astonishing in what devices this “surplus population” takes refuge.  The London crossing-sweepers are known all over the world; but hitherto the principal streets in all the great cities, as well as the crossings, have been swept by people out of other work, and employed by the Poor Law guardians or the municipal authorities for the purpose.  Now, however, a machine has been invented which rattles through the streets daily, and has spoiled this source of income for the unemployed.  Along the great highways leading into the cities, on which there is a great deal of waggon traffic, a large number of people may be seen with small carts, gathering fresh horse-dung at the risk of their lives among the passing coaches and omnibuses, often paying a couple of shillings a week to the authorities for the privilege.  But this occupation is forbidden in many places, because the ordinary street-sweepings thus impoverished cannot be sold as manure.  Happy are such of the “surplus” as can obtain a push-cart and go about with it.  Happier still those to whom it is vouchsafed to possess an ass in addition to the cart.  The ass must get his own food or is given a little gathered refuse, and can yet bring in a trifle of money.  Most of the “surplus” betake themselves to huckstering.  On Saturday afternoons, especially, when the whole working population is on the streets, the crowd who live from huckstering and peddling may be seen.  Shoe and corset laces, braces, twine, cakes, oranges, every kind of small articles are offered by men, women, and children; and at other times also, such peddlers are always to be seen standing at the street corners, or going about with cakes and ginger-beer or nettle-beer.  Matches and such things, sealing-wax, and patent mixtures for lighting fires are further resources of such venders.  Others, so-called jobbers, go about the streets seeking small jobs.  Many of these succeed in getting a day’s work, many are not so fortunate.

“At the gates of all the London docks,” says the Rev. W. Champney, preacher of the East End, “hundreds of the poor appear every morning in winter before daybreak, in the hope of getting a day’s work.  They await the opening of the gates; and, when the youngest and strongest and best known have been engaged, hundreds cast down by disappointed hope, go back to their wretched homes.”

When these people find no work and will not rebel against society, what remains for them but to beg?  And surely no one can wonder at the great army of beggars, most of them able-bodied men, with whom the police carries on perpetual war.  But the beggary of these men has a peculiar character.  Such a man usually goes about with his family singing a pleading song in the streets or appealing, in a speech, to the benevolence of the passers-by.  And it is a striking fact that these beggars are seen almost exclusively in the working-people’s districts, that it is almost exclusively the gifts of the poor