The House of the Vampire

The House of the Vampire

A NEW CONSCIENCE AND AN ANCIENT EVIL
By JANE ADDAMS
HULL HOUSE, CHICAGO
Author of Democracy and Social Ethics, Newer Ideals of PeaceThe Spirit of Youth and the City
StreetsTwenty Years at Hull-House
New YorkTHE MACMILLAN COMPANY1912
To the Juvenile Protective Association of Chicago, whose superintendent andfield officers have collected
much of the material for this book, and whosepresident, Mrs. Joseph T. Bowen, has so ably and
sympathetically collaborated inits writing.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I As inferred from An AnalogyCHAPTER II As indicated by Recent Legal EnactmentsCHAPTER
III As indicated by the Amelioration of Economic ConditionsCHAPTER IV As indicated by the Moral
Education and Legal Protection of ChildrenCHAPTER V As indicated by Philanthropic Rescue and
PreventionCHAPTER VI As indicated by Increased Social Control
PREFACE
The following material, much of which has been published in McClure'sMagazine, was written, not from the
point of view of the expert, butbecause of my own need for a counter-knowledge to a bewildering mass
ofinformation which came to me through the Juvenile Protective Associationof Chicago. The reports which its
twenty field officers daily brought toits main office adjoining Hull House became to me a revelation of
thedangers implicit in city conditions and of the allurements which aredesignedly placed around many young
girls in order to draw them into anevil life.
As head of the Publication Committee, I read the original documents in aseries of special investigations made
by the Association on dance halls, theatres, amusement parks, lake excursion boats, petty gambling, thehome
surroundings of one hundred Juvenile Court children and the recordsof four thousand parents who clearly
contributed to the delinquency oftheir own families. The Association also collected the personalhistories of
two hundred department-store girls, of two hundred factorygirls, of two hundred immigrant girls, of two
hundred office girls, andof girls employed in one hundred hotels and restaurants.
While this experience was most distressing, I was, on the other hand, much impressed and at times fairly
startled by the large and diversifiednumber of people to whom the very existence of the white slave traffichad
become unendurable and who promptly responded to any appeal made onbehalf of its victims. City officials,
policemen, judges, attorneys, employers, trades unionists, physicians, teachers, newly arrivedimmigrants,
clergymen, railway officials, and newspaper men, as under aprofound sense of compunction, were unsparing
of time and effort whengiven an opportunity to assist an individual girl, to promotelegislation designed for her
protection, or to establish institutionsfor her rescue.
I therefore venture to hope that in serving my own need I may also servethe need of a rapidly growing public
when I set down for rationalconsideration the temptations surrounding multitudes of young people andwhen I
assemble, as best I may, the many indications of a newconscience, which in various directions is slowly
gathering strength andwhich we may soberly hope will at last successfully array itself againstthis incredible
social wrong, ancient though it may be.
Hull House, Chicago.
CHAPTER I
AN ANALOGY
In every large city throughout the world thousands of women are so setaside as outcasts from decent society
that it is considered animpropriety to speak the very word which designates them. Lecky callsthis type of
woman "the most mournful and the most awful figure inhistory": he says that "she remains, while creeds and
civilizations riseand fall, the eternal sacrifice of humanity, blasted for the sins of thepeople. " But evils so old
that they are imbedded in man's earliesthistory have been known to sway before an enlightened public opinion
andin the end to give way to a growing conscience, which regards them firstas a moral affront and at length as
an utter impossibility. Thus thegeneration just before us, our own fathers, uprooted the enormous upasof
slavery, "the tree that was literally as old as the race of man, "although slavery doubtless had its beginnings in
the captives of man'searliest warfare, even as this existing evil thus originated.
Those of us who think we discern the beginnings of a new conscience inregard to this twin of slavery, as old
and outrageous as slavery itselfand even more persistent, find a possible analogy between certain civic,
philanthropic and educational efforts directed against the veryexistence of this social evil and similar
organized efforts whichpreceded the overthrow of slavery in America. Thus, long before slaverywas finally
declared illegal, there were international regulations ofits traffic, state and federal legislation concerning its
extension, andmany extra legal attempts to control its abuses; quite as we have theinternational regulations
concerning the white slave traffic, the stateand interstate legislation for its repression, and an extra legal
powerin connection with it so universally given to the municipal police thatthe possession of this power has
become one of the great sources ofcorruption in every American city.
Before society was ready to proceed against the institution of slaveryas such, groups of men and women by
means of the underground railroadcherished and educated individual slaves; it is scarcely necessary topoint
out the similarity to the rescue homes and preventive associationswhich every great city contains.
It is always easy to overwork an analogy, and yet the economist who foryears insisted that slave labor
continually and arbitrarily limited thewages of free labor and was therefore a detriment to national wealth
wasa forerunner of the economist of to-day who points out the economicbasis of the social evil, the connection
between low wages and despair, between over-fatigue and the demand for reckless pleasure.
Before the American nation agreed to regard slavery as unjustifiablefrom the standpoint of public morality, an
army of reformers, lecturers, and writers set forth its enormity in a never-ceasing flow of invective, of appeal,
and of portrayal concerning the human cruelty to which thesystem lent itself. We can discern the scouts and
outposts of a similararmy advancing against this existing evil: the physicians andsanitarians who are
committed to the task of ridding the race fromcontagious diseases, the teachers and lecturers who are
appealing to thehigher morality of thousands of young people; the growing literature, not only biological and
didactic, but of a popular type more closelyapproaching "Uncle Tom's Cabin. "
Throughout the agitation for the abolition of slavery in America, therewere statesmen who gradually became
convinced of the political and moralnecessity of giving to the freedman the protection of the ballot. Inthis
current agitation there are at least a few men and women who wouldextend a greater social and political
freedom to all women if onlybecause domestic control has proved so ineffectual.
We may certainly take courage from the fact that our contemporaries arefired by social compassions and
enthusiasms, to which even our immediatepredecessors were indifferent. Such compunctions have ever
manifestedthemselves in varying degrees of ardor through different groups in thesame community. Thus
among those who are newly aroused to action inregard to the social evil are many who would endeavor to
regulate it andbelieve they can minimize its dangers, still larger numbers who wouldeliminate all trafficking of
unwilling victims in connection with it, and yet others who believe that as a quasi-legal institution it may
beabsolutely abolished. Perhaps the analogy to the abolition of slavery ismost striking in that these groups, in
their varying points of view, arelike those earlier associations which differed widely in regard tochattel
slavery. Only the so-called extremists, in the first instance, stood for abolition and they were continually told
that what theyproposed was clearly impossible. The legal and commercial obstacles, bulked large, were placed
before them and it was confidently assertedthat the blame for the historic existence of slavery lay deep
withinhuman nature itself. Yet gradually all of these associations reached thepoint of view of the abolitionist
and before the war was over even themost lukewarm unionist saw no other solution of the nation's difficulty.
Some such gradual conversion to the point of view of abolition is theexperience of every society or group of
people who seriously face thedifficulties and complications of the social evil. Certainly all thenational
organizations--the National Vigilance Committee, the AmericanPurity Federation, the Alliance for the
Suppression and Prevention ofthe White Slave Traffic and many others--stand for the final abolitionof
commercialized vice. Local vice commissions, such as the able onerecently appointed in Chicago, although
composed of members of varyingbeliefs in regard to the possibility of control and regulation, unitedin the end
in recommending a law enforcement looking towards finalabolition. Even the most sceptical of Chicago
citizens, after readingthe fearless document, shared the hope of the commission that "the city, when aroused to
the truth, would instantly rebel against the social evilin all its phases. " A similar recommendation of ultimate
abolition wasrecently made unanimous by the Minneapolis vice commission after theconversion of many of its
members. Doubtless all of the nationalsocieties have before them a task only less gigantic than that faced
bythose earlier associations in America for the suppression of slavery, although it may be legitimate to remind
them that the best-knownanti-slavery society in America was organized by the New Englandabolitionists in
1836, and only thirty-six years later, in 1872, wasformally disbanded because its object had been
accomplished. The longstruggle ahead of these newer associations will doubtless claim itsmartyrs and its
heroes, has indeed already claimed them during the lastthirty years. Few righteous causes have escaped
baptism with blood;nevertheless, to paraphrase Lincoln's speech, if blood were exacted dropby drop in
measure to the tears of anguished mothers and enslaved girls, the nation would still be obliged to go into the
struggle.
Throughout this volume the phrase "social evil" is used to designate thesexual commerce permitted to exist in
every large city, usually in asegregated district, wherein the chastity of women is bought and sold.
Modifications of legal codes regarding marriage and divorce, moraljudgments concerning the entire group of
questions centring aboutillicit affection between men and women, are quite other questions whichare not
considered here. Such problems must always remain distinct fromthose of commercialized vice, as must the
treatment of an irreducibleminimum of prostitution, which will doubtless long exist, quite associety still
retains an irreducible minimum of murders. This volumedoes not deal with the probable future of prostitution,
and gives onlysuch historical background as is necessary to understand the presentsituation. It endeavors to
present the contributory causes, as they havebecome registered in my consciousness through a long residence
in acrowded city quarter, and to state the indications, as I have seen them, of a new conscience with its many
and varied manifestations.
