ABSTRACT
Lastly, IH-J the avoidance of evil is often ·of as much importance as positive good, we cannot pass over this year's chronicle without recording our great satisfaction at the failure of the determined effort made to ~xclude an honest and respectable class of women from .a healthy, if hard, employment at the pit-brow. It is . much in these days of intense competition for a woman -to receive good wages and sufficiency of food in an open-air and healthy, though laborious life, and we have no patience with the affected scruples of trades' -unionism or the tender-heartedness of that philanthropy which is made its cat's-paw, which seeks to .deprive women of their livelihood because the conditions .annexed to their calling are hard and uncomely. We hope that if the same attempt is made naxt year, it will be again and even more signally defeated. · ·
In taking leave of 1886, we have much to feel grateful for. It has been a year of hard work, of intense .excitement and of substantial recompense. It leaves women in a distinctly better position legally and socia1ly than it found them. It encourages the hope that by using the same efforts and the same courage .and perseverance the next year, the. jubilee year, to which so many English men and women are looking forward as crowning the half century of reform inaugurated by a woman's reign, may see even greater •tliumphs achieved.
