3. _The Possibilities of State Control._--We next note that _the industrial revolution has led to State control_, and that the Factory Act, whatever its defects in detail and its inadequacy to meet the situation, has greatly improved the status of the woman-worker by giving her _statutory rights against the employer_. This aspect has often been overlooked by leaders of the women's rights movement, who at one time tended to regard factory legislation as putting the woman in a childish and undignified position. But the true inwardness of the Factory Act is the assertion that workers are _persons_, with rights and needs that are sufficiently important to override commercial requirements. It has not only aided the progress of industrial betterment, but it has taught women that they are of significance and importance to the State, and has brought them out of the position of mere servility. A great deal more may be effected in the future when the governing class attain to more enlightened views of civics and economics, and when the women themselves become politically and socially conscious of what they want. 4. _Association. The factory system has also made it possible for women to strengthen their position by association and combination._--Such association affords women the best opportunity they have ever yet had of attaining economic independence on honourable conditions. And it is interesting to note that just as women are now awakening to social consciousness, and beginning to feel themselves members of a larger whole, so the Trade Unions are now reaching out to issues broader than the mere economic struggle, and are beginning to give more attention to social care for life and health. In the past the Unions have very largely taken what might be termed a juristic view of their functions. They have been concerned mainly with wage-questions, with the prevention of fraud through "truck," oppressive fines and unfair deductions; they have penalised backwardness in the improvement of machinery. As the management of a cotton mill concentrates on extorting the last unit of effort from the workers, so the Unions in the past have very largely concentrated on securing that the workers at any rate got their share of the results. But in more recent years the Unions are beginning to see that this, though good, is not enough. Industrial efficiency may be too dearly bought if it involves a loss of health, character, or personality, and recent reports of the cotton Unions show that the officials are increasingly aware of the seriousness of this matter from the point of view of health. _E.g._, the heavy rate of sickness among women-workers disclosed by the working of the Insurance Act has turned the attention of the Weavers' Amalgamation towards the insanitary conditions in which even now so many operatives do their work. "Fresh air, which is such an essential to health, is a bad thing for the cotton industry; what is wanted is damp air, and calico is