Moreover, there are whole classes of poor people in Germany whose homes are not tidy and comfortable, who are crowded into cellars and courtyards, and who have neither time nor strength for the decencies of life. The "Sweater" flourishes in Berlin as well as in London, and his victims are as overworked as they are here. He is usually a Jew, it is said in Berlin, but I will not guarantee the truth of that, for I have not observed that the Jew is anywhere a harder task-master than the Christian. As Berlin grew, these spiders of society increased in numbers, finding it easy and profitable to employ home workers and spare themselves the expenses of factories and of insurance. Women who could not go out to work were tempted by the chance offered them of earning a trifle at home, and woman-like never paused to reckon whether it was worth earning. As the city gets larger every evil connected with the system increases. The worst paid are naturally the incompetent rough peasant women who swarm into Berlin from the country districts, because they think that it will be easier to sit at a machine than to labour in the fields. These people have to buy their machines and their cotton at high prices from their employers, and then they get 10 pf. for making a blouse. A lady who spends her life in working amongst poor people told me that many of them worked for nothing in reality, because the trifle they earned only just paid the difference between the food they had to buy ready cooked and the food they might with more leisure prepare at home. They pay high rents for wretched homes, £15, for instance, for a kitchen and one room in a dark courtyard. Under £13 it is impossible to get anything in the poorest quarter of Berlin.