earn 10_s._ to 15_s._ a week, and in the hosiery, boot and shoe, and lace trades, the wages for the more skilled parts of the work are fairly good, as women’s wages go, in times of full work; though when the factories are working short time only 3_s._ or 4_s._ a week may be the average. These last trades, which have their chief seats in Leicester and Nottingham, all suffer from the competition of underpaid labour in the neighbouring districts. The hosiery seamer in the factory earns from 11_s._ to 16_s._ a week full time; but a home-worker at the same business may work hard all the week and only make 2_s._ 6_d._ or 3_s._ Perhaps the worst paid group of trades is that in which home-work is the leading feature, such as shirtmaking, mantle-making, tailoring, matchbox-making. The earnings are not only low but uncertain, and it is impossible to make any generalization as to their amount. There are certain skilled occupations, such as dressmaking and millinery, in which a superior worker can earn what are, for women, good wages. A dressmaker will commonly make from 10_s._ to £1, and a milliner about the same; but it must be remembered that there are women and girls employed in the minor branches of such trades whose wages are much less, and in provincial towns the superior workers too are paid on a lower scale. Finally, there are the women employed in very toilsome, disagreeable, or dangerous trades, and these are by no means highly paid when the nature of their work is considered. Laundresses, in the washing branch of the trade, get 2_s._ 6_d._ or 2_s._ 9_d._ a day, and ironers 3_s._ to 3_s._ 6_d._, and in all branches of the laundry trade employment is intermittent. Women are employed in tinplate works, ironworks, and brickworks, for 7_s._ 6_d._ a week, or little more, and white-lead workers’ wages are often only 2_s._ a day. § =Difference between Men’s and Women’s wages artificially kept up.=--To sum up, then, the points we have been considering;--whilst there are strong forces at work tending to abolish the distinctions between men’s and women’s work and the industrial disabilities to which women have been subject, such as lack of training and muscular strength, these very distinctions are still kept up by the different method of appraising the work performed. Even though a woman’s work may be as good and as rapid as a man’s, we have seen that her scale of payment is frequently far inferior to his. She may be working on the same kind of machine, speeded at the same pace, turning out the same commodity, and yet a heavy penalty is laid on her simply because she is a woman. The experience gained in the cotton trade, however, seems to shew that in an industry where machinery is largely employed, and where the trade organization includes both men and women, the economic disadvantages under which women labour tend to disappear.