Nothing is gained by making the situation better or worse than it is, nor in anywise different from what it is.
This ancient evil is indeedsocial in the sense of community responsibility and can only beunderstood and at
length remedied when we face the fact and measure theresources which may at length be massed against it.
Perhaps the moststriking indication that our generation has become the bearer of a newmoral consciousness in
regard to the existence of commercialized vice isthe fact that the mere contemplation of it throws the more
sensitive menand women among our contemporaries into a state of indignant revolt. Itis doubtless an
instinctive shrinking from this emotion and anunconscious dread that this modern sensitiveness will be
outraged, whichjustifies to themselves so many moral men and women in their persistentignorance of the
subject. Yet one of the most obvious resources at ourcommand, which might well be utilized at once, if it is to
be utilizedat all, is the overwhelming pity and sense of protection which therecent revelations in the white
slave traffic have aroused for thethousands of young girls, many of them still children, who are
yearlysacrificed to the "sins of the people. " All of this emotion ought to bemade of value, for quite as a state
of emotion is invariably the organicpreparation for action, so it is certainly true that no profoundspiritual
transformation can take place without it.
After all, human progress is deeply indebted to a study ofimperfections, and the counsels of despair, if not full
of seasonedwisdom, are at least fertile in suggestion and a desperate spur toaction. Sympathetic knowledge is
the only way of approach to any humanproblem, and the line of least resistance into the jungle of
humanwretchedness must always be through that region which is most thoroughlyexplored, not only by the
information of the statistician, but bysympathetic understanding. We are daily attaining the latter throughsuch
authors as Sudermann and Elsa Gerusalem, who have enabled theirreaders to comprehend the so-called
"fallen" woman through a skilfulportrayal of the reaction of experience upon personality. Their realismhas
rescued her from the sentimentality surrounding an impossibleCamille quite as their fellow-craftsmen in
realism have replaced theweeping Amelias of the Victorian period by reasonable women transcribedfrom
actual life.
The treatment of this subject in American literature is at present inthe pamphleteering stage, although an
ever-increasing number of shortstories and novels deal with it. On the other hand, the plays throughwhich
Bernard Shaw constantly places the truth before the public inEngland as Brieux is doing for the public in
France, produce in thespectators a disquieting sense that society is involved incommercialized vice and must
speedily find a way out. Such writing islike the roll of the drum which announces the approach of the
troopsready for action.
Some of the writers who are performing this valiant service are relatedto those great artists who in every age
enter into a long struggle withexisting social conditions, until after many years they change theoutlook upon
life for at least a handful of their contemporaries. Theirreaders find themselves no longer mere bewildered
spectators of a givensocial wrong, but have become conscious of their own hypocrisy in regardto it, and they
realize that a veritable horror, simply because it washidden, had come to seem to them inevitable and almost
normal.
Many traces of this first uneasy consciousness regarding the social evilare found in contemporary literature,
for while the business ofliterature is revelation and not reformation, it may yet perform for themen and women
now living that purification of the imagination andintellect which the Greeks believed to come through pity
and terror.
Secure in the knowledge of evolutionary processes, we have learned totalk glibly of the obligations of race
progress and of the possibilityof racial degeneration. In this respect certainly we have a wideroutlook than that
possessed by our fathers, who so valiantly grappledwith chattel slavery and secured its overthrow. May the
new consciencegather force until men and women, acting under its sway, shall beconstrained to eradicate this
ancient evil!
CHAPTER II
RECENT LEGAL ENACTMENTS
At the present moment even the least conscientious citizens agree that, first and foremost, the organized traffic
in what has come to be calledwhite slaves must be suppressed and that those traffickers who procuretheir
victims for purely commercial purposes must be arrested andprosecuted. As it is impossible to rescue girls
fraudulently andillegally detained, save through governmental agencies, it is naturallythrough the line of legal
action that the most striking revelations ofthe white slave traffic have come. For the sake of convenience, we
maydivide this legal action into those cases dealing with the internationaltrade, those with the state and
interstate traffic, and the regulationswith which the municipality alone is concerned.
First in value to the white slave commerce is the girl imported fromabroad who from the nature of the case is
most completely in the powerof the trader. She is literally friendless and unable to speak thelanguage and at
last discouraged she makes no effort to escape. Manycases of the international traffic were recently tried in
Chicago andthe offenders convicted by the federal authorities. One of these cases, which attracted much
attention throughout the country, was of Marie, aFrench girl, the daughter of a Breton stone mason, so old and
poor thathe was obliged to take her from her convent school at the age of twelveyears. He sent her to Paris,
where she became a little household drudgeand nurse-maid, working from six in the morning until eight at
night, and for three years sending her wages, which were about a franc a day, directly to her parents in the
Breton village. One afternoon, as she wasbuying a bottle of milk at a tiny shop, she was engaged in
conversationby a young man who invited her into a little patisserie where, aftergiving her some sweets, he
introduced her to his friend, Monsieur Paret, who was gathering together a theatrical troupe to go to America.
Paretshowed her pictures of several young girls gorgeously arrayed andannouncements of their coming tour,
and Marie felt much flattered whenit was intimated that she might join this brilliant company. Afterseveral
clandestine meetings to perfect the plan, she left the city withParet and a pretty French girl to sail for America
with the rest of theso-called actors. Paret escaped detection by the immigration authoritiesin New York,
through his ruse of the "Kinsella troupe, " and took thegirls directly to Chicago. Here they were placed in a
disreputable housebelonging to a man named Lair, who had advanced the money for theirimportation. The two
French girls remained in this house for severalmonths until it was raided by the police, when they were sent
toseparate houses. The records which were later brought into court showthat at this time Marie was earning
two hundred and fifty dollars aweek, all of which she gave to her employers. In spite of this largemonetary
return she was often cruelly beaten, was made to do thehousehold scrubbing, and was, of course, never
allowed to leave thehouse. Furthermore, as one of the methods of retaining a reluctant girlis to put her
hopelessly in debt and always to charge against her theexpenses incurred in securing her, Marie as an imported
girl had begunat once with the huge debt of the ocean journey for Paret and herself. In addition to this large
sum she was charged, according to universalcustom, with exorbitant prices for all the clothing she received
andwith any money which Paret chose to draw against her account. Later, when Marie contracted typhoid
fever, she was sent for treatment to apublic hospital and it was during her illness there, when a
generalinvestigation was made of the white slave traffic, that a federalofficer visited her. Marie, who thought
she was going to die, freelygave her testimony, which proved to be most valuable.
The federal authorities following up her statements at last locatedParet in the city prison at Atlanta, Georgia,
where he had beenconvicted on a similar charge. He was brought to Chicago and on histestimony Lair was
also convicted and imprisoned.
Marie has since married a man who wishes to protect her from theinfluence of her old life, but although not
yet twenty years old andmaking an honest effort, what she has undergone has apparently so farwarped and
weakened her will that she is only partially successful inkeeping her resolutions, and she sends each month to
her parents inFrance ten or twelve dollars, which she confesses to have earnedillicitly. It is as if the shameful
experiences to which this littleconvent-bred Breton girl was forcibly subjected, had finally becomeregistered
in every fibre of her being until the forced demoralizationhas become genuine. She is as powerless now to
save herself from hersubjective temptations as she was helpless five years ago to saveherself from her captors.
Such demoralization is, of course, most valuable to the white slavetrader, for when a girl has become
thoroughly accustomed to the life andtestifies that she is in it of her own free will, she puts herselfbeyond the
protection of the law. She belongs to a legally degradedclass, without redress in courts of justice for personal
outrages.
Marie, herself, at the end of her third year in America, wrote to thepolice appealing for help, but the lieutenant
who in response to herletter visited the house, was convinced by Lair that she was there ofher own volition
and that therefore he could do nothing for her. It iseasy to see why it thus becomes part of the business to
break down agirl's moral nature by all those horrible devices which are constantlyused by the owner of a white
slave. Because life is so often shortenedfor these wretched girls, their owners degrade them morally as
quicklyas possible, lest death release them before their full profit has beensecured. In addition to the quantity
of sacrificed virtue, to the bulkof impotent suffering, which these white slaves represent, ourcivilization
becomes permanently tainted with the vicious practicesdesigned to accelerate the demoralization of unwilling
victims in orderto make them commercially valuable. Moreover, a girl thus rendered moreuseful to her owner,
will thereafter fail to touch either the chivalryof men or the tenderness of women because good men and
women have becomeconvinced of her innate degeneracy, a word we have learned to use withthe unction
formerly placed upon original sin. The very revolt ofsociety against such girls is used by their owners as a
protection tothe business.
