absorbing press of getting a living
that compels the employment of child-labor, and thus brings physical and
moral degeneration, not only for this generation but for many to come.
It is not alone the nine thousand in factories that we must deal with,
but many hundred thousands uncounted and unrecognized, the same spirit
dominating all.

In one of the better class of tenement-houses a woman, a polisher in a
jewelry manufactory, said the other day:--

"I'm willing to work hard, I don't care how hard; but it's awful to me
to see my little boy and the way he goes on. He's a cash-boy at D----'s,
and they don't pay by the week, they pay by checks, so every cash-boy is
on the keen jump after a call. They're so worried and anxious and afraid
they won't get enough; and Johnny cries and says, 'O mamma, I do try,
but there's one boy that always gets ahead of me.' I think it's an awful
system, even if it does make them smart."

An awful system, yet in its ranks march more and more thousands every
year. It would seem as if every force in modern civilization bent toward
this one end of money-getting, and the child of days and the old man of
years alike shared the passion and ran the same mad race. It is the
passion itself that has outgrown all bounds and that faces us
to-day,--the modern Medusa on which he who looks has no more heart of
flesh and blood but forever heart of stone, insensible to any sorrow,
unmoved by any cry of child or woman. It is with this shape that the
battle must be, and no man has yet told us its issue. Nay, save here and
there one, who counts that battle is needed, or sees the shadow of the
terror walking not only in darkness but before all men's eyes, who is
there that has not chosen blindness and will not hear the voice that
pleads: "Let my people go free"?

CHAPTER EIGHTEENTH.

STEADY TRADES AND THEIR OUTLOOK.

"I used to think there were steady trades; but somehow now everything
gets mixed, and you can't tell what's steady and what isn't."

"What makes the mix?"

"The Lord only knows! I've studied over it till I'm dazed, and sometimes
I've wondered if my mind was weakening."

The speaker, a middle-aged Scotchwoman, whose tongue still held a little
of the burr that thirty years of American life had not been able to
extract, put her hand to her head as if the fault must concentrate
there.

"If it was my trade alone," she said, "I might think I was to blame for
not learning new ways, but