Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth must speak, so in this chapter I deal with an old, old subject. Generations come and go; in a hundred directions improvement follows on the heels of improvement. For most men the hours of toil have been considerably lessened. Factory and workshop inspection has done wonders. Employers’ liability for the health and safety of their servants has been forcibly brought home. But, strange to say, the condition of the London home workers is practically the same as it was in Hood’s time. True the silent ‘stitch, stitch, stitch’ of the needle plied by ‘fingers weary and worn’ has given place to the never-ceasing rattle of the sewing-machine; but little else is altered, for the incessant toil and misery of the workers remain as before--nay, worse--for a hundred other trades have sprung up to the seamstresses’ company, the conditions of which are equally bad, and in some cases worse, than the conditions under which the seamstresses live and die. Commissions have sat, inquiries have been made, Blue-Books have been filled with evidence, people have wept, philanthropists have poured out their wealth, but all in vain, for the evil is still with us, our sorrow and our shame. It has often been urged against moving stories of fiction that, while they stir the emotions, they provide no outlet for practical sympathy, and that stirring the well-springs of pity out of mere caprice is but to demoralize. I am afraid my last chapter is somewhat open to this charge. I know it has touched the hearts of a good many people, for I have received some hundreds of letters with regard to it; I also know, and have good reasons for knowing, that most of the writers were not content that their emotions should be stirred and no practical result ensue. ‘You have saddened us.’ ‘What can we do?’ ‘What are you going to do?’ So wrote one lady, and she voiced the thoughts of many. Neither was it the female heart alone that was stirred, for I soon became aware that in writing on the sufferings of London’s oppressed women I had touched the heart of humanity. ‘We are full of trouble here, and we have our own sorrows, but I send you a draft for £25 to make some of those women happier.’ So wrote a member of the Legislative Assembly of Natal. ‘I have been farming out here for twenty-five years but I have never forgotten Hood’s “Song of the Shirt.” I send you £10 to help those poor women.’ Thus wrote a farmer in Cape Colony. From Australia and from Ireland, Scotland, and Wales letters came, and the purport of them all was, ‘Can’t you do something to make the poor women happier?’ For more years than I care to remember I had hoped and longed for a Home of Rest for these women, to which I could send the poorest of them. Africa and Australia gave me out of the goodness of their hearts the nucleus of the fund that enabled me to do it.