orphan girl in our Christian capital? We talk about the brutalities of
the dark ages, and we profess to shudder as we read in books of the
shameful exaction of the rights of feudal superior. And yet here,
beneath our very eyes, in our theatres, in our restaurants, and in many
other places, unspeakable though it be but to name it, the same hideous
abuse flourishes unchecked. A young penniless girl, if she be pretty,
is often hunted from pillar to post by her employers, confronted always
by the alternative--Starve or Sin. And when once the poor girl has
consented to buy the right to earn her living by the sacrifice of her
virtue, then she is treated as a slave and an outcast by the very men
who have ruined her. Her word becomes unbelievable, her life an
ignominy, and she is swept downward ever downward, into the bottomless
perdition of prostitution. But there, even in the lowest depths,
excommunicated by Humanity and outcast from God, she is far nearer the
pitying heart of the One true Saviour than all the men who forced her
down, aye, and than all the Pharisees and Scribes who stand silently by
while these Fiendish wrongs are perpetrated before their very eyes.

The blood boils with impotent rage at the sight of these enormities,
callously inflicted, and silently borne by these miserable victims.
Nor is it only women who are the victims, although their fate is the
most tragic. Those firms which reduce sweating to a fine art,
who systematically and deliberately defraud the workman of his pay,
who grind the faces of the poor, and who rob the widow and the orphan,
and who for a pretence make great professions of public spirit and
philanthropy, these men nowadays are sent to Parliament to make laws
for the people. The old prophets sent them to Hell--but we have
changed all that. They send their victims to Hell, and are rewarded by
all that wealth can do to make their lives comfortable. Read the House
of Lords' Report on the Sweating System, and ask if any African slave