ty to get regular employment. He did not have the energy and
enterprise necessary to obtain or hold a steady position.

The pair had two daughters, and the four of them lived in a couple of
holes, called "rooms" by courtesy, for which they paid seven shillings
per week. They possessed no stove, managing their cooking on a single
gas-ring in the fireplace. Not being persons of property, they were
unable to obtain an unlimited supply of gas; but a clever machine had
been installed for their benefit. By dropping a penny in the slot, the
gas was forthcoming, and when a penny's worth had forthcome the supply
was automatically shut off. "A penny gawn in no time," she explained,
"an' the cookin' not arf done!"

Incipient starvation had been their portion for years. Month in and
month out, they had arisen from the table able and willing to eat more.
And when once on the downward slope, chronic innutrition is an important
factor in sapping vitality and hastening the descent.

Yet this woman was a hard worker. From 4.30 in the morning till the last
light at night, she said, she had toiled at making cloth dress-skirts,
lined up and with two flounces, for seven shillings a dozen. Cloth dress-
skirts, mark you, lined up with two flounces, for seven shillings a
dozen! This is equal to $1.75 per dozen, or 14.75 cents per skirt.

The husband, in order to obtain employment, had to belong to the union,
which collected one shilling and sixpence from him each week. Also, when
strikes were afoot and he chanced to be working, he had at times been
compelled to pay as high as seventeen shillings into the union's coffers
for the relief fund.

One daughter, the elder, had worked as green hand for a dressmaker, for
one shilling and sixpence per week--37.5 cents per week, or a fraction
over 5 cents per day. However, when the slack season came she was
discharged, though she had been taken on at such low pay with the
understanding that she was to learn the trade and work up. After that
she had been employed in a bicycle store for three years, for which she
received five shillings per week, walking two miles to her work, and two
back, and being fined for tardiness.

As far as the man and woman were concerned, the game was played. They
had lost handhold and foothold, and were falling into the pit. But what
of the daughters? Living like swine, enfeebled by chronic innutrition,
being sapped mentally, morally, and physically, what cha