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In London, the other day, it was found that one club of gentlemen, a thousand strong, spent twenty thousand dollars at the club-house during the year for drink.
Well, I would allow them twenty thousand dollars more at home for liquor, making in all forty thousand dollars a year.
These men were all men of education and leisure; they had books and paintings, opera, race-course, and regatta.
A thousand men down in Portsmouth in a ship-yard, working under a boss, spent at the grog-shops of the place, in that year, eighty thousand dollars,--double that of their rich brethren.
What is the explanation of such a fact as that?
Why, the club-man had a circle of pleasures and of company; the operative, after he had worked fourteen hours, had nothing to look forward to but his grog.
That is why I say, lift a man, give him life, let him work eight hours a day, give him the school, develop his taste for music, give him a garden, give him beautiful things to see, and good books to read, and you will starve out those lower appetites.
Give a man a chance to earn a good living, and you may save his life.
So it is with women in prostitution.
Poverty is the road to it; it is this that makes them the prey of the wealth and the leisure of another class.
Give a hundred men in this country good wages and eight hours work, and ninety-nine will disdain to steal.
Give a hundred women a good chance to get a good living, and ninety-nine of them will disdain to barter their virtue for gold.
You will find in our criminal institutions to-day a great many men with big brains, who ought to have risen in the world,--perhaps gone to Congress.
You may laugh, but I tell you the biggest brains don't go to Congress.
Now, take a hundred criminals: ten of them will be smart men; but take the remainder, and eighty of them are below the average, body and mind,--they were, as
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