This apparently anomalous feature of our civilization may appear to the reader to be accidental and exceptional, but it is not. In the larger cities the same conditions prevail under different forms. There are a great many shops in New York and other cities where men and women, principally the latter, work at starvation wages, and are so assisted by the pretended kindness of their employers that they always are in debt and cannot possibly leave without fear of suit and possibly arrest. The so-called slave marts of certain districts of the city of New York on Sundays are not overdrawn pictures, as the reading public may imagine them. There are hundreds of thousands of people so absolutely bound to their present employers that their only method of escape seems to be death. Public sentiment does not countenance slavery, though, and public sentiment is all-powerful? The will of the people is the law of the land? Yes, yes; that sounds very well. There is a good deal of truth in it, too, but the truth is all on one side. Public sentiment does not concern itself with anything which is not brought closely to its attention. Public sentiment in the United States did not countenance African slavery long after the Constitution was adopted, nevertheless the institution grew and flourished until it almost destroyed the nation. Public sentiment did not approve of any of the abuses of the colored race which individual overseers and owners might be mean enough to indulge in. Nevertheless, as in everything else, the public acted upon the old-fashioned principle of not interfering in other people’s business. The general public does not handle the slaves, still less does the general public manage the employers. It hears once in a while of abuses and cruelties, and thinks these are outrageous, but they are not its affair. Each man must look out for himself, Heaven helps those who help themselves, _etcetera, etcetera_. There are a good many ways of getting rid of moral responsibility in this world, and nearly everybody is mean enough to take advantage of them when the moral responsibility does not affect any one of his own family, much less his own pocket-book.