me into the yard and turned off the gas; but I had to work two hours
after he was gone. I'm better off than the woman in the next room. She
makes children's suits--coats and knickerbockers--for ha'penny a piece,
with tuppence for finishing, and her cotton to find; and, do 'er best,
she won't make over four shillings and threepence a week, sometimes
less. There's a mother and daughter next door that were bound to their
trade for three months, and the daughter gave three months' work to
learn it; but the most they make on children's suits is eight shillings
and sixpence the two, and they work fifteen and sixteen hours a day."

This record of a house or two in Whitechapel is the record of street
after street in working London. No trade into which the needle enters
has escaped the system which has been perfected little by little till
there is no loophole by which the lower order of worker can escape. The
sweaters themselves are often kind-hearted men, ground by the system,
but soon losing any sensitiveness; and the mass of eager applicants are
constantly reinforced, not only by the steady pressure of emigrants of
all nations, but by an influx from the country. In short, conditions
are generally the same for London as New York, but intensified for the
former by the enormous numbers, and the fact that outlying spaces do not
mean a better chance. This problem of one great city is the problem of
all; and in each and all the sweater stands as an integral part of
modern civilization. Often far less guilty than he is counted to be, and
often as much a sufferer as his workers from those above him, his
mission has legitimate place only where ignorant and incompetent workers
must be kept in order, and may well give place to factory labor. With
skill comes organization and the power to claim better wages; and with
both skilled labor and co-operation the sweater has no further place,
and is transformed to foreman or superintendent. Till this is
accomplished, the word must stand, as it does to-day, for all imaginable
evil that can hedge about both worker and work.

CHAPTER V.

CHILD OF THE EAST END.

"What is it to be a lady?" The voice was the voice of a small and
exceedingly grimy child, who held in her arms one still smaller and even
grimier, known to the neighborhood as "Wemock's Orlando." Under ordinary
circumstances, neither Wemock's nor anybody's youngest could have
excited the least attention in Tower Hamlets where