The case against the captors of Marie, as well as twenty-four othercases, was ably and vigorously conducted
by Edwin W. Sims, United StatesDistrict Attorney in Chicago. He prosecuted under a clause of
theimmigration act of 1908, which was unfortunately declaredunconstitutional early the next year, when for
the moment federalauthorities found themselves unable to proceed directly against thisinternational traffic.
They could not act under the international whiteslave treaty signed by the contracting powers in Paris in 1904,
andproclaimed by the President of the United States in 1908, because it wasfound impossible to carry out its
provisions without federal police. Thelong consideration of this treaty by Congress made clear to the
nationthat it is in matters of this sort that navies are powerless and that asour international problems become
more social, other agencies must beprovided, a point which arbitration committees have long urged.
Thediscussion of the international treaty brought the subject before theentire country as a matter for immediate
legislation and for executiveaction, and the White Slave Traffic Act was finally passed by Congressin 1910,
under which all later prosecutions have since been conducted. When the decision on the immigration clause
rendered in 1909 threw theburden of prosecution back upon the states, Mr. Clifford Roe, thenassistant State's
Attorney, within one year investigated 348 such cases, domestic and foreign, and successfully prosecuted 91,
carrying on thevigorous policy inaugurated by United States Attorney Sims. In 1908Illinois passed the first
pandering law in this country, changing theoffence from disorderly conduct to a misdemeanor, and greatly
increasingthe penalty. In many states pandering is still so little defined as tomake the crime merely a breach of
manners and to put it in the sameclass of offences as selling a street-car transfer.
As a result of this vigorous action, Chicago became the first city tolook the situation squarely in the face, and
to make a determinedbusiness-like fight against the procuring of girls. An office wasestablished by
public-spirited citizens where Mr. Roe was placed incharge and empowered to follow up the clues of the
traffic whereverfound and to bring the traffickers to justice; in consequence the whiteslave traders have
become so frightened that the foreign importation ofgirls to Chicago has markedly declined. It is estimated by
Mr. Roe thatsince 1909 about one thousand white slave traders, of whom thirty orforty were importers of
foreign girls, have been driven away from thecity.
Throughout the Congressional discussions of the white slave traffic, beginning with the Howell-Bennett Act in
1907, it was evident that thesubject was closely allied to immigration, and when the immigrationcommission
made a partial report to Congress in December, 1909, upon"the importation and harboring of women for
immoral purposes, " theirfinding only emphasized the report of the Commissioner General ofImmigration
made earlier in the year. His report had traced theinternational traffic directly to New York, Chicago, Boston,
Buffalo, New Orleans, Denver, Seattle, Portland, Salt Lake City, Ogden, andButte. As the list of cities was
comparatively small, it seemed notunreasonable to hope that the international traffic might be
rigorouslyprosecuted, with the prospect of finally doing away with it in spite ofits subtle methods, its
multiplied ramifications, and its financialresources. Only officials of vigorous conscience can deal with
thistraffic; but certainly there can be no nobler service for federal andstate officers to undertake than this
protection of immigrant girls.
It is obvious that a foreign girl who speaks no English, who has not theremotest idea in what part of the city
her fellow-countrymen live, whodoes not know the police station or any agency to which she may apply, is
almost as valuable to a white slave trafficker as a girl importeddirectly for the trade. The trafficker makes
every effort to interceptsuch a girl before she can communicate with her relations. Althoughgreat care is taken
at Ellis Island, the girl's destination carefullyindicated upon her ticket and her friends communicated with,
after sheboards the train the governmental protection is withdrawn and manyuntoward experiences may befall
a girl between New York and her finaldestination. Only this year a Polish mother of the Hull
Houseneighborhood failed to find her daughter on a New York train upon whichshe had been notified to
expect her, because the girl had been inducedto leave the New York train at South Chicago, where she was
met by twoyoung men, one of them well known to the police, and the other a youngPole, purporting to have
been sent by the girl's mother.
The immigrant girl also encounters dangers upon the very moment of herarrival. The cab-men and expressmen
are often unscrupulous. One of thelatter was recently indicted in Chicago upon the charge of
regularlyprocuring immigrant girls for a disreputable hotel. The non-Englishspeaking girl handing her written
address to a cabman has no means ofknowing whither he will drive her, but is obliged to place
herselfimplicitly in his hands. The Immigrants' Protective League has broughtabout many changes in this
respect, but has upon its records somepiteous tales of girls who were thus easily deceived.
An immigrant girl is occasionally exploited by her own lover whom shehas come to America to marry. I recall
the case of a Russian girl thusdecoyed into a disreputable life by a man deceiving her through a fakemarriage
ceremony. Although not found until a year later, the girl hadnever ceased to be distressed and rebellious.
Many Slovak and Polishgirls, coming to America without their relatives, board in housesalready filled with
their countrymen who have also preceded their ownfamilies to the land of promise, hoping to earn money
enough to send forthem later. The immigrant girl is thus exposed to dangers at the verymoment when she is
least able to defend herself. Such a girl, alreadybewildered by the change from an old world village to an
American city, is unfortunately sometimes convinced that the new country freedom doesaway with the
necessity for a marriage ceremony. Many others are toldthat judgment for a moral lapse is less severe in
America than in theold country. The last month's records of the Municipal Court in Chicago, set aside to hear
domestic relation cases, show sixteen unfortunategirls, of whom eight were immigrant girls representing eight
differentnationalities. These discouraged and deserted girls become an easy preyfor the procurers who have
sometimes been in league with their lovers.
Even those girls who immigrate with their families and sustain anaffectionate relation with them are yet often
curiously free fromchaperonage. The immigrant mothers do not know where their daughterswork, save that it
is in a vague "over there" or "down town. " Theythemselves were guarded by careful mothers and they would
gladly givethe same oversight to their daughters, but the entire situation is sounlike that of their own peasant
girlhoods that, discouraged by theirinability to judge it, they make no attempt to understand theirdaughters'
lives. The girls, realizing this inability on the part oftheir mothers, elated by that sense of independence which
the firsttaste of self-support always brings, sheltered from observation duringcertain hours, are almost as free
from social control as is thetraditional young man who comes up from the country to take care ofhimself in a
great city. These immigrant parents are, of course, quiteunable to foresee that while a girl feels a certain
restraint of publicopinion from the tenement house neighbors among whom she lives, andwhile she also
responds to the public opinion of her associates in afactory where she works, there is no public opinion at all
operating asa restraint upon her in the hours which lie between the two, occupied inthe coming and going to
work through the streets of a city large enoughto offer every opportunity for concealment. So much of the
recreationwhich is provided by commercial agencies, even in its advertisements, deliberately plays upon the
interest of sex because it is under suchexcitement and that of alcohol that money is most recklessly spent.
Thegreat human dynamic, which it has been the long effort of centuries tolimit to family life, is deliberately
utilized for advertising purposes, and it is inevitable that many girls yield to such allurements.
On the other hand, one is filled with admiration for the many immigrantgirls who in the midst of insuperable
difficulties resist alltemptations. Such admiration was certainly due Olga, a tall, handsomegirl, a little passive
and slow, yet with that touch of dignity which acontinued mood of introspection so often lends to the young.
Olga hadbeen in Chicago for a year living with an aunt who, when she returned toSweden, placed her niece in
a boarding-house which she knew to bethoroughly respectable. But a friendless girl of such striking
beautycould not escape the machinations of those who profit by the sale ofgirls. Almost immediately Olga
found herself beset by two young men whocontinually forced themselves upon her attention, although she
refusedall their invitations to shows and dances. In six months the frightenedgirl had changed her
boarding-place four times, hoping that the menwould not be able to follow her. She was also obliged
constantly to lookfor a cheaper place, because the dull season in the cloak-making tradecame early that year.
In the fifth boarding-house she finally foundherself so hopelessly in arrears that the landlady, tired of waiting
forthe "new cloak making to begin, " at length fulfilled a long-promisedthreat, and one summer evening at
nine o'clock literally put Olga intothe street, retaining her trunk in payment of the debt. The girl walkedthe
street for hours, until she fancied that she saw one of herpersecutors in the distance, when she hastily took
refuge in a sheltereddoorway, crouching in terror. Although no one approached her, she satthere late into the
night, apparently too apathetic to move. With thecurious inconsequence of moody youth, she was not aroused
to action bythe situation in which she found herself. The incident epitomized to herthe everlasting riddle of the
universe to which she could see nosolution and she drearily decided to throw herself into the lake. As sheleft
the doorway at daybreak for this pitiful purpose, she attracted theattention of a passing policeman. In response
to his questions, kindlyat first but becoming exasperated as he was convinced that she waseither "touched in
her wits" or "guying" him, he obtained a confusedstory of the persecutions of the two young men, and in
sheerbewilderment he finally took her to the station on the very chargeagainst the thought of which she had so
long contended.
