can exaggerate, or,
indeed, ever really tell in full the real wretchedness that is plain for
all who will look. But, even with them, the conviction remains that it
is, after all, a temporary state of things, and that all must very
shortly come right.

Day by day, the desire has grown stronger to make plain the fact that
this is a world-wide question, and one that must be answered. It is not
for a city here and there, chiefly those where emigrants pour in, and
so often, the mass of unskilled labor, always underpaid, and always near
starvation. It is for the cities everywhere in the world of
civilization, and because London includes the greatest numbers, these
lines are written in London after many months of observation among
workers on this side of the sea, and as the prelude to some record of
what has been seen and heard, and must still be before the record ends,
not only here, but in one or two representative cities on the continent.
London, however, deserves and demands chief consideration, not only
because it leads in numbers, but because our own conditions are, in many
points, an inheritance which crossed the sea with the pilgrims, and is
in every drop of Anglo-Saxon blood. If the glint of the sovereign and
its clink in the pocket are the dearest sight and sound to British eyes
and ears, America has equal affection for her dollars, in both countries
alike chink and glint standing with most, for the best things life
holds. It remains for us to see whether counteracting influences are
stronger here than with us, and if the worker's chance is hampered more
or less by the conditions that hedge in all labor. The merely
statistical side of the question is left, as in the previous year's
work, chiefly to those who deal only with this phase, though drawn upon
wherever available or necessary. There is, however, small supply. Save
in scattered trades-union reports, an occasional blue book, and here and
there the work of a private investigator, like Mr. Charles Booth, there
is nothing which has the value of our own reports from the various
bureaus of labor. The subject has until now excited little interest or
attention, save with a few political economists, and the band of
agitators who are the disciples, not of things as they are, but things
as they ought to be. One of the most admirable and well-officered
organizations in New York, "The Workingwoman's Protective Union," which
gave invaluable assistance last year, has only a