The sanitary conditions amid which the great majority of these alien immigrants labour and live may truly be described as appalling. It is a remarkable thing that just as the lower organisms of animal life are capable of living under circumstances which are intolerable to higher organisms, so can these people exist--and even to a certain extent thrive--in an atmosphere and amid surroundings which to the more highly-developed Englishman and Englishwoman mean disease and death. Cleanliness and sanitation are peculiarities of Western rather than of Eastern nationalities. When Peter the Great went back to Russia after his famous visit to London two centuries ago, he left behind him such a filthy habitation, that the cleansing of it had to be defrayed by an especial grant from the Exchequer. This is a matter of history; and if rumour is to be believed, a similar experience in connection with the visit of an Oriental potentate has occurred in very recent years. If this sort of thing is incidental to the visit of Eastern Princes, how much rather then is it liable to accompany the wholesale inundation of poor and degraded foreigners, who flock into London and our large cities from every country in Europe? In treating of this sanitary aspect, in order to avoid any possible charge of exaggeration, I prefer to quote the statements of unimpeachable authorities rather than to advance any theories of my own. The surroundings amid which these people are content to labour and to live are deplorable and filthy beyond description. To quote from the Majority Report of the Sweating Committee--a Report which has been attacked because of the undue moderation of its language, and which certainly cannot be said to unduly exaggerate the evil:-- "Three or four gas-jets may be flaring in a room, a coke fire burning in the wretched fire-place, sinks untrapped, closets without water, and, altogether, the sanitary conditions abominable. A witness told us that in a double room, perhaps 9 feet by 15 feet, a man, his wife, and six children slept, and in the same room ten men were usually employed, so that at night eighteen persons would be in that one room. These witnesses alluded to the want of sanitary precautions, and of decent and sufficient accommodation, and declared that the effects of this, combined with the inadequate wages earned, had the effect of driving girls to prostitution." The state of the sweaters' dens in East London is revolting beyond measure, and resembles rather the description of Dante's _Inferno_, than the abodes of a professedly civilized people. Here is the description of one taken almost at random from a mass of evidence teeming with similar details. A Factory Inspector, who described it, says it gives a fair idea of all the rest, and he certainly ought to know, seeing that some 4000 factories and "workshops innumerable" are under his inspection. He says:--