From my heart I pity them, but one cannot be blind to the general consequences.

And these things must be taken into consideration when efforts are made, as undoubtedly efforts will some day be made, to tackle this question in a reasonable way.
It is high time, too, that the public understood the difficulties that attend any effort to lift lodging-house habitues to a higher form of existence.
I am bold enough to hazard the statement that the number of these people increases year by year, and that no redemptive effort has had the slightest effect in checking the continual increase.

As Secretary of the Howard Association, it is my business year by year to make myself acquainted with the criminal statistics, and all matters connected with our prisons.

These statistics more than confirm my statement, for they tell us that while drunkenness, brutality, crimes of violence show a steady decrease, vagabondage, sleeping out, begging, etc., show a continual increase as years roll by.
Of course many of them appear again and again in the prison statistics, nevertheless they form a great and terrible army, whose increase bodes ill for dear and fair old England.
Like birds they are migratory, but they pour no sweetness on the morning or evening air.

Like locusts they leave a blight behind.
Like famished wolves when winter draws near they seek the habitations of men.