luding with a state examination.

The English midwives are vehemently complaining because the new Midwives
Act will be deliberated on by a commission having no midwife as a member.
The superintendent of the London Institute for Midwives has protested
against this on behalf of 26,000 midwives.

Another woman, Octavia Hill, participated in the official inquiry of the
living conditions of the London East End, which led to a systematic
campaign against the slums. This work is at present continued in London by
31 or more women sanitary officers. They supplement the work of the
factory inspectors, since they inspect the conditions under which women
home-workers live. In the whole country there are more than 80 such women
sanitary officers.

The home-workers are mostly women. Half of the 900,000 or more English
women engaged in the manufacture of ready-made clothing are permitted to
work at home. Their wages are wretchedly low. The government, which pays
the _men_ of the Woolwich Arsenal trade-union wages, is one of the worst
exploiters of women (who do not have the right to vote); in the Army
Clothing Works the government employs women either directly or indirectly
(as home-workers through sweaters).[50]

The urgent need of widening woman's field of labor and improving her
conditions of labor is clearly stated in a lecture which Miss B. L.
Hutchins delivered before the Royal Statistical Society. According to the
census of 1901 there were 1,070,000 more women than men in Great Britain.
In 1901, of every 1000 persons 516 were women (in 1841, only 511 were
women). The longevity of women is higher than that of men (47.77 to
44.13). When the old age pensions were introduced, 135 women to every 100
men applied for aid. Only half of the adult women (5,700,000) are provided
for through marriage, and then only for 20 to 30 years of their lives.
Previous to marriage, and afterward, most of the women are dependent on
their own work for a living. Because English women know from experience
that their conditions of labor can be improved only through the exercise
of the suffrage, they have adopted their "militant tactics."

In the field of poor-relief England again has taken the lead, inasmuch as
she has permitted women to fill honorary posts in the municipal
administration of the poor-law. At the present time 1162 women are engaged
in this work, 147 of whom are rural district councillors.

The chief reform efforts of the women were di