to whom industry is a meaningless word.

There are many of them, and a mixed lot they are. The deformed, the
crippled and the half-witted abound. Rogues and rascals, brutes in human
form, and human forms that are harking back to the brute abound also.
With some we may sound the lowest depths, with others we may ascend
to glorious heights. This is the wonder of underworld. Some of its
inhabitants have come down, and are going lower still. Others are
struggling with slippery feet to ascend the inclined plane that leads to
the world above. Some in their misery are feebly hoping for a hand that
will restore them to the world they have for ever lost!

And there are others who find their joy in this netherworld! For here
every restraint may be abandoned and every decency may be outraged. Here
are men and women whose presence casts a blight upon everything fresh
and virtuous that comes near them.

Here the children grow old before their time, for like little cubs they
lie huddled upon each other when the time for sleep comes. Not for them
the pretty cot, the sweet pillow and clean sheets! but the small close
room, the bed or nest on the floor, the dirty walls and the thick
air. Born into it, breathing it as soon as their little lungs begin to
operate, thick, dirty air dominates their existence or terminates their
lives.

"Glorious childhood" has no place here, to sweet girlhood it is fatal,
and brave boyhood stands but little chance.

Though here and there one and another rise superior to environment
and conditions, the great mass are robbed of the full stature of their
bodies, of their health, their brain power and their moral life.

But their loss is not the nation's gain, for the nation loses too! For
the nation erects huge buildings falsely called workhouses, tremendous
institutions called prisons. Asylums in ever-increasing numbers are
required to restrain their feeble bodies, and still feebler minds!

Let us look at the contrasts! Their houses are so miserably supplied
with household goods that even a rash and optimistic man would hesitate
before offering a sovereign for an entire home, yet pawnshops flourish
exceedingly, although the people possess nothing worth pawning. Children
are half fed, for the earnings of parents are too meagre to allow a
sufficient quantity of nourishing food; but public-houses do a roaring
trade on the ready-money principle, while the chandler supplies scraps
of food and half-ounces of