but their wretched offspring are death-stricken as the penalty; the lead poisons the blood of parent and child alike. Young women and children work at artificial flower-making, and soon their occupation teaches that Scheele's and Schweenfurth green, bright and pleasing colours to the eye, are death's darts too often fatally aimed. The occupation may be objected to as unhealthy; but the need for food is great, and the woman's or child's wages, wretchedly little though they are, yet help to fill the mouths at home: so the wage is taken till the worker dies. Here, again, the checks to an increase of population all stop short of starvation—the victims are poisoned instead of starved. So where some forty or fifty young girls are crowded into a badly ventilated work-room, not large enough for half the number, from early in the morning till even near midnight, when orders press; or in some work-room where slop clothes are made, and twenty-five tailors are huddled together in a little parlour scarce wide enough for three—they work to live, and die slowly while they work. They are not starved, but is this sort of asphyxiation much better? The poor are not only driven to unhealthy, but also to noisome dwellings. There are in London, Liverpool, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Manchester, and other large cities, fearful alleys, with wretched houses, and small ill-ventilated rooms, each room containing a family, the individuals of which are crowded together under conditions so wretched that disease, and often speedy death, is the only possible result. In the East of London, ten, eleven, and, in some cases, fourteen persons have been found sleeping in one wretched little room. Is it wonderful that some of these misery-stricken ones die before they have time to starve? From poverty the mother, obliged to constantly work that the miserable pittance she gets may yield enough to sustain bare life, is unable properly to nurse and care for baby-child, and often quick death, or slow but certain disease, ending ultimately in the grave, is the result.
The poor live by wages. Wages popularly signify the
