Take Mrs. Marshall’s family and circumstances. Mrs. Marshall is, to all intents and purposes, a widow, her husband being in an asylum. She herself is a superior woman, tall and handsome, and with clean dapper ways and a slight hardness of manner that comes from bitter disappointment and hopeless struggling. She has four children, two of whom have been taken by the Poor Law authorities into their district schools--a better plan than giving out-door relief, but, at the same time, one that has the disadvantage of removing the little ones from the home influence of a very good mother. Mrs. Marshall herself, after vainly trying to get work, was taken as a scrubber at a public institution, where she earns 9_s._ a week and her dinner. She works from six in the morning till five at night, and then returns to her fireless, cheerless room to find her two children back from school and ready for their chief meal; for during her absence their breakfast and dinner can only have consisted of bread and cold scraps. We will not dwell on the hardship of having to turn to and light the fire, tidy the room, and prepare the meal after having already done ten hours’ scrubbing or washing. The financial question is now before us, and to that we will confine our thoughts. Out of her 9_s._ a week Mrs. Marshall pays 3_s._ 3_d._ for rent; 2_d._ for schooling; 1_s._ for light and firing (and this does not allow of the children having a morning fire before they go to school); 9_d._ she puts by for boots and clothing; and imagine what it must be to dress, so as to keep warm, three people on 1_l._ 19_s._ a year! and 6_d._ she pays for her bits of washing, for she cannot do them herself after all her heavy daily work. (Pause, though, for a moment to consider how Mrs. Marshall’s washerwoman must work when she does three changes of linen, aprons, sheets, and a table-cloth for 6_d._ a week.) Deduct from the 9_s._ weekly wage-- _s._ _d._ Rent 3 3 Schooling 2 Firing 1 0 Clothes 9 Washing 6 -------- 5 8 and 3_s._ 4_d._ is left with which to provide breakfast and tea for a hard-working woman for seven days in the week, dinner for Sunday, and three meals daily for two growing children of ten and eleven. We have seen how, even with economy, knowledge, strength, and time, proper food cannot be obtained for less than 1_d._ or 1¼_d._ a meal, and this would make a weekly total of 5_s._ 11¼_d._ 3_s._ 4_d._, with no time, with little knowledge, and only the remnants of strength, which has been used up in earning the 3_s._ 4_d._, is all Mrs. Marshall has with which to meet these requirements.