hair, this woman suddenly lost all power
in both her wrists.

Eliza H., aged twenty-five, _after five months_ at lead works, was
seized with colic. She entered another factory (after being refused
by the first one) and worked on uninterruptedly for two years. Then
the former symptoms returned, she was seized with convulsions, and
died in two days of acute lead poisoning.

Mr. Vaughan Nash, speaking of the unborn generation, says: "The children
of the white-lead worker enter the world, as a rule, only to die from the
convulsions of lead poisoning--they are either born prematurely, or die
within the first year."

And, finally, let me instance the case of Harriet A. Walker, a young girl
of seventeen, killed while leading a forlorn hope on the industrial
battlefield. She was employed as an enamelled ware brusher, wherein lead
poisoning is encountered. Her father and brother were both out of
employment. She concealed her illness, walked six miles a day to and
from work, earned her seven or eight shillings per week, and died, at
seventeen.

Depression in trade also plays an important part in hurling the workers
into the Abyss. With a week's wages between a family and pauperism, a
month's enforced idleness means hardship and misery almost indescribable,
and from the ravages of which the victims do not always recover when work
is to be had again. Just now the daily papers contain the report of a
meeting of the Carlisle branch of the Dockers' Union, wherein it is
stated that many of the men, for months past, have not averaged a weekly
income of more than from four to five shillings. The stagnated state of
the shipping industry in the port of London is held accountable for this
condition of affairs.

To the young working-man or working-woman, or married couple, there is no
assurance of happy or healthy middle life, nor of solvent old age. Work
as they will, they cannot make their future secure. It is all a matter
of chance. Everything depends upon the thing happening, the thing with
which they have nothing to do. Precaution cannot fend it off, nor can
wiles evade it. If they remain on the industrial battlefield they must
face it and take their chance against heavy odds. Of course, if they are
favourably made and are not tied by kinship duties, they may run away
from the industrial battlefield. In which event the safest thing the man
can do is to join the army; and for the woman, possibly, to