No one who has ever visited Cradley can forget it. The impression produced is ineffaceable. So much grime and dirt set in the midst of beautiful moors and hills--so much human skill and industry left neglected, despised and underpaid. The small chains are made by women who work in tiny sheds, sometimes alone, sometimes with two or three others. Each is equipped with a bellows on the left of the forge, worked by the left hand, a forge, anvil, hammer, pincers, and one or two other tools. The chains are forged link by link by sheer manual skill; there is no mechanical aid whatever, and we understand that machines for chain-making have been tried, but have never yet been successful. The operation is extremely ingenious and dextrous, and where the women keep to the lighter kind of chains there would be little objection to the work, if done for reasonable hours and good pay. It is carried on under shelter, almost in the open air, and is by no means as drearily monotonous as many kinds of factory work. On the other hand, in practice the women are often liable to do work too heavy for them, and the children are said to run serious risks of injury by fire. At the time of the present writer's visit, now about ten years ago, these poor women were paid on an average about 5s. 6d. a week, and were working long hours to get their necessary food. Most have achieved considerable increases under the combined influence of organisation and the Trade Board, and probably 11s. or 12s. is now about the average, while some are getting half as much again. When the strike was over there was a substantial remainder left over from the money subscribed to help the strikers. The chain-makers did not divide the money among themselves, but built a workers' Institute. Surely the dawn of such a spirit as this in the minds of these hard-pressed people is something for England to be proud of. In August 1911 came a great uprising of underpaid workers, and among them the women. The events of that month are still fresh in our memories; perhaps their full significance will only be seen when the history of these crowded years comes to be written. The tropical heat and sunshine of that summer seemed to evoke new hopes and new desires in a class of workers usually only too well described as "cheap and docile." The strike of transport workers set going a movement which caught even the women. In Bermondsey almost every factory employing women was emptied. Fifteen thousand women came out spontaneously, and the National Federation of Women Workers had the busiest fortnight known in its whole history of seven years.