ast. These cases are not picked.
They are to be found scattered all over London. Many and many a
family is at the present time being kept by the labor of one or two
such girls, who can at the most earn a few shillings. When one
thinks what the life of a young girl is in happy families, all the
joyousness of which she is capable, until sorrow sets its seal on
her, one's heart aches for the sad lives of these girls in the
city.

'And still her voice comes ringing
Across the soft still air,
And still I hear her singing,
"Oh, life, thou art most fair!"'

"A young girl is capable of feeling in one brief hour more intense
delight than a boy of her age experiences in a fortnight. Yet all
this joyousness is ruthlessly stamped upon by competition, and
thousands of girls in London have no enjoyment except to gaze at
monstrosities in penny gaffs, or to dance on dirty pavements; and
generally these poor things are too tired even to do that. It is
strange that the public take so little interest in these girls,
considering they must become mothers of future citizens. 'The youth
of a nation are the trustees of posterity.' What sort of daughters
are these girls with their pinched faces and stunted bodies likely
to give England? What will posterity say of the girl labor that now
goes on in the city? I have seen strong men weeping because they
have no bread to give their children; I know at the London docks
chains have been replaced by wooden barriers, because starving men
behind pressed so hard on starving men in front, that the latter
were nearly cut in two by the iron railings; I have watched a
contractor mauled when he had no work to give, and have myself been
nearly killed by a brick-bat that was hurled at a contractor's head
by a man whose family was starving: but I deliberately say of all
the victims of our present competitive system I pity these girls
the most. They are so fragile. Honest work is made for them almost
impossible; and if they slip, no one gives them a second chance,
they are kicked and spat upon by the public. I know that the
girl-labor question is but a portion of the larger labor question,
that nothing can be done for them at present; but I wish that they
were not the victims of the _laissez-faire_ policy in two ways