ii4 THE WORLD'S WORKERS. 



influential personages, giving suggestions and supply- 

 ing information on various points. All this required 

 much patience, and very often was very wearying 

 work. To use her own words, " she had to write the 

 same thing backwards and forwards, and crossways, 

 and every way possible, to try to get things, or rather 

 one simple thing, into people's heads." But "happily 

 she had the patience of Job." 



Her zeal on behalf of neglected children was 

 indeed absolutely without bounds, and could not 

 abate until something was done for them. As her 

 friend Mr. Commissioner Hill said of her, " she was 

 like a boy running down Greenwich Hill she had 

 lost the power of slackening her pace, and must go to 

 the bottom." 



Working constantly in the reformatory, and 

 coming constantly as she did into communication 

 with young thieves and vagabonds, Mary Carpenter 

 soon saw that child-criminals were not the only 

 children who needed to be helped, but that there 

 were children belonging to a class just above the 

 criminals who were as yet comparatively innocent, 

 but who would almost certainly become criminal if 

 they were not looked after and cared for. It was to 

 reach these neglected little ones that the " Industrial 

 Schools Act" was planned and carried out, an Act 

 which made it lawful for a magistrate to send ragged 

 children who lived in the streets "street arabs" as they 

 were called, because they were so wild and careless 



