=Extent of Combination.=--Whilst Lancashire and Yorkshire afford the most instructive field for studying the influence of factory legislation upon labour, the information that may be gleaned there respecting combination as an element in the economic and social life of women is no less instructive. Side by side with one another you find two great kindred industries--the woollen and the cotton--and the level of one, so far as women are concerned, is far below that of the other. No explanation based on competition, either in commercial or labour markets, can account for this difference. The explanation must be sought, not in the ability of the individual or the working of the market, but in the extent and direction of the combination which exists among the operatives. It is certain that the operatives of Lancashire and Cheshire have shewn themselves far more alive to the benefits of combination than those of Yorkshire. The worker in the cotton mill, whether male or female, is a Trade Unionist almost as a matter of course, and though, as in the best organized of trades, a certain number still remain outside the pale of the union, those who are inside are sufficiently strong, both in numbers and in practical effectiveness, to formulate the labour policy of the trade. There is a wide difference between formulating a policy and carrying it out in practice, but the organizations of the spinners, weavers, and cardroom-workers have been successful in making the two very nearly synonymous. Their leaders have been fully alive to the absurdity of attempting to carry through an heroic policy in the absence of effective co-operation on the part of the majority. To ignore the women workers would have been fatal in an industry which numbers them by tens of thousands. Accordingly the policy of the Unionists has been to bring men and women together into the same organization; to treat their labour as one and the same; and to provide equal rules for the remuneration and protection of all. The most notable result has been that women weavers in the cotton trade are paid precisely the same wages as the men; though indeed the fact is scarcely second in importance that the co-operation of the women workers in every branch of the cotton industry is absolutely secured for every trade movement.