Why do not the women refuse? Because they would be discharged. There are always hundreds ready and eager to take their places. The struggle for bread is too fierce for the fighters to shrink from any torture in its attainment. With the dangers of the white-lead works, which employ a large number of these families, most people are now familiar; at least, those who read the inquests must be. In addition to the liability to lead-poisoning, in many of these works the machinery is highly dangerous. In spite of the Employers' Liability Act, the victims of machinery accidents--that is, when they are women or children--rarely get compensation. The hospitals are full of accidents from these causes; often the negligence is that of a fellow-workman, but in at least half a dozen cases I have investigated not one shilling of compensation has the victim obtained. Saw-mills, and places where steam and circular saws are used, employ a large number of boys. If you were to give a tea-party to saw-mill boys, the thing that would astonish you would be the difficulty of finding half a dozen of your guests with the proper number of fingers. I know one little lad who is employed at pulling out the planks which have been pushed through the machine by men, and he has one hand now on which only the thumb is left. Then there is the lemonade-bottling, which is another industry largely employing the lads of poor neighbourhoods. The bottles are liable to burst, and cases of maiming are almost of daily occurrence. The bottlers are obliged to wear masks to protect their faces, but their hands are bound to be exposed to the danger. These are a few of the dangerous and unhealthy occupations by which the poor live, and I have enumerated those largely practised by children. I have done so to show how little we can wonder if for lack of a protecting arm, or that parental love which is, alas! so rare a thing in the very poor districts, these boys and girls yield to the first temptation to go wrong, and instead of risking life and limb for a paltry wage, take to those paths of vice which we have it on the highest authority are always the most easy of access. As we leave the home of the factory girls we come upon a scene which illustrates the life outside. A big crowd of foul-mouthed, blackguardly boys and girls, with a few men and women among them, are gathered round two girls who are fighting fiercely. They have quarrelled, a bystander tells us, in the adjacent public-house about a young man. He is considered her legitimate property by one lady, and the said lady has surprised him treating her rival to gin. Neither of the girls is more than seventeen, I should say, yet they are fighting and blaspheming and using words that make even myself and my collaborator shudder, used as we are by this time to the defiled Saxon of the slums.