taken from a royal commission report and are authentic.

Conceive of an old woman, broken and dying, supporting herself and four
children, and paying three shillings per week rent, by making match boxes
at 2.25d. per gross. Twelve dozen boxes for 2.25d., and, in addition,
finding her own paste and thread! She never knew a clay off, either for
sickness, rest, or recreation. Each day and every day, Sundays as well,
she toiled fourteen hours. Her day's stint was seven gross, for which
she received 1s. 3.75d. In the week of ninety-eight hours' work, she
made 7066 match boxes, and earned 4s. 10.25d., less per paste and thread.

Last year, Mr. Thomas Holmes, a police-court missionary of note, after
writing about the condition of the women workers, received the following
letter, dated April 18, 1901:-

Sir,--Pardon the liberty I am taking, but, having read what you said
about poor women working fourteen hours a day for ten shillings per
week, I beg to state my case. I am a tie-maker, who, after working
all the week, cannot earn more than five shillings, and I have a poor
afflicted husband to keep who hasn't earned a penny for more than ten
years.

Imagine a woman, capable of writing such a clear, sensible, grammatical
letter, supporting her husband and self on five shillings per week! Mr.
Holmes visited her. He had to squeeze to get into the room. There lay
her sick husband; there she worked all day long; there she cooked, ate,
washed, and slept; and there her husband and she performed all the
functions of living and dying. There was no space for the missionary to
sit down, save on the bed, which was partially covered with ties and
silk. The sick man's lungs were in the last stages of decay. He coughed
and expectorated constantly, the woman ceasing from her work to assist
him in his paroxysms. The silken fluff from the ties was not good for
his sickness; nor was his sickness good for the ties, and the handlers
and wearers of the ties yet to come.

Another case Mr. Holmes visited was that of a young girl, twelve years of
age, charged in the police court with stealing food. He found her the
deputy mother of a boy of nine, a crippled boy of seven, and a younger
child. Her mother was a widow and a blouse-maker. She paid five
shillings a week rent. Here are the last items in her housekeeping
account: Tea. 0.5d.; sugar, 0.5d.; bread, 0.25d.; margarine, 1d.; oil,
1.5d.; and firewood, 1d. Good