a nap when and where they can. And this lazy happy-go-lucky way of doing business may do no great harm, whilst an eight hour day at high wages under modern scientific management may mean work so intense that it takes the last inch out of the workers, and cannot be done except by persons in the prime of life, nor even by them for many consecutive months. The employers had another resource in the introduction of machinery. When employers can get plenty of cheap labor they will not introduce machinery: it is too much trouble, and though the machine may do the work of several persons it may cost more. At this moment (1925) in Lisbon the very rough and dirty business of coaling steamships can be done by machinery. The machinery is actually there ready for use. But the work is done by women, because they are cheaper and there is no law against it. If a Portuguese Factory Act were passed, forbidding the employment of women, or imposing restrictions and regulations on it (possibly not really for the sake of the women, but only to keep them out of the job and thus reserve it for men), the machinery would be turned on at once; and it would soon be improved and added to until it became indispensable. But as the women would lose their employment, they would object to any such Factory Act much more vociferously than the employers.