It is necessary for a thorough understanding of the question which is agitating the entire community that every phase of it should be studied. In and about the Mint, which is a notorious 'slum,' in addition to a very large contingent of the criminal classes, there resides a colony of industrious folks, whose livelihood must be earned in the great thoroughfares. Hawkers of fish and fruit and vegetables, penny-toy vendors, watercress and flower girls, cheapjacks, street stall-keepers of all sorts and conditions, and men and women and children who work at certain industries carried on in the neighbourhood--these are among the deserving class of the poor, earning precarious incomes, who are about to be driven out by a Metropolitan improvement and forced to seek shelter in one or other of the already densely-packed districts. The first effect on the dishoused people themselves will be disastrous. They will not only be compelled to give up their work and their _clientèle_ in the neighbourhood, but they will lose a privilege which is absolute salvation to many of them. The injury is greatest to the most industrious, because they have 'established a character' among the little tradespeople of the district, and in the winter they obtain the necessaries of life on credit. In the winter, times are bad for many of the ordinary industries of the poor, and, but for the fact that local shopkeepers will trust established tenants of decent character, hundreds of them would be brought face to face with absolute starvation. The 'characters' worked up in one district are useless in another, and thus it will be seen how severe a blow to the poor dwellers in a neighbourhood its destruction must be. Moreover, in addition to being injured themselves, the displaced inhabitants will injure the neighbourhoods to which they migrate. A sudden rush will be made, say, on the rookeries of Bethnal Green or Whitechapel--places already overcrowded. What will be the result? Where we have one family living in a single room now, we shall presently find two families packed, and the rush for accommodation will send the rents of these places up another ten or fifteen per cent. Some of the dislodged people, men and women who are never half-a-crown ahead of the world, must, as they get no compensation for the loss they will be put to by eviction, drift into the workhouse. Now, the workhouse is utter ruin to the class who look for their work daily. A man goes into the casual ward; before he leaves it in the morning, he must do a certain amount of work. It is quite right that he should, but what is the result? When he gets out it is too late to look for work that day; the chance is gone. So he must come in again the next night, and the process is repeated. This is the way habitual loafers are too often manufactured, and one fruitful source of vagabondage is the constant disturbance of the poor from the places where they had settled down and started in business.