And then turn back to the preface: “It must not be forgotten that the time of which I write was considered ‘good times’ in England. The starvation and lack of shelter I encountered constituted a chronic condition of misery, which is never wiped out, even in the periods of greatest prosperity. Following the summer in question came a hard winter. To such an extent did the suffering and positive starvation increase that society was unable to cope with it. Great numbers of the unemployed formed into processions, as many as a dozen at a time, and daily marched through the streets of London crying for bread. Mr. Justin McCarthy, writing in the month of January, 1903, to the New York _Independent_, briefly epitomises the situation, as follows: ‘The workhouses have no space left in which to pack the starving crowds who are craving every night at their doors for food and shelter. All the charitable institutions have exhausted their means in trying to raise supplies of food for the famishing residents of the garrets and cellars of London lanes and alleys.’” And then consider that in the city where this was going on, the leading newspaper (the _Times_) was printing a three-column article setting forth the fact that competition had grown so great that it was now no longer possible for a “gentleman” to maintain his status with a family in London upon an income of half a million dollars a year! Yet if one wishes for social contrasts, there is really no need of crossing the ocean. Mr. Schwab’s nine million dollar palace in New York will answer the purpose; or so will the St. Regis Hotel. The swinging doors of the St. Regis, so the visitor is informed, cost ten thousand dollars apiece; the panelling of the smoking-room cost forty-five thousand dollars, and the carriage-entrance rain-shed cost eighty-five thousand dollars. The walls of it are covered with a silk brocade, which cost twenty dollars a yard, and the ceiling is gilded with material costing one dollar an ounce. It cost a hundred thousand dollars to fit up the office, and four million dollars to build the whole structure. A two-room apartment in it, without meals, is valued at nine thousand six hundred dollars a year; and for your meals you may try—say, “milk-fed chicken” at two dollars for each tiny portion. [Illustration: _Courtesy of Penna. Child Labor Committee_ ] [Illustration: _From Stereograph, Copyrighted 1906, by Underwood & Underwood_ THE SOCIAL CONTRAST IN NEW YORK ]