ll-box making, 9s. for thirty-six gross; possible earnings, 8s.
per week.

Shirt button-hole making, 1d. a dozen; can do three or four dozen a
day.

Whip-making, 1s. a dozen; can do a dozen a day.

Trousers finishing, 3d. to 5d. each, finding one's own cotton; can
do four a day.

Shirt-finishing, 3d. to 4d. a dozen; possible earnings, 6s. a week.

Outside of the cities, where the needle is almost the sole refuge of the
unskilled worker, every industry is invaded. A recent report as to
English nail and chain workers shows hours and general conditions to be
almost intolerable, while the wage averages eightpence a day. In the
mines, despite steady action concerning them, women are working by
hundreds for the same rate. In short, from every quarter comes in
repeated testimony that the majority of working Englishwomen are
struggling for a livelihood; that a pound a week is a fortune, and that
the majority live on a wage below subsistence point.

The enormous influx of foreign population is partly responsible for
these conditions, but far less than is popularly supposed; since the
Jews, most often accused, are in many cases juster employers than the
Christians, and suffer from the same causes. For all alike, legislation
is powerless to reach certain ingrained evils, and the recent
sweating-commission ended its report with the words:--

"We express the firm hope that the faithful exposure of the evils
that we have been called upon to unveil, will have the effect of
leading capitalists to lend greater attention to the conditions
under which work is done, which furnishes the merchandise they
demand. When legislation has attained the limit beyond which it can
no longer be useful, the amelioration of the condition of workers
can result only from the increasing moral sense of those who employ
them."

This conclusion, it may be added, is in full accord with that given in
the Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII., as well as with that of our most
serious workers at home; our own government examination into the
sweating-system, now embodied in a Congressional Report accessible to
all, being simply confirmation of every point made in that for England.
As a summary of many working conditions in London, I add part of a
report made by an indefatigable student of social conditions, Margaret
Harkness, associated now with Mr. Charles Booth, and as able an observer
as