The growth of England's industries, more than any other single thing, contributed to the well-being of the masses of English society, while at the same time it tended to make sharper distinctions among them. The increase of ease and comfort in living affected largely the character of domestic life; and the wider scope of industry and sterner demands for labor, which were the outcome of a desire to participate largely in the benefits of the new industries, gave opportunity to individual talent and application; while the unfrugal and shiftless, or the unfortunate, experienced in proportionately greater degree the severity of living. To mining, fishing, farming, sheep rearing, fruit cultivation, weaving, seafaring,--the industries of England other than manufactures,--were added during the seventeenth century glass manufacture, cotton manufacture, and other industries which were the foundation of England's material greatness. This list was greatly augmented during the eighteenth century, and the development of manufactures of all sorts created the factory towns, which drew to them, as into a vortex, the populations of the rural districts, and created many problems of modern society in which female and child labor are involved. Among the women in everyday life, social habits were easy and existence had many elements of contentment. Gossip--which had become differentiated from scandal, because of a wider variety of subjects to chatter about than flagitious conduct, occupied a large proportion of the time of the women. The public gardens and the promenades of the cities, notably the capital, were as much resorted to as during the reign of Charles, and there was as keen an interest in the display of styles and the parade of wealth by the women who rode in their carriages or were carried in their sedan chairs as formerly there had been in the conduct of the gilded set of the Restoration.