THE DEMON OF GREED. 351 



know the virtues of a drop of cleansing water. You have 

 to ascend rotten staircases which threaten to give way be- 

 neath every step, and which in some places have already 

 broken down. You have to grope your way along dark 

 and filthy passages swarming with vermin. Then, if 

 you are not driven back by the intolerable stench, you 

 may gain admittance to the dens in which these thou- 

 sands of beings, who belong as much as you to the race 

 for whom Christ died, herd together." . . . 



" Every room in these reeking tenements houses a 

 family or two. In one room a missionary found a man 

 ill with small-pox, his wife just recovering from her con- 

 finement, and the children running about half naked and 

 covered with dirt. Here are seven people living in one 

 underground kitchen, and a little dead child lying in the 

 same room. Here live a widow and her six children, 

 two of whom are ill with scarlet fever. In another, 

 nine brothers and sisters from twenty-nine years of age 

 downward, live, eat, and sleep together." 



And so the wretched and shameful story goes on, and 

 the author assures us that these are not " selected cases," 

 but that they simply show what is to be found " in house 

 after house, court after court, street after street " ; and 

 that the accounts are in no way exaggerated, but are 

 often toned down, because the actual facts are too hor- 

 rible to be printed. 



And next, as to the work by which they live. A 

 woman, trouser-making, can earn one shilling a day if 

 she works seventeen hours at it. A woman with a sick 

 husband and a little child to look after, works at shirt- 

 finishing, at 3d. a dozen, and can earn barely 6d. a day. 

 Another maintains herself and a blind husband bv mak- 



