eight hours work i p the people of the abyss she made match boxes and earned less her and thread last year mr thomas a police court missionary of note after writing about the condition of the women workers received the following letter dated april � sir pardon the liberty i am taking but having read what you said about poor women working fourteen hours a day for ten shillings per week beg to state my case i am a tie maker who after working all the week cannot earn more than five shillings and have a poor afflicted husband to keep who hasn t earned a penny for more than ten years imagine a woman capable of writing such a clear sensible letter supporting her husband and self on shillings per week mr visited her he had to squeeze to get into the room there lay her sick husband there she worked all day long there she cooked ate washed and slept and there her husband and she performed all the functions of living and dying there was no space for the missionary to sit down save on the bed which was partially covered with ties and silk the sick man s lungs were in the last stages of decay he and constantly the woman ceasing from her work to assist him in his the silken from the ties was not good for his sickness nor was his sickness wages good for the ties and the and of the ties yet to come another case mr visited was that of a young girl twelve years of age charged in the police court with stealing food he found her the mother of a boy of nine a crippled boy of seven and a younger child her mother was a widow and a maker she paid f i a week rent here are the last in her housekeeping account tea i sugar i cent bread cent cents oil cents and i cent good of the soft and tender folk imagine yourselves and keeping house on such a scale setting a table for five and keeping an eye on your mother of twelve to see that she did not steal food for her little brothers and sisters the while you at a nightmare line of which stretched away into the gloom and down to the s coffin a for you i chapter xix the is it well that while we range science in ihe time city children and soul and sense in there among tlie gloomy progress halls on feet crime and hunger cast our maidens by the thousand on the street there the master his haggard of her daily bread there a le sordid holds the living and the dead there the fire of fever across ihe rolled floor and the crowded couch of in the of the poor � at one time the nations of europe confined the jews in city but to day the dominant class by less but none the less methods has confined the yet necessary workers into of remarkable meanness and east london is such a where the rich and the powerful do not dwell and the traveller not and where two million workers swarm and die it must not be supposed that all the workers of london are crowded into the east end but the tide is setting strongly in that direction the poor quarters of the city proper are constantly being destroyed and the main stream of the is the toward the east in the last twelve years one district london over the border as it is called which lies well beyond and mile end has increased or over sixty per cent the churches in this district by the way can seat but one in every thirty seven of the added population the city of dreadful monotony the east end is often called especially by well fed who look over the surface of things and are merely shocked by the intolerable and meanness of it all if the east end is worthy of no worse title than the city of dreadful monotony and if working people are unworthy of variety and beauty and surprise it would not be such a bad place in which to live but the east end does merit a worse title it should be called the city of degradation while it is not a city of as some people imagine it may well be said to be one gigantic from the of simple decency and clean manhood and womanhood any mean street of all its mean streets is a where sights and sounds abound which neither you nor i would care to have our children see and hear is a place where no man s children should live and see and hear where you and i would not care to have our wives pass their lives is a place where no other man s wife i i the people of the abyss should have to pass her life for here in the east end the and brute of life are there is no privacy the bad the good and all together innocent childhood is sweet and beautiful but in east london innocence is a fleeting thing and you must catch an east them before they crawl out of the cradle or you will find the very as wise as you the application of the golden rule that east london is an unfit place in which to live where you would not have your own babe live and develop and gather to itself knowledge of life and the things of life is not a fit place for the the of other men to live and develop and gather to themselves knowledge of life and the things of life it is a simple thing this golden rule and all that is required political economy and the of the can go hang if they say otherwise what is not good enough for you 