The girl was doubtless sullen in court the next morning; she wasresentful of the policeman's talk, she was
oppressed and discouraged andtherefore taciturn. She herself said afterwards that she "often gotstill that way. "
She so sharply felt the disgrace of arrest, after herlong struggle for respectability, that she gave a false name
and becameinvolved in a story to which she could devote but half her attention, being still absorbed in an
undercurrent of speculative thought whichcontinually broke through the flimsy tale she was fabricating.
With the evidence before him, the judge felt obliged to sustain thepoliceman's charge, and as Olga could not
pay the fine imposed, hesentenced her to the city prison. The girl, however, had appeared sostrangely that the
judge was uncomfortable and gave her in charge of arepresentative of the Juvenile Protective Association in
the hope thatshe could discover the whole situation, meantime suspending thesentence. It took hours of patient
conversation with the girl and thekindly services of a well-known alienist to break into her dangerousstate of
mind and to gain her confidence. Prolonged medical treatmentaverted the threatened melancholia and she was
at last rescued from themeaningless despondency so hostile to life itself, which has claimedmany young
victims.
It is strange that we are so slow to learn that no one can safely livewithout companionship and affection, that
the individual who tries thehazardous experiment of going without at least one of them is prone tobe swamped
by a black mood from within. It is as if we had to buildlittle islands of affection in the vast sea of impersonal
forces lest webe overwhelmed by them. Yet we know that in every large city there arehundreds of men whose
business it is to discover girls thus hard pressedby loneliness and despair, to urge upon them the old excuse
that "no onecares what you do, " to fill them with cheap cynicism concerning thevalue of virtue, all to the end
that a business profit may be secured.
Had Olga yielded to the solicitations of bad men and had the immigrationauthorities in the federal building of
Chicago discovered her in thedisreputable hotel in which her captors wanted to place her, she wouldhave been
deported to Sweden, sent home in disgrace from the countrywhich had failed to protect her. Certainly the
immigration laws might dobetter than to send a girl back to her parents, diseased and disgracedbecause
America has failed to safeguard her virtue from the machinationsof well-known but unrestrained criminals.
The possibility of deportationon the charge of prostitution is sometimes utilized by jealous husbandsor
rejected lovers. Only last year a Russian girl came to Chicago tomeet her lover and was deceived by a fake
marriage. Although the manbasely deserted her within a few weeks he became very jealous a yearlater when
he discovered that she was about to be married to aprosperous fellow-countryman, and made charges against
her to thefederal authorities concerning her life in Russia. It was with thegreatest difficulty that the girl was
saved from deportation to Russiaunder circumstances which would have compelled her to take out a redticket
in Odessa, and to live forevermore the life with which her loverhad wantonly charged her.
May we not hope that in time the nation's policy in regard to immigrantswill become less negative and that a
measure of protection will beextended to them during the three years when they are so liable toprompt
deportation if they become criminals or paupers?
While it may be difficult for the federal authorities to accomplish thisprotection and will doubtless require an
extension of the powers of theDepartment of Immigration, certainly no one will doubt that it is thebusiness of
the city itself to extend much more protection to younggirls who so thoughtlessly walk upon its streets. Yet, in
spite of thegrave consequences which lack of proper supervision implies, themunicipal treatment of
commercialized vice not only differs in each citybut varies greatly in the same city under changing
administrations.
The situation is enormously complicated by the pharisaic attitude of thepublic which wishes to have the
comfort of declaring the social evil tobe illegal, while at the same time it expects the police department
toregulate it and to make it as little obvious as possible. In reality thepolice, as they themselves know, are not
expected to serve the public inthis matter but to consult the desires of the politicians; for, next tothe fast and
loose police control of gambling, nothing affords betterpolitical material than the regulation of
commercialized vice. First inline is the ward politician who keeps a disorderly saloon which servesboth as a
meeting-place for the vicious young men engaged in the trafficand as a market for their wares. Back of this the
politician higher upreceives his share of the toll which this business pays that it mayremain undisturbed. The
very existence of a segregated district underpolice regulation means, of course, that the existing law must
benullified or at least rendered totally inoperative. When policeregulation takes the place of law enforcement a
species of municipalblackmail inevitably becomes intrenched. The police are forced toregulate an illicit trade,
but because the men engaged in an unlawfulbusiness expect to pay money for its protection, the corruption of
thepolice department is firmly established and, as the Chicago vicecommission report points out, is merely
called "protection to thebusiness. " The practice of grafting thereafter becomes almost official. On the other
hand, any man who attempts to show mercy to the victims ofthat business, or to regulate it from the victim's
point of view, isconsidered a traitor to the cause. Quite recently a former inspector ofpolice in Chicago
established a requirement that every young girl whocame to live in a disreputable house within a prescribed
district mustbe reported to him within an hour after her arrival. Each one wasclosely questioned as to her
reasons for entering into the life. If shewas very young, she was warned of its inevitable consequences and
urgedto abandon her project. Every assistance was offered her to return towork and to live a normal life.
Occasionally a girl was desperate and itwas sometimes necessary that she be forcibly detained in the
policestation until her friends could be communicated with. More often she wasglad to avail herself of the
chance of escape; practically always, unless she had already become romantically entangled with a
disreputableyoung man, whom she firmly believed to be her genuine lover andprotector.
One day a telephone message came to Hull House from the inspector askingus to take charge of a young girl
who had been brought into the stationby an older woman for registration. The girl's youth and the innocenceof
her replies to the usual questions convinced the inspector that shewas ignorant of the life she was about to
enter and that she probablybelieved she was simply registering her choice of a boarding-house. Herstory
which she told at Hull House was as follows: She was a Milwaukeefactory girl, the daughter of a Bohemian
carpenter. Ten days before shehad met a Chicago young man at a Milwaukee dance hall and after a
briefcourtship had promised to marry him, arranging to meet him in Chicagothe following week. Fearing that
her Bohemian mother would not approveof this plan, which she called "the American way of getting married,
"the girl had risen one morning even earlier than factory worknecessitated and had taken the first train to
Chicago. The young man mether at the station, took her to a saloon where he introduced her to afriend, an
older woman, who, he said, would take good care of her. Afterthe young man disappeared, ostensibly for the
marriage license, thewoman professed to be much shocked that the little bride had brought noluggage, and
persuaded her that she must work a few weeks in order toearn money for her trousseau, and that she, an older
woman who knew thecity, would find a boarding-house and a place in a factory for her. Shefurther induced
her to write postal cards to six of her girl friends inMilwaukee, telling them of the kind lady in Chicago, of the
good chancesfor work, and urging them to come down to the address which she sent. The woman told the
unsuspecting girl that, first of all, a newcomer mustregister her place of residence with the police, as that was
the law inChicago. It was, of course, when the woman took her to the policestation that the situation was
disclosed. It needed but littleinvestigation to make clear that the girl had narrowly escaped awell-organized
plot and that the young man to whom she was engaged wasan agent for a disreputable house. Mr. Clifford Roe
took up the casewith vigor, and although all efforts failed to find the young man, thewoman who was his
accomplice was fined one hundred and fifty dollars andcosts.
The one impression which the trial left upon our minds was that all themen concerned in the prosecution felt a
keen sense of outrage againstthe method employed to secure the girl, but took for granted that thelife she was
about to lead was in the established order of things, ifshe had chosen it voluntarily. In other words, if the
efforts of theagent had gone far enough to involve her moral nature, the girl, whoalthough unsophisticated,
was twenty-one years old, could have remained, quite unchallenged, in the hideous life. The woman who was
prosecutedwas well known to the police and was fined, not for her dailyoccupation, but because she had
become involved in interstate whiteslave traffic. One touch of nature redeemed the trial, for the girlsuffered
much more from the sense that she had been deserted by herlover than from horror over the fate she had
escaped, and she was neverwholly convinced that he had not been genuine. She asserted constantly, in order to
account for his absence, that some accident must havebefallen him. She felt that he was her natural protector
in this strangeChicago to which she had come at his behest and continually resented anyimputation of his
motives. The betrayal of her confidence, the playingupon her natural desire for a home of her own, was a
ghastly revelationthat even when this hideous trade is managed upon the most carefullycalculated commercial
principles, it must still resort to the use of theoldest of the social instincts as its basis of procedure.
