Sentence:  Even if these purely official catastrophes carried any conviction, the majority of English girls remain so poor, so dependent, so well aware that the drudgeries of such honest work as is within their reach are likely enough to lead them eventually to lung disease, premature death, and domestic desertion or brutality, that they would still see reason to prefer the <WSD>primrose path</WSD> to the strait path of virtue, since both, vice at worst and virtue at best, lead to the same end in poverty and overwork. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  The life of prostitution.