sorts of devices are used; potato parings, vegetable refuse, and
rotten vegetables are eaten for want of other food, and everything
greedily gathered up which may possibly contain an atom of nourishment.
And, if the week's wages are used up before the end of the week, it often
enough happens that in the closing days the family gets only as much
food, if any, as is barely sufficient to keep off starvation. Of course
such a way of living unavoidably engenders a multitude of diseases, and
when these appear, when the father from whose work the family is chiefly
supported, whose physical exertion most demands nourishment, and who
therefore first succumbs--when the father is utterly disabled, then
misery reaches its height, and then the brutality with which society
abandons its members, just when their need is greatest, comes out fully
into the light of day.

To sum up briefly the facts thus far cited. The great towns are chiefly
inhabited by working-people, since in the best case there is one
bourgeois for two workers, often for three, here and there for four;
these workers have no property whatsoever of their own, and live wholly
upon wages, which usually go from hand to mouth. Society, composed
wholly of atoms, does not trouble itself about them; leaves them to care
for themselves and their families, yet supplies them no means of doing
this in an efficient and permanent manner. Every working-man, even the
best, is therefore constantly exposed to loss of work and food, that is
to death by starvation, and many perish in this way. The dwellings of
the workers are everywhere badly planned, badly built, and kept in the
worst condition, badly ventilated, damp, and unwholesome. The
inhabitants are confined to the smallest possible space, and at least one
family usually sleeps in each room. The interior arrangement of the
dwellings is poverty-stricken in various degrees, down to the utter
absence of even the most necessary furniture. The clothing of the
workers, too, is generally scanty, and that of great multitudes is in
rags. The food is, in general, bad; often almost unfit for use, and in
many cases, at least at times, insufficient in quantity, so that, in
extreme cases, death by starvation results. Thus the working-class of
the great cities offers a graduated scale of conditions in life, in the
best cases a temporarily endurable existence for hard work and good
wages, good and endurable, that is, from the worker's st