This Chicago police inspector, whose desire to protect young girls wasso genuine and so successful, was
afterward indicted by the grand juryand sent to the penitentiary on the charge of accepting "graft"
fromsaloon-keepers and proprietors of the disreputable houses in hisdistrict. His experience was a dramatic
and tragic portrayal of theposition into which every city forces its police. When a girl who hasbeen secured for
the life is dissuaded from it, her rescue represents adefinite monetary loss to the agency which has secured her
and incursthe enmity of those who expected to profit by her. When this enmity hassufficiently accumulated,
the active official is either "called down" byhigher political authority, or brought to trial for those
illegalpractices which he shares with his fellow-officials. It is, therefore, easy to make such an inspector as
ours suffer for his virtues, which areindividual, by bringing charges against his grafting, which is generaland
almost official. So long as the customary prices for protection areadhered to, no one feels aggrieved; but the
sentiment which prompts aninspector "to side with the girls" and to destroy thousands of dollars'worth of
business is unjustifiable. He has not stuck to the rules of thegame and the pack of enraged gamesters, under
full cry of "morality, "can very easily run him to ground, the public meantime being gratifiedthat police
corruption has been exposed and the offender punished. Yethundreds of girls, who could have been discovered
in no other way, wererescued by this man in his capacity of police inspector. On the otherhand, he did little to
bring to justice those responsible for securingthe girls, and while he rescued the victim, he did not interfere
withthe source of supply. Had he been brought to trial for thisindifference, it would have been impossible to
find a grand jury tosustain the indictment. He was really brought to trial because he hadbroken the implied
contract with the politicians; he had devised illicitand damaging methods to express that instinct for protecting
youth andinnocence, which every man on the police force doubtless possesses. Werethis instinct freed from all
political and extra legal control, it wouldin and of itself be a tremendous force against commercialized vice
whichis so dependent upon the exploitation of young girls. Yet the fortunesof the police are so tied up to those
who profit by this trade and totheir friends, the politicians, that the most well-meaning man upon theforce is
constantly handicapped. Several illustrations of this occur tome. Two years ago, when very untoward
conditions were discovered inconnection with a certain five-cent theatre, a young policeman arrestedthe
proprietor, who was later brought before the grand jury, indictedand released upon bail for nine thousand
dollars. The crime was aheinous one, involving the ruin of fourteen little girls; but so muchpolitical influence
had been exerted on behalf of the proprietor, whowas a relative of the republican committeeman of his ward,
that althoughthe license of the theatre was immediately revoked, it was reissued tohis wife within a very few
days and the man continued to be a menace tothe community. When the young policeman who had made the
arrest saw himin the neighborhood of the theatre talking to little girls and reportedhim, the officer was taken
severely to task by the highest republicanauthority in the city. He was reprimanded for his activity and
orderedtransferred to the stockyards, eleven miles away. The policeman wellunderstood that this was but the
first step in the process called"breaking;" that after he had moved his family to the stockyards, in afew weeks
he would be transferred elsewhere, and that this change ofbeat would be continued until he should at last be
obliged to resignfrom the force. His offence, as he was plainly told, had been hisignorance of the fact that the
theatre was under political protection. In short, the young officer had naïvely undertaken to serve the
publicwithout waiting for his instructions from the political bosses.
A flagrant example of the collusion of the police with vice is instancedby United States District Attorney
Sims, who recently called upon theChicago police to make twenty-four arrests on behalf of the UnitedStates
government for violations of the white slave law, when all of themen liable to arrest left town two hours after
the warrants were issued. To quote Mr. Sims: "We sent the secret service men who had been workingin
conjunction with the police back to Washington and brought in a freshsupply. These men did not work with
the police, and within two weeksafter the first set of secret service men had left Chicago, the men wewanted
were back in town, and without the aid of the city police wearrested all of them. "
When the legal control of commercialized vice is thus tied up with citypolitics the functions of the police
become legislative, executive andjudicial in regard to street solicitation: in a sense they also havepower of
license, for it lies with them to determine the number of womenwho are allowed to ply their trade upon the
street. Some of these womenare young earthlings, as it were, hoping to earn money for much-desiredclothing
or pleasure. Others are desperate creatures making one lasteffort before they enter a public hospital to face a
miserable end; butby far the larger number are sent out under the protection of the menwho profit by their
earnings, or they are utilized to secure patronagefor disreputable houses. The police regard the latter "as
regular, " andwhile no authoritative order is ever given, the patrolman understandsthat they are protected. On
the other hand, "the straggler" is liable tobe arrested by any officer who chooses, and she is subjected to a
fineupon his unsupported word. In either case the police regard all suchwomen as literally "abandoned, "
deprived of ordinary rights, obliged tolive in specified residences, and liable to have their personalliberties
invaded in a way that no other class of citizens wouldtolerate.
The recent establishment of the Night Court in New York registers anadvance in regard to the treatment of
these wretched women. Not onlydoes the public gradually become cognizant of the treatment accordedthem,
but some attempt at discrimination is made between the firstoffenders and those hardened by long practice in
that most hideous ofoccupations. Furthermore, an adult probation system is gradually beingsubstituted for the
system of fines which at present are levied in suchwise as to virtually constitute a license and a partnership
with thepolice department.
While American cities cannot be said to have adopted a policy either ofsuppression or one of regulation,
because the police consider the formerimpracticable and the latter intolerable to public opinion, we
mayperhaps claim for America a little more humanity in its dealing withthis class of women, a little less
ruthlessness than that exhibited bythe continental cities where regimentation is relentlessly assumed.
The suggestive presence of such women on the streets is perhaps one ofthe most demoralizing influences to be
found in a large city, and suchvigorous efforts as were recently made by a former chief of police inChicago
when he successfully cleared the streets of their presence, demonstrates that legal suppression is possible. At
least this obvioustemptation to young men and boys who are idly walking the streets mightbe avoided, for in
an old formula one such woman "has cast down manywounded; yea, many strong men have been slain by her.
" Were the streetskept clear, many young girls would be spared familiar knowledge thatsuch a method of
earning money is open to them. I have personally knownseveral instances in which young girls have begun
street solicitationthrough sheer imitation. A young Polish woman found herself in direstraits after the death of
her mother. Her only friends in America hadmoved to New York, she was in debt for her mother's funeral, and
as itwas the slack season of the miserable sweat-shop sewing she had beendoing, she was unable to find work.
One evening when she was quitedesperate with hunger, she stopped several men upon the street, as shehad
seen other girls do, and in her broken English asked them forsomething to eat. Only after a young man had
given her a good meal at arestaurant did she realize the price she was expected to pay and thehorrible things
which the other girls were doing. Even in her shockedrevolt she could not understand, of course, that she
herself epitomizedthat hideous choice between starvation and vice which is perhaps thecrowning disgrace of
civilization.
The legal suppression of street solicitation would not only protectgirls but would enormously minimize the
risk and temptation to boys. Theentire system of recruiting for commercialized vice is largely dependentupon
boys who are scarcely less the victims of the system than are thegirls themselves. Certainly this aspect of the
situation must beseriously considered.
In 1908, when Mr. Clifford Roe conducted successful prosecutions againstone hundred and fifty of these
disreputable young men in Chicago, nearlyall of them were local boys who had used their personal
acquaintance tosecure their victims. The accident of a long acquaintance with one ofthese boys, born in the
Hull-House neighborhood, filled me withquestionings as to how far society may be responsible for these
wretchedlads, many of them beginning a vicious career when they are but fifteenor sixteen years of age.
Because the trade constantly demands very younggirls, the procurers require the assistance of immature boys,
for inthis game above all others "youth calls to youth. " Such a boy is oftenincited by the professional procurer
to ruin a young girl, because thelatter's position is much safer if the character of the girl isblackened before he
sells her, and if he himself cannot be implicated inher downfall. He thus keeps himself within the letter of the
law, andwhen he is even more cautious, he induces the boy to go through theceremony of a legal marriage by
promising him a percentage of his wife'sfirst earnings.
Only yesterday I received a letter from a young man whom I had knownfrom his early boyhood, written in the
state penitentiary, where he isserving a life sentence. His father was a drunkard, but his mother was afine
woman, devoted to her children, and she had patiently supported herson Jim far beyond his school age. At the
time of his trial, she pawnedall her personal possessions and mortgaged her furniture in order to getthree
hundred dollars for his lawyer. Although Jim usually led the lifeof a loafer and had never supported his
mother, he was affectionatelydevoted to her and always kindly and good-natured. Perhaps it wasbecause he
had been so long dependent upon a self-sacrificing woman thatit became easy for him to be dependent upon
his wife, a girl whom he metwhen he was temporarily acting as porter in a disreputable hotel. Through his
long familiarity with vice, and the fact that many of hiscompanions habitually lived upon the earnings of "their
girls, " heeasily consented that his wife should continue her life, and heconstantly accepted the money which
she willingly gave him. After hismarriage he still lived in his mother's house and refused to take moremoney
from her, but she had no idea of the source of his income. One dayhe called at the hotel, as usual, to ask for his
wife's earnings, and ina quarrel over the amount with the landlady of the house, he drew arevolver and killed
her. Although the plea of self-defense was urged inthe trial, his abominable manner of life so outraged both
judge and jurythat he received the maximum sentence. His mother still insists that hesincerely loved the girl,
whom he so impulsively married and that heconstantly tried to dissuade her from her evil life. Certain it is
thatJim's wife and mother are both filled with genuine sorrow for his fateand that in some wise the educational
and social resources in the cityof his birth failed to protect him from his own lower impulses and fromthe evil
companionship whose influence he could not withstand. He is butone of thousands of weak boys, who are
constantly utilized to supply thewhite slave trafficker with young girls, for it has been estimated thatat any
given moment the majority of the girls utilized by the trade areunder twenty years of age and that most of
them were procured whenyounger. We cannot assume that the youths who are hired to entice andentrap these
girls are all young fiends, degenerate from birth; themajority of them are merely out-of-work boys, idle upon
the streets, whoreadily lend themselves to these base demands because nothing else ispresented to them.
