is bringing home to all minds of men,--thanks to it for a service
such as Newspapers have seldom done,--ought to excite unspeakable
reflections in every mind. Thirty thousand outcast Needlewomen
working themselves swiftly to death; three million Paupers
rotting in forced idleness, _helping_ said Needlewomen to die:
these are but items in the sad ledger of despair.

Thirty thousand wretched women, sunk in that putrefying well of
abominations; they have oozed in upon London, from the universal
Stygian quagmire of British industrial life; are accumulated in
the _well_ of the concern, to that extent. British charity is
smitten to the heart, at the laying bare of such a scene;
passionately undertakes, by enormous subscription of money, or by
other enormous effort, to redress that individual horror; as I
and all men hope it may. But, alas, what next? This general well
and cesspool once baled clean out to-day, will begin before night
to fill itself anew. The universal Stygian quagmire is still
there; opulent in women ready to be ruined, and in men ready.
Towards the same sad cesspool will these waste currents of human
ruin ooze and gravitate as heretofore; except in draining the
universal quagmire itself there is no remedy. "And for that,
what is the method?" cry many in an angry manner. To whom, for
the present, I answer only, "Not 'emancipation,' it would seem,
my friends; not the cutting loose of human ties, something far
the reverse of that!"

Many things have been written about shirtmaking; but here perhaps
is the saddest thing of all, not written anywhere till now, that
I know of. Shirts by the thirty thousand are made at
twopence-halfpenny each; and in the mean while no needlewoman,