The women more directly involved in this widespread evil of licentiousness are the women of the poorer classes of society. The poorer classes constitute in every country the great majority of the people; they form its solid strength and determine its character. The extreme danger of moral degradation in those classes of young women who constitute such an immense preponderance of the female population is at once evident. These women are everywhere, interlinked with every class of society. They form an important part (often the larger female portion) of every well-to-do household. They are the companions and inevitable teachers of infancy and childhood. They often form the chief or only female influence which meets the young man in early professional, business, or even college life. They meet him in every place of public amusement, in his walks at night, in his travels at home and abroad. By day and by night the young man away from home is brought into free intercourse, not with women of his own class, but with poor working girls and women, who form the numerical bulk of the female population, who are found in every place and ready for every service. Educated girls are watched and guarded. The young man meets them in rare moments only, under supervision, and generally under unnatural restraint; but the poor girl he meets constantly, freely, at any time and place. Any clear-sighted person who will quietly observe the way in which female servants, for instance, regard very young men who are their superiors in station, can easily comprehend the dangers of such association. The injustice of the common practical view of life is only equalled by its folly. This practical view utterly ignores the fact of the social influence and value of this portion of society. The customs of civilized nations practically consider poor women as subjects for a life so dishonourable, that a rich man feels justified in ostracizing wife, sister, or daughter who is guilty of the slightest approach to such life. It is the great mass of poor women who are regarded as (and sometimes brutally stated to be) the subjects to be used for the benefit of the upper classes. Young and innocent men, it is true, fall into vice, or are led into it, or are tempted into it by older women, and are not deliberate betrayers. But the rubicon of chastity once passed, the moral descent is rapid, and the preying upon the poor soon commences. The miserable slaves in houses of prostitution are the outcasts of the poor. The young girls followed at night in the streets are the honest working girl, the young servant seeking a short outdoor relief to her dreary life, as well as the unhappy fallen girl, who has become in her turn the seducer. If fearful of health, the individual leaves the licensed slaves of sin and the chance associations of the streets, it is amongst the poor and unprotected that he seeks his mistress:--the young seamstress,