All the recent investigations have certainly made clear that the bulk ofthe entire traffic is conducted with the
youth of the community, andthat the social evil, ancient though it may be, must be renewed in ourgeneration
through its younger members. The knowledge of the youth ofits victims doubtless in a measure accounts for
the new sense ofcompunction which fills the community.

CHAPTER III
AMELIORATION OF ECONOMIC CONDITIONS
It may be possible to extract some small degree of comfort from therecent revelations of the white slave traffic
when we reflect that atthe present moment, in the midst of a freedom such as has never beenaccorded to young
women in the history of the world, under an economicpressure grinding down upon the working girl at the
very age when shemost wistfully desires to be taken care of, it is necessary to organizea widespread
commercial enterprise in order to procure a sufficientnumber of girls for the white slave market.
Certainly the larger freedom accorded to woman by our changing socialcustoms and the phenomenal number
of young girls who are utilized bymodern industry, taken in connection with this lack of supply, wouldseem to
show that the chastity of women is holding its own in thatslow-growing civilization which ever demands more
self-control andconscious direction on the part of the individuals sharing it.
Successive reports of the United States census indicate thatself-supporting girls are increasing steadily in
number each decade, until 59 per cent. Of all the young women in the nation between the agesof sixteen and
twenty, are engaged in some gainful occupation. Yearafter year, as these figures increase, the public views
them withcomplacency, almost with pride, and confidently depends upon the innerrestraint and training of this
girlish multitude to protect it fromdisaster. Nevertheless, the public is totally unable to determine atwhat
moment these safeguards, evolved under former industrialconditions, may reach a breaking point, not because
of economic freedom, but because of untoward economic conditions.
For the first time in history multitudes of women are laboring withoutthe direct stimulus of family interest or
affection, and they are alsounable to proportion their hours of work and intervals of rest accordingto their
strength; in addition to this for thousands of them the effortto obtain a livelihood fairly eclipses the very
meaning of life itself. At the present moment no student of modern industrial conditions canpossibly assert
how far the superior chastity of woman, so rigidlymaintained during the centuries, has been the result of her
domesticsurroundings, and certainly no one knows under what degree of economicpressure the old restraints
may give way.
In addition to the monotony of work and the long hours, the small wagesthese girls receive have no relation to
the standard of living whichthey are endeavoring to maintain. Discouraged and over-fatigued, theyare often
brought into sharp juxtaposition with the women who areobtaining much larger returns from their illicit trade.
Society alsoventures to capitalize a virtuous girl at much less than one who hasyielded to temptation, and it
may well hold itself responsible for theprecarious position into which, year after year, a multitude of frailgirls
is placed.
The very valuable report recently issued by the vice commission ofChicago leaves no room for doubt upon
this point. The report estimatesthe yearly profit of this nefarious business as conducted in Chicago tobe
between fifteen and sixteen millions of dollars. Although theseenormous profits largely accrue to the men who
conduct the business sideof prostitution, the report emphasizes the fact that the average girlearns very much
more in such a life than she can hope to earn by anyhonest work. It points out that the capitalized value of the
averageworking girl is six thousand dollars, as she ordinarily earns sixdollars a week, which is three hundred
dollars a year, or five per cent. On that sum. A girl who sells drinks in a disreputable saloon, earningin
commissions for herself twenty-one dollars a week, is capitalized ata value of twenty-two thousand dollars.
The report further estimatesthat the average girl who enters an illicit life under a protector ormanager is able to
earn twenty-five dollars a week, representing acapital of twenty-six thousand dollars. In other words, a girl in
such alife "earns more than four times as much as she is worth as a factor inthe social and industrial economy,
where brains, intelligence, virtueand womanly charm should bring a premium. " The argument is specious
inthat it does not record the economic value of the many later years inwhich the honest girl will live as wife
and mother, in contrast to thepremature death of the woman in the illicit trade, but the girl herselfsees only the
difference in the immediate earning possibilities in thetwo situations.
Nevertheless the supply of girls for the white slave traffic so farfalls below the demand that large business
enterprises have beendeveloped throughout the world in order to secure a sufficient number ofvictims for this
modern market. Over and over again in the criminalproceedings against the men engaged in this traffic, when
questioned asto their motives, they have given the simple reply "that more girls areneeded", and that they were
"promised big money for them". Althougheconomic pressure as a reason for entering an illicit life has thus
beenbrought out in court by the evidence in a surprising number of cases, there is no doubt that it is often
exaggerated; a girl always prefers tothink that economic pressure is the reason for her downfall, even whenthe
immediate causes have been her love of pleasure, her desire forfinery, or the influence of evil companions. It
is easy for her, as forall of us, to be deceived as to real motives. In addition to this thewretched girl who has
entered upon an illicit life finds the experienceso terrible that, day by day, she endeavors to justify herself with
theexcuse that the money she earns is needed for the support of some onedependent upon her, thus following
habits established by generations ofvirtuous women who cared for feeble folk. I know one such girl living ina
disreputable house in Chicago who has adopted a delicate childafflicted with curvature of the spine, whom she
boards with respectablepeople and keeps for many weeks out of each year in an expensivesanitarium that it
may receive medical treatment. The mother of thechild, an inmate of the house in which the ardent
foster-mother herselflives, is quite indifferent to the child's welfare and also ratheramused at such solicitude.
The girl has persevered in her course forfive years, never however allowing the little invalid to come to
thehouse in which she and the mother live. The same sort of devotion andself-sacrifice is often poured out
upon the miserable man who in thebeginning was responsible for the girl's entrance into the life and
whoconstantly receives her earnings. She supports him in the luxurious lifehe may be living in another part of
the town, takes an almost maternalpride in his good clothes and general prosperity, and regards him as theone
person in all the world who understands her plight.
Most of the cases of economic responsibility, however, are not due tochivalric devotion, but arise from a
desire to fulfill familyobligations such as would be accepted by any conscientious girl. Thiswas clearly
revealed in conversations which were recently held withthirty-four girls, who were living at the same time in a
rescue home, when twenty-two of them gave economic pressure as the reason forchoosing the life which they
had so recently abandoned. One piteouslittle widow of seventeen had been supporting her child and had
beenable to leave the life she had been leading only because her marriedsister offered to take care of the baby
without the money formerly paidher. Another had been supporting her mother and only since her recentdeath
was the girl sure that she could live honestly because she hadonly herself to care for.
The following story, fairly typical of the twenty-two involving economicreasons, is of a girl who had come to
Chicago at the age of fifteen, from a small town in Indiana. Her father was too old to work and hermother was
a dependent invalid. The brother who cared for the parents, with the help of the girl's own slender wages
earned in the countrystore of the little town, became ill with rheumatism. In her desire toearn more money the
country girl came to the nearest large city, Chicago, to work in a department store. The highest wage she could
earn, even though she wore long dresses and called herself "experienced, " wasfive dollars a week. This sum
was of course inadequate even for her ownneeds and she was constantly filled with a corroding worry for
"thefolks at home. " In a moment of panic, a fellow clerk who was "wise"showed her that it was possible to
add to her wages by makingappointments for money in the noon hour at down-town hotels. Havingearned
money in this way for a few months, the young girl made anarrangement with an older woman to be on call in
the evenings whenevershe was summoned by telephone, thus joining that large clandestine groupof apparently
respectable girls, most of whom yield to temptation onlywhen hard pressed by debt incurred during illness or
non-employment, orwhen they are facing some immediate necessity. This practice has becomeso general in
the larger American cities as to be systematicallyconducted. It is perhaps the most sinister outcome of the
economicpressure, unless one cites its corollary--the condition of thousands ofyoung men whose low salaries
so cruelly and unjustifiably postpone theirmarriages. For a long time the young saleswoman kept her position
in thedepartment store, retaining her honest wages for herself, but sendingeverything else to her family. At
length however, she changed from herclandestine life to an openly professional one when she needed
enoughmoney to send her brother to Hot Springs, Arkansas, where she maintainedhim for a year. She
explained that because he was now restored to healthand able to support the family once more, she had left the
life "foreverand ever", expecting to return to her home in Indiana. She suspectedthat her brother knew of her
experience, although she was sure that herparents did not, and she hoped that as she was not yet seventeen,
shemight be able to make a fresh start. Fortunately the poor child did notknow how difficult that would be.
It is perhaps in the department store more than anywhere else that everypossible weakness in a girl is detected
and traded upon. For while it istrue that "wherever many girls are gathered together more or lessunprotected
and embroiled in the struggle for a livelihood, near by willbe hovering the procurers and evil-minded", no
other place of employmentis so easy of access as the department store. No visitor is received ina factory or
office unless he has definite business there, whereas everypurchaser is welcome at a department store, even a
notorious woman wellknown to represent the demi-monde trade is treated with marked courtesyif she spends
large sums of money. The primary danger lies in the factthat the comely saleswomen are thus easy of access.
