Mrs. Pembrose hadn’t a doubt she knew. Of course for a long time and more especially in the Metropolis where the distances were so great and increasing so rapidly, there had been a gathering feeling not only in the catering trade, but in very many factory industries, against the daily journey to employment and home again. It was irksome and wasteful to everyone concerned, there was a great loss in control, later hours of beginning, uncertain service. “Yes, my husband calculated the hours lost in London every week, hours that are neither work nor play, mere tiresome stuffy journeying. It made an enormous sum. It worked out at hundreds of working lives per week.” Sir Isaac’s project was to abolish all that, to bring his staff into line with the drapers and grocers who kept their assistants on the living-in system.... “I thought people objected to the living-in system,” said Mr. Brumley. “There’s an agitation against it on the part of a small Trade Union of Shop Assistants,” said Mrs. Pembrose. “But they have no real alternative to propose.” “And this isn’t Living In,” said Mr. Brumley. “Yes, I think you’ll find it is,” said Mrs. Pembrose with a nice little expert smile. “Living-in isn’t _quite_ what we want,” said Lady Harman slowly and with knitted brows, seeking a method of saying just what the difference was to be. “Yes, not perhaps in the strictest sense,” said Mrs. Pembrose giving her no chance, and went on to make fine distinctions. Strictly speaking, living-in meant sleeping over the shop and eating underneath it, and this hostel idea was an affair of a separate house and of occupants who would be assistants from a number of shops. “Yes, collectivism, if you like,” said Mrs. Pembrose. But the word collectivism, she assured them, wouldn’t frighten her, she was a collectivist, a socialist, as her husband had always been. The day was past when socialist could be used as a term of reproach. “Yes, instead of the individual employer of labour, we already begin to have the collective employer of labour, with a labour bureau—and so on. We share them. We no longer compete for them. It’s the keynote of the time.” Mr. Brumley followed this with a lifted eyebrow. He was still new to these modern developments of collectivist ideas, this socialism of the employer. The whole thing Mrs. Pembrose declared was a step forward in civilization, it was a step in the organization and discipline of labour. Of course the unruly and the insubordinate would cry out. But the benefits were plain enough, space, light, baths, association, reasonable recreations, opportunities for improvement—— “But freedom?” said Mr. Brumley. Mrs. Pembrose inclined her head a little on one side, looked at him this time and smiled the expert smile again. “If you knew as much as I do of the difficulties of social work,” she said, “you wouldn’t be very much in love with freedom.” “But—it’s the very substance of the soul!”