How body and soul are kept together in the case of girls under such circumstances as have been detailed, it is not difficult though very painful to imagine. Working from dawn till night in hideous filth and squalor unutterable, for a wage which does not suffice to buy the barest necessaries (a wage cut down ever lower and lower by the fierce competition from the shoals of destitute foreigners landed in London week by week), hundreds, nay thousands of young women--Englishwomen, our sisters--eke out their wretched earnings by means of the street. The Pharisee and the Self-righteous pass by on the other side and condemn them; but it is not these poor unfortunates who are to be condemned, but the system which makes such a state of things possible. The Vicar of Old Ford, in his evidence before the House of Lords' Committee, mentioned cases he knew of where young girls of thirteen, who work in this cheap tailoring trade, were leading an immoral life. In one instance, two sisters, one twelve and the other ten years of age, had already embarked upon a life of shame. One of these girls had been sent out by her stepmother, because the family "had to live." Another instance, if possible more horrible still, was related to me by a clergyman in the East End of London, of a case which had come under his notice, though not before it was too late. It was that of a woman, an Englishwoman, a seamstress, who with her husband was engaged in the cheap tailoring trade at the usual sweating prices. All went fairly well for a time, for the two were able by their united efforts to earn a living, and to maintain themselves and their little children in a state of comparative decency and comfort. But one winter the husband, never a strong man, fell ill and died. The wife laboured on, managing by some almost superhuman effort to earn enough for herself and the children, and to keep body and soul together. Then the slack time, so greatly dreaded by all those engaged in the "sweating trade," came on, and there was nothing to be done for weeks and weeks. In despair this woman, who had hitherto led a blameless life, took to the streets. "It was wrong," the moralist and purist will say, "wrong and reprehensible to the last degree. Is there not the workhouse for such people, is there not parochial relief, are there not charitable agencies, free dinners, clothing clubs, district visitors without end? Could she not have applied to one of these instead of drifting into sin?" It may be so. All that I know is, that she and her children were starving, and that the sin brought its own punishment, for the poor woman never recovered from the horrors of that awful winter. The shame of it all seemed to settle on her as a blight, and the following year she died, broken-spirited, and broken-hearted, one more victim sacrificed to this infamous system of starvation prices and ruinous competition.