The disreputableyoung man constantly passes in and out, making small purchases fromevery pretty girl,
opening an acquaintance with complimentary remarks;or the procuress, a fashionably-dressed woman, buys
clothing in largeamounts, sometimes for a young girl by her side, ostensibly herdaughter. She condoles with
the saleswoman upon her hard lot and lack ofpleasure, and in the rôle of a kindly, prosperous matron invites
her tocome to her own home for a good time. The girl is sometimes subjected totemptation through the men
and women in her own department, who tell herhow invitations to dinners and theatres may be procured. It is
notsurprising that so many of these young, inexperienced girls are eitherdeceived or yield to temptation in
spite of the efforts made to protectthem by the management and by the older women in the establishment.
The department store has brought together, as has never been done beforein history, a bewildering mass of
delicate and beautiful fabrics, jewelry and household decorations such as women covet, gatheredskilfully from
all parts of the world, and in the midst of this bulk ofdesirable possessions is placed an untrained girl with
carefulinstructions as to her conduct for making sales, but with no guidance inregard to herself. Such a girl
may be bitterly lonely, but she isexpected to smile affably all day long upon a throng of changingcustomers.
She may be without adequate clothing, although she stands inan emporium where it is piled about her, literally
as high as her head. She may be faint for want of food but she may not sit down lest sheassume "an attitude of
inertia and indifference, " which is against therules. She may have a great desire for pretty things, but she must
sellto other people at least twenty-five times the amount of her own salary, or she will not be retained. Because
she is of the first generation ofgirls which has stood alone in the midst of trade, she is clinging andtimid, and
yet the only person, man or woman, in this commercialatmosphere who speaks to her of the care and
protection which shecraves, is seeking to betray her. Because she is young and feminine, hermind secretly
dwells upon a future lover, upon a home, adorned with themost enticing of the household goods about her,
upon a child dressed inthe filmy fabrics she tenderly touches, and yet the only man whoapproaches her there
acting upon the knowledge of this inner life ofhers, does it with the direct intention of playing upon it in order
todespoil her. Is it surprising that the average human nature of theseyoung girls cannot, in many instances,
endure this strain? Of fifteenthousand women employed in the down-town department stores of Chicago, the
majority are Americans. We all know that the American girl has grownup in the belief that the world is hers
from which to choose, that thereis ordinarily no limit to her ambition or to her definition of success. She
realizes that she is well mannered and well dressed and does notappear unlike most of her customers. She sees
only one aspect of hercountrywomen who come shopping, and she may well believe that the chiefconcern of
life is fashionable clothing. Her interest and ambitionalmost inevitably become thoroughly worldly, and from
the very fact thatshe is employed down town, she obtains an exaggerated idea of the luxuryof the illicit life all
about her, which is barely concealed.
The fifth volume of the report of "Women and Child Wage Earners" in theUnited States gives the result of a
careful inquiry into "the relationof wages to the moral condition of department store women. " Inconnection
with this, the investigators secured "the personal historiesof one hundred immoral women, " of whom ten were
or had been employed ina department store. They found that while only one of the ten had beendirectly
induced to leave the store for a disreputable life, six of themsaid that they had found "it was easier to earn
money that way. " Thereport states that the average employee in a department store earnsabout seven dollars a
week, and that the average income of the onehundred immoral women covered by the personal histories,
ranged fromfifty dollars a week to one hundred dollars a week in exceptional cases. It is of these exceptional
cases that the department store girl hears, and the knowledge becomes part of the unreality and glittering life
thatis all about her.
Another class of young women which is especially exposed to thisalluring knowledge is the waitress in
down-town cafés and restaurants. Arecent investigation of girls in the segregated district of aneighboring city
places waiting in restaurants and hotels as highest onthe list of "previous occupations. " Many waitresses are
paid so littlethat they gratefully accept any fee which men may offer them. It is alsothe universal habit for
customers to enter into easy conversation whilebeing served. Some of them are lonely young men who have
fewopportunities to speak to women. The girl often quite innocently acceptsan invitation for an evening, spent
either in a theatre or dance hall, with no evil results, but this very lack of social convention exposesher to
danger. Even when the proprietor means to protect the girls, acertain amount of familiarity must be borne, lest
their resentmentshould diminish the patronage of the café. In certain restaurants, moreover, the waitresses
doubtless suffer because the patrons comparethem with the girls who ply their trade in disreputable saloons
underthe guise of serving drinks.
The following story would show that mere friendly propinquity mayconstitute a danger. Last summer an
honest, straightforward girl from asmall lake town in northern Michigan was working in a Chicago café,
sending every week more than half of her wages of seven dollars to hermother and little sister, ill with
tuberculosis, at home. The motherowned the little house in which she lived, but except for the vegetablesshe
raised in her own garden and an occasional payment for plain sewing, she and her younger daughter were
dependent upon the hard-working girlin Chicago. The girl's heart grew heavier week by week as the
mother'sletters reported that the sister was daily growing weaker. One hot dayin August she received a letter
from her mother telling her to come atonce if she "would see sister before she died. " At noon that day
whensickened by the hot air of the café, and when the clatter of dishes, thebuzz of conversation, the orders
shouted through the slide seemed but ahideous accompaniment to her tormented thoughts, she was
suddenlystartled by hearing the name of her native town, and realized that oneof her regular patrons was
saying to her that he meant to take a nightboat to M. At 8 o'clock and get out of this "infernal heat. "
Almostinvoluntarily she asked him if he would take her with him. Although thevery next moment she became
conscious what his consent implied, she didnot reveal her fright, but merely stipulated that if she went with
himhe must agree to buy her a return ticket. She reached home twelve hoursbefore her sister died, but when
she returned to Chicago a week laterburdened with the debt of an undertaker's bill, she realized that shehad
discovered a means of payment.
All girls who work down town are at a disadvantage as compared tofactory girls, who are much less open to
direct inducement and to thetemptations which come through sheer imitation. Factory girls also havethe
protection of working among plain people who frankly designate anirregular life, in harsh, old-fashioned
terms. If a factory girl catchessight of the vicious life at all, she sees its miserable victims in allthe
wretchedness and sordidness of their trade in the poorer parts ofthe city. As she passes the opening doors of a
disreputable saloon shemay see for an instant three or four listless girls urging liquor uponmen tired out with
the long day's work and already sodden with drink. Asshe hurries along the street on a rainy night she may
hear a sharp cryof pain from a sick-looking girl whose arm is being brutally wrenched bya rough man, and if
she stops for a moment she catches his mutteredthreats in response to the girl's pleading "that it is too bad a
nightfor street work. " She sees a passing policeman shrug his shoulders as hecrosses the street, and she
vaguely knows that the sick girl has putherself beyond the protection of the law, and that the rough man has
anunderstanding with the officer on the beat. She has been told thatcertain streets are "not respectable, " but a
furtive look down thelength of one of them reveals only forlorn and ill-looking houses, fromwhich all
suggestion of homely domesticity has long since gone; aslovenly woman with hollow eyes and a careworn
face holding up thelurching bulk of a drunken man is all she sees of its "denizens, "although she may have
known a neighbor's daughter who came home to dieof a mysterious disease said to be the result of a "fast life,
" andwhose disgraced mother "never again held up her head. "
Yet in spite of all this corrective knowledge, the increasing nervousenergy to which industrial processes daily
accommodate themselves, andthe speeding up constantly required of the operators, may at any momentso
register their results upon the nervous system of a factory girl asto overcome her powers of resistance. Many a
working girl at the end ofa day is so hysterical and overwrought that her mental balance isplainly disturbed.
Hundreds of working girls go directly to bed as soonas they have eaten their suppers. They are too tired to go
from home forrecreation, too tired to read and often too tired to sleep. A humaneforewoman recently said to
me as she glanced down the long room in whichhundreds of young women, many of them with their shoes
beside them, werestanding: "I hate to think of all the aching feet on this floor; thesegirls all have trouble with
their feet, some of them spend the entireevening bathing them in hot water. " But aching feet are no more
usualthan aching backs and aching heads. The study of industrial diseases hasonly this year been begun by the
federal authorities, and doubtless asmore is known of the nervous and mental effect of over-fatigue,
manymoral breakdowns will be traced to this source. It is already easy tomake the connection in definite
cases: "I was too tired to care, " "I wastoo tired to know what I was doing, " "I was dead tired and sick of itall,
" "I was dog tired and just went with him, " are phrases taken fromthe lips of reckless girls, who are
endeavoring to explain the situationin which they find themselves.
