=System of Tours.=--The growth of provincial unions has been much quickened by the policy recently adopted by the League,--now called the Women’s Trades Union League. A scheme of annual tours has been mapped out, by which the officials of the League are enabled to visit periodically districts in which unions are forming, or are likely to be formed. Sometimes the men’s unions send to ask for the help of the League to organise the women, whose readiness to accept lower wages they recognise as a serious danger to the position of labour as a whole. Often the women themselves send a request for help, and occasionally outsiders have invited the League to come and rouse the impoverished and helpless workers of a district. Interest in the subject is sometimes awakened by a discussion at a political meeting, and various clubs and associations have from time to time invited a member of the League’s Committee to give an address upon women’s unions. If after some such beginning the ground seems ready for working, and especially if the local Trades Council advises, a meeting of women is called, and the officials of the League, aided by such friendly supporters as the district may afford, explain the advantages of combination. Afterwards the names of those willing to join a union are taken down, and a date is arranged for a business meeting, at which officers are chosen and rules formed. Members of the Trades Council are generally present at the second meeting, to put the women in the way of arranging their affairs. The society is now formed, and it may seem that everything is going well; but the difficulties in the way of successful unionism among a class so poor and so unaccustomed to the methods of combination as the majority of working-women are very great, and it is often found that in a few months membership has dwindled to a small number, and the hopeful prospects of the opening weeks have entirely disappeared. Often the committee is not up to its work, accounts are badly kept, or the collectors are unable to arrange a good working method for getting in subscriptions, a matter which is by no means easy when the employers or their managers and foremen happen to view the formation of the union with disfavour. Then again, if, as sometimes happens, suspicion arises that the hard-earned funds are being mismanaged, the union will melt away as if by magic, to be re-organised only with great difficulty. In order to avoid this danger as far as may be, and to give the newly-formed union an incentive to perseverance, the League promises a second visit at the end of a year to those societies which affiliate themselves to the central body. A plan of spring and autumn tours has been arranged, and by grouping a number of industrial centres in one part of the country the emissaries of the League have been enabled to cover much more ground than would have been possible in a series of detached visits. In this manner Lady