"We never drink nothing but tea in working
time," struck in the male chief here; "but
when work's over, I take my three, or perhaps
my four, pints of beer, and enjoy 'em, I can tell
you. Reform demonstration bill on the wall?
Well, I don't bother my head about politics;
but they sent the poster here, and I just stuck
it where you see (winking), to help to keep the
roof up. No, I didn't jine in it, not I. If I
go away, there's thirty people loses a day's
work, and that ain't the sort of reform they'd
fancy, you may be sure."

This match-box maker is a jovial aristocrat in
his way. A hale healthy-looking man of forty,
he looks as ruddy and strong as if his days were
spent in farming or at the sea-side. Besides
making up boxes on the premises, he sends out
the creased slips of wood and the paper labels
to women and children who work at home; he
acts, in short, as middle man between the dealer
and the labourers. "About twopence a gross
sticks to 'em when all's done," he says,
pleasantly, when asked as to his profits. A brazier
full of coke stands in the centre of the garret
where the women are at work, and a strong
sulphureous odour permeates the place. "We're
obliged to keep it where it is, for drying, don't
yer see? But the smell's bad at times, so we
keep both windows open, and have lots of nice
fresh air." We are in Bethnal-green, remember,
with a view of the house-tops of Spitalfields, and
are looking out upon dingy broken-roof trees,
smoked-dried pigeon-traps, dirt, and desolation.
The "fresh air" has been eddying round stale
fish-curing establishments, close confined homes,
has apparently looked in at a gasworks, and
burrowed among the district drains. Yet the
people look tolerably well, and as, according
to our host's own estimate, he sometimes
clears as much as ninety twopences, or fifteen
shillings, in the twenty-four hours, he at least
is comfortably off.

The home workers, who make up the materials
he sends them, are a very different class. The
head of the household may be a dock-labourer, or
a street-hawker, or a dustman, or, as was the case
at a home we visited later in the day, "a hay band-
gatherer" (that is, a man who lives by collecting
the haybands thrown away at markets and
stables, and selling them to chairmakers as
stuffing). His earnings are precarious, and are
never more than enough to pay the rent and
provide a moiety of the family bread. The
wife and children have to work or starve.
Match-box making and bead-working are their
regular employments, but though the latter is
slightly better paid, the demand for it varies
with the fashion, while for the former there is
a more regular and constant supply of work.

Accompanied by an experienced district visitor
and a friend well acquainted with the locality,
we proceed to visit a few of the "hundreds of
children who do more work and are worse off"
than the poor little infant whose case has
been so eloquently and successfully brought
before the public. First, to a little sentry-box
of a room up the back stairs of a crazy tenement
hard by. Here, the figure huddled on the
bed, with head bound up, is so ghastly and
unlifelike, that we start back to avoid intruding
upon what seems the chamber of death. Three
children are standing at the table, and work on
unremittingly. Heads are uplifted for a moment
as our guide opens the door, but only to resume
their steadfast gaze upon the paper, chips, and
paste being deftly converted into boxes lay the
little hands. On being silently beckoned in,
we find the mass of rags has assumed shape,
and is a woman, but so weird and wan and
haggard as to remind us of Haydon's picture of
Lazarus in his grave-clothes. Swaying to and
fro from sheer debility, and with dull heavy
eyes, which wander purposelessly everywhere,
the figure essays to speak, and, with many a
pant and suppressed groan, gives us her little
history.

"Bad pains in limbs, and chest so hard like,
that I can't help the children as I ought, and
they don't get on so fast in consequence. When
I'm on the ground, to pick up and sort as quickly
as they put together, we can, by never stopping,
turn out our eight gross a day. Twopence
halfpenny a gross is what we get, and find our
own paste and string. Five farthings'-worth of
flour, which is half a pound, will make enough
paste for seven gross of boxes, if you're careful;
but there's waste now that I lay here, and I can't
cut the labels even, though I keep the paper and
scissors by my side" (showing them moaningly)
"to turn to directly the pain leaves me for a
little. We have to tie the boxes up in bundles
after they're made, and the hemp for doing this
comes heavy out of what we earn. A penn'orth
of hemp will tie up twenty-one gross of boxes,
and then there's the sending of 'em home, which
takes time and prevents work. Ah! It makes a
terrible difference my not being on the ground;
for the children often can't get on, and there's
time and money lost."

This speech is not given consecutively as
written, but with constant stoppages for
breath, and from pain, through all of which the
three children go on methodically pasting down.
Neither the unwonted presence of strangers nor
their mother's suffering breaks this monotonous
labour for a moment. When spoken to,
they reply in a listless fashion, as if mere talk
were a profligate expenditure of time.

Five different articles are used to make up
the match-box. Two slender shavings of wood,
one each for its inner and outer part; one label
of coloured paper for the half containing the
lucifers; one printed label bearing the dealer's
names for the outer box; a square piece of
sand-paper to strike the matches on the bottom.
The wood is ready creased by the machine-work
we saw in the garret factory; the paper lies in
sheets like undivided postage labels, upon the
squalid bed; the sand-paper is on the floor in
long strips of the width requisite to go length-
wise on the boxes, but these require snipping
into pieces of their width. The manipulation
of this sand-paper is the most painful part of
the work. The rough surface cuts the children's