=Personal Narratives.=--In support of what has been here stated as to the general conditions of shop work, I may add some particulars gleaned from one or two lady shop assistants who have been kind enough to tell me frankly their experience. Both are now employed in shops with whose management they are perfectly content, but their previous experiences were of a far less agreeable nature. Miss Smith served for some time in a drapery establishment in a second-rate quarter of a large town. The hours were from 9 a.m. to 9.30 p.m., and to 10, 10.30, or later on Saturdays. No annual holidays were given; the assistants were supposed to have one free day a month, but often they did not get it. An hour was allowed for dinner, which the assistants had to provide either in or out of the building. As my informant’s home was half an hour distant she brought her own dinner, and thus was unable to have warm food. When engaged in the millinery department she divided her time between the showroom and the workroom, and was often kept until 12.30 on Saturday night, or rather Sunday morning, finishing orders. Her sister had been similarly employed in a small country town for eighteen months, during most of which time the working hours were so long that from Monday morning until Sunday morning she only left the counter for bed. “At the end of the time,” added Miss Smith, “she was carried home in blankets,” having broken down completely under the hard conditions of her life. “Country shops,” remarked Miss Smith, “are the worst of all; the work is never at an end.” Asked if she had ever found deficient sanitary arrangements, she stated that in an otherwise well-managed shop the housekeeper had at one time, from some whim, taken to locking the lavatories, opening them only at certain intervals. The rebellion that ensued, however, had forced her to relinquish the practice. Some small shops, it was added, were “merely square rooms,” and were unprovided with offices.