To show that this mother, with her three children to support, cannot compete in the sweating industries, I instance from the current newspapers the two following cases:-

A father indignantly writes that his daughter and a girl companion receive 8.5d. per gross for making boxes.  They made each day four gross.  Their expenses were 8d. for car fare, 2d. for stamps, 2.5d. for glue, and 1d. for string, so that all they earned between them was 1s. 9d., or a daily wage each of 10.5d.

In the second ewe, before the Luton Guardians a few days ago, an old woman of seventy-two appeared, asking for relief.  “She was a straw-hat maker, but had been compelled to give up the work owing to the price she obtained for them—­namely, 2.25d. each.  For that price she had to provide plait trimmings and make and finish the hats.”

Yet this mother and her three children we are considering have done no wrong that they should be so punished.  They have not sinned.  The thing happened, that is all; the husband, father and bread-winner, was struck down.  There is no guarding against it.  It is fortuitous.  A family stands so many chances of escaping the bottom of the Abyss, and so many chances of falling plump down to it.  The chance is reducible to cold, pitiless figures, and a few of these figures will not be out of place.

Sir A. Forwood calculates that—­

1 of every 1400 workmen is killed annually. 1 of every 2500 workmen is totally disabled. 1 of every 300 workmen is permanently partially disabled. 1 of every 8 workmen is temporarily disabled 3 or 4 weeks.

But these are only the accidents of industry.  The high mortality of the people who live in the Ghetto plays a terrible part.  The average age at death among the people of the West End is fifty-five years; the average age at death among the people of the East End is thirty years.  That is to say, the person in the West End has twice the chance for life that the person has in the East End.  Talk of war!  The mortality in South Africa and the Philippines fades away to insignificance.  Here, in the heart of peace, is where the blood is being shed; and here not even the civilised rules of warfare obtain, for the women and children and babes in the arms are killed just as ferociously as the men are killed.  War!  In England, every year, 500,000 men, women, and children, engaged in the various industries, are killed and disabled, or are injured to disablement by disease.

In the West End eighteen per cent. of the children die before five years of age; in the East End fifty-five per cent. of the children die before five years of age.  And there are streets in London where out of every one hundred children born in a year, fifty die during the next year; and of the fifty that remain, twenty-five die before they are five years old.  Slaughter!  Herod did not do quite so badly.

That industry causes greater havoc with human life than battle does no better substantiation can be given than the following extract from a recent report of the Liverpool Medical Officer, which is not applicable to Liverpool alone:-