"In Frome, a leading printing establishment employs 130 girls, but none are married. There is a rule against employing married women. It is regarded as immoral to do so--'It means that the husband spends the extra money in beer.' "In Stroud, amongst thirty girls, none were married. "In Bath, in a firm employing forty girls, a few were married, but none whose husbands were in work. 'That would be considered _infra dig_.' [Sidenote: (c) Leeds and Bradford.] "Married women are rarely employed in these trades in Leeds. Out of seventeen houses visited, only three had married women as regular workers. One of these is an account-book maker's, where a few out of the thirty hands are married; another is a wallpaper manufacturer's, where no difference is made when girls marry, and the third is a paper-bag house, where a few out of the thirty women employed are married. In the remaining fourteen houses, comprising about 930 girls, no married women work. It is a custom recognised by masters and workers alike that women leave on marriage, so that the industrial career of these workers stops usually at twenty-two or twenty-three. In two houses old hands who have married are taken on for occasional rushes of work. "This dearth of married women in these trades seems strange in a town where married women's work is such a common feature in the mills, but is accounted for by the fact that the girls employed in the printing trades belong to a comparatively comfortable class, marry in their own class, and are not expected to be breadwinners. One employer suggests that the work requires more regularity than can be expected from a married woman, but this does not seem to be a serious difficulty in London. "Bradford conditions are practically the same. Seven firms have no married women, one has one married out of 100 workers, and this is an exception, married women not being employed as a rule. As in Leeds, the hands who have married come in to help when there is a rush of work. One manager remarked that, if the girls think they are not going to marry they leave for the mills, where pay is higher." * * * * * [Sidenote: The moral influence of the married worker.] There seems to be a pretty widespread objection to the moral influence of married women in the workshop. "Mr. ---- objects to the employment of married women. He dislikes the way they talk to the unmarried girls.... Lately he has been obliged to employ them as he could not get enough unmarried women." [Sidenote: Family health.]