There is no guarding against it. It is fortuitous. A family
stands so many chances of escaping the bottom of the Abyss, and so many
chances of falling plump down to it. The chance is reducible to cold,
pitiless figures, and a few of these figures will not be out of place.

Sir A. Forwood calculates that--

1 of every 1400 workmen is killed annually.
1 of every 2500 workmen is totally disabled.
1 of every 300 workmen is permanently partially disabled.
1 of every 8 workmen is temporarily disabled 3 or 4 weeks.

But these are only the accidents of industry. The high mortality of the
people who live in the Ghetto plays a terrible part. The average age at
death among the people of the West End is fifty-five years; the average
age at death among the people of the East End is thirty years. That is
to say, the person in the West End has twice the chance for life that the
person has in the East End. Talk of war! The mortality in South Africa
and the Philippines fades away to insignificance. Here, in the heart of
peace, is where the blood is being shed; and here not even the civilised
rules of warfare obtain, for the women and children and babes in the arms
are killed just as ferociously as the men are killed. War! In England,
every year, 500,000 men, women, and children, engaged in the various
industries, are killed and disabled, or are injured to disablement by
disease.

In the West End eighteen per cent. of the children die before five years
of age; in the East End fifty-five per cent. of the children die before
five years of age. And there are streets in London where out of every
one hundred children born in a year, fifty die during the next year; and
of the fifty that remain, twenty-five die before they are five years old.
Slaughter! Herod did not do quite so badly.

That industry causes greater havoc with human life than battle does no
better substantiation can be given than the following extract from a
recent report of the Liverpool Medical Officer, which is not applicable
to Liverpool alone:-

In many instances little if any sunlight could get to the courts, and
the atmosphere within the dwellings was always foul, owing largely to
the saturated condition of the walls and ceilings, which for so many
years had absorbed the exhalations of the occupants into their porous
material. Singular testimony to the absence of sunlight in these
courts was furnished by the action of the Parks and