from the public: the mortality of operatives, in some of the cities, is ten per cent. a year! Perhaps that is the worst case which you can find on a large scale even in Europe. How much better off are many women in Boston who gain their bread by the needle? yes a large class of women in all our great cities? The ministers of the poor can answer that; your police can tell of the direful crime to which necessity sometimes drives women whom honest labor cannot feed! I know it will be said, "Buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest; get work at the lowest wages." Still there is another view of the case, and I am speaking to men whose professed religion declares that all are brothers, and demands that the strong help the weak. Oppression of this sort is one fertile source of pauperism and crime. How much there is of it I know not, but I think men seldom cry unless they are hurt. When men are gathered together in large masses, as in the manufacturing towns, if there is any oppression of this sort, it is sure to get told of, especially in New England. But when a small number are employed, and they isolated from one another, the case is much harder. Perhaps no class of laborers in New England is worse treated than the hired help of small proprietors. Then, too, there is a temptation to abuse their political power to the injury of the nation, to make laws which seem good for themselves, but are baneful to the people; to control the churches, so that they shall not dare rebuke the actual sins of the nation, or the sins of trade, and so the churches be made apologizers for lowness, practising infidelity as their sacrament, but in the name of Christ and God. The ruling power in England once published a volume of sermons, as well as a book of prayers, which the clergy were commanded to preach. What sort of a gospel got recommended therein, you may easily guess; and what is recommended by the class of merchants in New England, you may as easily hear. * * * * *