ing the north-eastern provinces of that country,
and the immorality, drunkenness and thieving propensities of its
peasantry, thus continues (p. 361): "The system of contract laborers,
under obligation to bring one or two other laborers into the field, is
in some measure responsible for the immorality, inasmuch as the one or
two, so to speak, gang-laborers, are usually girls, who live in the same
room as the family. Children are not carefully tended and reared. The
wives are obliged to work daily throughout summer and autumn, and on
many properties in winter also. They go very early to work, are free
half an hour before midday to prepare the dinner and do other household
work, and return to work till sunset. The children come badly off.
Often there is no older child to take charge of the little ones, who are
consequently left to themselves in the house. A direct result is the
great mortality of children. From 1858 to 1861 there died in the
province of Prussia, out of a total population of 2,190,072, an annual
average of 21,290 children under one year, and of 40,845 children under
ten years, being 0.97 and 1.86 per cent. of the population; whereas in
the Rhine province, with a population of 2,112,959, the percentages were
0.57 and 1.12 respectively."

In 1870 in the United States, with a total population in town and
country of 38,558,371, the number of deaths of children under one year
was 110,445, and under ten years 229,542, being 0.29 and 0.59
respectively. In other words, where one child dies in the United States,
_two_ die in the Rhenish provinces of Prussia, and _more than three_ in
one of the north-eastern provinces.

I was in Berlin in the autumn of 1872, when there was a meeting there of
the emperors of Germany, Russia and Austria. Every preparation had been
made for this august convocation, among others that of banishing from
the streets all unpleasant sights. Yet on that occasion, when Unter den
Linden was crowded with carriages and horsemen and well-dressed people,
when Russia and Austria were dashing about in open barouches, with
outriders before and guardsmen behind, and the eye encountered on all
sides the bravery of military uniforms and arms and waving pennants, I
saw in a side-street a woman drawing a hand-cart laden with some heavy
substance that was piled up to the height of four or five feet above the
rails of the cart. Beside this poor slave, who withal carried an infant
upon her back which could no