Opinions differ as to the amount of homework done nowadays. The plant required is just a folder--a piece of bone. There is no doubt that to some extent folding is still done at home by the older girls who have _during the day been employed in the factory_. One employer admitted that on "not more than three or at most four nights in the year" do girls take work home from his shop. The cause is set down to the impatience of the public. Everybody wants his order executed immediately. Rates paid for homework are, if anything, a shade less than those paid for work done in the factory. While such work increases the total earnings this is not the main motive for undertaking it. A good deal of it is forced, and due to the urgency of the public demand. During very busy months some firms have a great deal of folding done as _outwork_ by widows and married women _not_ now employed in the factory during the day. But this practice is declining. Twopence per 1,000 extra is paid by one firm, _i.e._, 10_d._ as against 8_d._, for this outwork to compensate for lack of facilities in the home. Despite the great number of sewing and folding machines introduced in recent years there are probably more women employed at the trade than ever. There is more work. The small shops tend to retain women's labour. Their jobs are so small in amount and varied in character that it would not pay them to introduce machinery. Further, in the large shops, folding machines have not always proved satisfactory. Doubtless, had men been engaged in folding during the last fifty years, employers would ere this have perfected a folding machine, but the cheapness of women's labour takes away some of the incentive to invention. Sometimes the introduction of a machine reduces women's work in one department and increases it in another. Take as an example the wire-stitching machine used in the production of tens of thousands of penny pocket time-tables and diaries. If the diary is not out during the first three days of the month it may as well not appear at all. There is a short selling time during which sales are keen. Without the device of the stitching machine the only way in which large quantities of such ephemeral publications could be placed quickly on the market would be by the employment of a very large staff of women. But the big and rapid output possible by means of the machine, although it reduces the work of women stitchers, brings increased work to the women folders. (E.) _Machine Ruling._