=Changes in General Conditions.=--The grievances of the women and children employed in the mills in the cotton trade were the subject of general discussion fifty years ago, and it was the exposure of the terrible conditions under which they worked, the excessive hours, the insanitary conditions, and their complete helplessness, that forced the hand of the various governments of the day, and enabled Lord Ashley to introduce his factory legislation. Since that time the country has heard but little of the lot of the mill operatives, but from time to time it appears that all is not as it should be. For instance, evidence was laid before the Labour Commission which shewed that the currently-accepted picture of the prosperity and comfort of the mill operatives was much too highly coloured. The representatives both of the women and of the men brought forward a mass of evidence shewing that the grievances to which the workpeople were exposed were of the most real and vital kind. The wages in certain districts and departments might be good, but the over-driving, the speeding up of machinery, the high temperature maintained in the mills, the utterly inadequate provision made for the health of the workpeople, and the prevalence of fines, all pointed to the conclusion that the factory legislation contemplated by Lord Ashley and his successors, and followed up from time to time almost to the present moment, presented no finality. The conditions of labour have, it is true, been transformed since those early days when we read of the operatives’ deputation to Lord Palmerston. In order to demonstrate that working a mule was not an easy matter the operatives induced the Prime Minister to push a chair up and down the room in imitation of a spinner’s motions. The hours of labour have been shortened, but the intensity of labour has increased at an even higher rate. The strain upon the muscle and bodily strength may be less, but the nervous wear and tear, the mental strain, the storm and stress of the mill, have been also steadily increasing. The history of the troubles of the Lancashire and Yorkshire operative is not then a closed chapter; for that matter no department of industry in these days is or can be. Changes and improvements in manufacturing processes and machinery are so constant and sweeping that the worker is ever face to face with new problems, many of which, indeed, are directly due to the rising standard of his own life.