Thence to the domestic workshops. Old women, young girls, wives and mothers working as if for dear life. Little children, unkempt and woebegone, crouching amongst the cinders. No time for nursing or housewifery in the chain trade. These women earned from 6s. to 9s. a week. Some of them are, I see, in an advanced state of pregnancy. And what pleasures have these people: what culture and beauty in their lives? This: "Were they ever so anxious to 'improve their minds,' what leisure have they, what opportunity? Their lives are all swelter and sleep. Their town a squalid, hideous place, ill-lighted and unpaved--the paths and roads heel-deep in mire. Their houses are not homes--they have neither comfort nor beauty, but are mere shelters and sleeping-pens. "In all the place there is no news-room nor free library, nor even a concert-hall or gymnasium. There is no cricket-ground, no assembly-room, no public bath, no public park, nor public garden. Throughout all that sordid, dolorous region I saw not so much as one tree, or flower-bed, or fountain. Nothing bright or fair on which to rest the eye. "But there are public-houses. And in several of them I tasted the liquor, and spilled it on the floor." Of how many towns and villages in Europe and America might the same be said? Of how many women are these terrible descriptions true? In the evidence given before the Royal Commission on Canal Labour, it was stated in evidence that men and women often worked for seven days and nights on the canals, and in the winter. Some of the witnesses declared that the work was unfit for women, that it was "degrading." The Royal Commissioners could not understand the word degrading, and asked how it could degrade a woman to steer a boat. Here is one reply given by an angry witness: Do you think it womanly work to push with a twenty-foot pole a boat laden with 30 tons of coal? If you saw a mother of a family climbing a four-foot wall, you'd think it was no work for women. I have seen a woman knocked into the lock with a child at her breast by a sudden blow of the tiller. I have seen my own sister-in-law climb the lock-gates at one end to go and shut them at the other. Many of the "cabins" on the narrow boats are about seven feet by five. In such cabins sleep the "captain" and his family; in one case a man and his wife, a girl of ten, a couple of younger children, and two boys of fourteen and sixteen years of age. Those are a few glimpses of the environment of the women and the children of the poor. I cannot quit the subject without again telling an experience which hurt me like a wound. It was in a workhouse school: a school where master and matron did the best they could do for the children so unfortunately placed. Love Hunger "As we crossed a bridge from one building to another the master said something about a fish-pond, adding, 'We do not catch fish here, but we catch a good many mice.' "'Have you many mice?' I asked.