new state of public opinion upon the subject. There are many firms and private employers nowadays who make it a point of honour to pay their employees properly. We can help to promote the growth of the opinion that it is discreditable to do otherwise. There are other means of aiming at the same end; co-operation and profit-sharing are all roads in the same direction. So, too, are trades unions, though they, like every one else, sometimes make mistakes.
Another reason for underpayment of labour is inefficiency of labour. Both boys and girls when they leave school too often learn no trade, but go out straight to some unskilled employment. Here is an opportunity for those who act as school managers or who work amongst the poor. It is not difficult to make oneself acquainted with the conditions of employment in the various trades. A word of advice at the right moment to a boy or girl leaving school, or to their parents, may be the means of altering the course of a lifetime.
Or again, it is possible to do much in the direction of forwarding the growth of the great friendly societies, the value of whose work is seldom sufficiently recognised. We can, if we like, join them ourselves, either as financial or honorary members, and so gain an insight into that work and make it more generally known. It is no exaggeration to say that if every one who could do so joined a good and sound friendly society when young, the social question would be half-way towards solution. It is an admitted fact that members of friendly societies comparatively seldom have to apply for relief, and they believe themselves that they can, if not interfered with, solve the question of support in old age. We read in the February number of "Unity," which is a journal widely circulated amongst Foresters, Oddfellows,
