Public indignation has been excited by the accounts of the death of Mary Anne Walkley, a girl employed by Madame Elise, of Regent Street, wife of one Isaacson, and a notorious dressmaker. "Long hours in an overcrowded room and sleeping in an ill-ventilated bedroom," said Sir George Grey, "caused the young girl's death." What is to be done? Lord Shaftesbury in the Lords, and Mr. Bagwell in the Commons, called attention to the system under which such girls are killed; and the man Isaacson, who seems to fill a similar office to that of Mr. Mantalini, and who writes English of which that gent would be proud, issued a letter full of impertinence and bad grammar, in defence of Mrs. Isaacson's place. Thereupon the parish requested other testimony, and Dr. Lankester examined the premises, and found the dormitories rather better and the workroom rather worse than had been expected. [Illustration: THE HAUNTED LADY, OR THE GHOST IN THE LOOKING-GLASS MADAME LA MODISTE: "We would not have disappointed your Ladyship, at any sacrifice, and the robe is finished _à merveille_."] These tragedies and the efforts which they prompted serve as a convenient transition to a more general survey of Labour problems, Labour legislation, and Labour organization and representation as they are revealed and discussed in the pages of _Punch_ from 1857 to 1874. Under the recently established and rapidly extending joint reign of steam and coal, it was only natural that rural life should recede into the background. Railway construction had drawn off many labourers from agriculture, and the influx of labour into the manufacturing districts continued apace. In the prospectus of the Dressmaking Company given above, the work-hours are given as ten. But in 1859 the movement among working-men for a nine-hours' day had already been started. Strikes were common, but _Punch_ discourages them on the ground that the men always lost in the long run, and that the "agitators"--the name "Labour Leaders" had not yet emerged--were the real criminals. The _Examiner_ took the same line in 1861 when it wrote "the submission of workmen to the tyranny of their Unions is at once one of the most curious and lamentable phenomena of our time." Yet the existence of genuine distress is not denied, and in a little parable in verse entitled "Men and Bees," profit-sharing between masters and men is recommended as the true solution. On what was still, in spite of Factory Acts and other measures, the greatest blot on our industrial system--the employment of child labour--_Punch_ spoke with no uncertain voice. Early in 1860 he gives Lord Brougham a good mark for taking up the question in the Lords:--