Only slowly are laws being enacted to limit the hours of working women, yet the able brief presented to the
United States supreme court on theconstitutionality of the Oregon ten-hour law for women, based its pleaupon
the results of overwork as affecting women's health, the gravemedical statement constantly broken into by a
portrayal of thedisastrous effects of over-fatigue upon character. It is as yetdifficult to distinguish between the
results of long hours and theresults of overstrain. Certainly the constant sense of haste is one ofthe most
nerve-racking and exhausting tests to which the human systemcan be subjected. Those girls in the sewing
industry whose mothersthread needles for them far into the night that they may sew without amoment's
interruption during the next day; those girls who inserteyelets into shoes, for which they are paid two cents a
case, each casecontaining twenty-four pairs of shoes, are striking victims of theover-speeding which is so
characteristic of our entire factory system.
Girls working in factories and laundries are also open to thepossibilities of accidents. The loss of only two
fingers upon the righthand, or a broken wrist, may disqualify an operator from continuing inthe only work in
which she is skilled and make her struggle forrespectability even more difficult. Varicose veins and broken
arches inthe feet are found in every occupation in which women are obliged tostand for hours, but at any
moment either one may develop beyond purelypainful symptoms into crippling incapacity. One such girl
recentlyreturning home after a long day's work deliberately sat down upon thefloor of a crowded street car,
explaining defiantly to the conductor andthe bewildered passengers that "her feet would not hold out
anotherminute. " A young woman who only last summer broke her hand in a manglewas found in a rescue
home in January, explaining her recent experienceby the phrase that she was "up against it when leaving the
hospital inOctober. "
In spite of many such heart-breaking instances the movement forsafeguarding machinery and securing
indemnity for industrial accidentsproceeds all too slowly. At a recent exhibition in Boston the knife of
aminiature guillotine fell every ten seconds to indicate the rate ofindustrial accidents in the United States.
Grisly as was the device, itshideousness might well have been increased had it been able todemonstrate the
connection between certain of these accidents and thecomplete moral disaster which overtook their victims.
Yet factory girls who are subjected to this overstrain and overtimeoften find their greatest discouragement in
the fact that after alltheir efforts they earn too little to support themselves. One girl saidthat she had first
yielded to temptation when she had become utterlydiscouraged because she had tried in vain for seven months
to saveenough money for a pair of shoes. She habitually spent two dollars aweek for her room, three dollars
for her board, and sixty cents a weekfor carfare, and she had found the forty cents remaining from her
weeklywage of six dollars inadequate to do more than re-sole her old shoestwice. When the shoes became too
worn to endure a third soling and shepossessed but ninety cents towards a new pair, she gave up her
struggle;to use her own contemptuous phrase, she "sold out for a pair of shoes. "
Usually the phrases are less graphic, but after all they contain thesame dreary meaning: "Couldn't make both
ends meet, " "I had always beenused to having nice things, " "Couldn't make enough money to live on, " "Igot
sick and ran behind, " "Needed more money, " "Impossible to feed andclothe myself, " "Out of work, hadn't
been able to save. " Of course agirl in such a strait does not go out deliberately to find illicitmethods of earning
money, she simply yields in a moment of utterweariness and discouragement to the temptations she has been
able towithstand up to that moment. The long hours, the lack of comforts, thelow pay, the absence of
recreation, the sense of "good times" all abouther which she cannot share, the conviction that she is rapidly
losinghealth and charm, rouse the molten forces within her. A swelling tide ofself-pity suddenly storms the
banks which have hitherto held her andfinally overcomes her instincts for decency and righteousness, as
wellas the habit of clean living, established by generations of herforebears.
The aphorism that "morals fluctuate with trade" was long consideredcynical, but it has been demonstrated in
Berlin, in London, in Japan, aswell as in several American cities, that there is a distinct increase inthe number
of registered prostitutes during periods of financialdepression and even during the dull season of leading local
industries. Out of my own experience I am ready to assert that very often all thatis necessary to effectively
help the girl who is on the edge ofwrong-doing is to lend her money for her board until she finds work,
provide the necessary clothing for which she is in such desperate need, persuade her relatives that she should
have more money for her ownexpenditures, or find her another place at higher wages. Upon suchsimple
economic needs does the tried virtue of a good girl sometimesdepend.
Here again the immigrant girl is at a disadvantage. The average wage oftwo hundred newly arrived girls of
various nationalities, Poles, Italians, Slovaks, Bohemians, Russians, Galatians, Croatians, Lithuanians,
Roumanians, Germans, and Swedes, who were interviewed bythe Immigrants' Protective League, was four
dollars and a half a weekfor the first position which they had been able to secure in Chicago. Itoften takes a
girl several weeks to find her first place. During thisperiod of looking for work the immigrant girl is subjected
to greatdangers. It is at such times that immigrants often exhibit symptoms ofthat type of disordered mind
which alienists pronounce "due to conflictthrough poor adaptation. " I have known several immigrant young
men aswell as girls who became deranged during the first year of life inAmerica. A young Russian who came
to Chicago in the hope of obtainingthe freedom and self-development denied him at home, after three
monthsof bitter disillusionment, with no work and insufficient food, was sentto the hospital for the insane. He
only recovered after a group of hisyoung countrymen devotedly went to see him each week with promises
ofwork, the companionship at last establishing a sense of unbrokenassociation. I also recall a Polish girl who
became utterly distraughtafter weeks of sleeplessness and anxiety because she could not repayfifty dollars
which she had borrowed from a countryman in Chicago forthe purpose of bringing her sister to America. Her
case was declaredhopeless, but when the creditor made reassuring visits to the patientshe began to mend and
now, five years later, is not only free from debt, but has brought over the rest of the family, whose united
earnings areslowly paying for a house and lot. Psychiatry is demonstrating theafter-effects of fear upon the
minds of children, but little has yetbeen done to show how far that fear of the future, arising from
economicinsecurity in the midst of new surroundings, has superinduced insanityamong newly arrived
immigrants. Such a state of nervous bewilderment andfright, added to that sense of expectation which youth
always carriesinto new surroundings, often makes it easy to exploit the virtue of animmigrant girl. It goes
without saying that she is almost alwaysexploited industrially. A Russian girl recently took a place in
aChicago clothing factory at twenty cents a day, without in the leastknowing that she was undercutting the
wages of even that ill-paidindustry. This girl rented a room for a dollar a week and all that shehad to eat was
given her by a friend in the same lodging house, whoshared her own scanty fare with the newcomer.
In the clothing industry trade unionism has already established aminimum wage limit for thousands of women
who are receiving theprotection and discipline of trade organization and responding to thetonic of self-help.
Low wages will doubtless in time be modified byMinimum Wage Boards representing the government's stake
in industry, such as have been in successful operation for many years in certainBritish colonies and are now
being instituted in England itself. As yetMassachusetts is the only state which has appointed a special
commissionto consider this establishment for America, although the IndustrialCommission of Wisconsin is
empowered to investigate wages and theireffect upon the standard of living.
Anyone who has lived among working people has been surprised at thedocility with which grown-up children
give all of their earnings totheir parents. This is, of course, especially true of the daughters. Thefifth volume of
the governmental report upon "Women and Child WageEarners in the United States, " quoted earlier, gives
eighty-four percent. As the proportion of working girls who turn in all of their wagesto the family fund. In
most cases this is done voluntarily andcheerfully, but in many instances it is as if the tradition of
woman'sdependence upon her family for support held long after the actual facthad changed, or as if the
tyranny established through generations whendaughters could be starved into submission to a father's will,
continuedeven after the rôles had changed, and the wages of the girl childsupported a broken and dissolute
father.
An over-restrained girl, from whom so much is exacted, will sometimesbegin to deceive her family by failing
to tell them when she has had araise in her wages. She will habitually keep the extra amount forherself, as she
will any overtime pay which she may receive. All suchmoney is invariably spent upon her own clothing,
which she, of course, cannot wear at home, but which gives her great satisfaction upon thestreets.
The girl of the crowded tenements has no room in which to receive herfriends or to read the books through
which she shares the lives ofassorted heroines, or, better still, dreams of them as of herself. Evenif the
living-room is not full of boarders or children or washing, it iscomfortable neither for receiving friends nor for
reading, and she findsupon the street her entire social field; the shop windows with theirdesirable garments
hastily clothe her heroines as they travel the oldroads of romance, the street cars rumbling noisily by suggest
adelectable somewhere far away, and the young men who pass offerpossibilities of the most delightful
acquaintance. It is not astonishingthat she insists upon clothing which conforms to the ideals of
thisall-absorbing street and that she will unhesitatingly deceive anuncomprehending family which does not
recognize its importance.
One such girl had for two years earned money for clothing by fillingregular appointments in a disreputable
saloon between the hours of sixand half-past seven in the evening. With this money earned almost dailyshe
bought the clothes of her heart's desire, keeping them with thesaloon-keeper's wife. She demurely returned to
her family for supper inher shabby working clothes and presented her mother with her unopenedpay envelope
every Saturday night. She began this life at the age offourteen after her Polish mother had beaten her because
she had"elbowed" the sleeves and "cut out" the neck of her ungainly calico gownin a vain attempt to make it
look "American. " Her mother, who had soconscientiously punished a daughter who was "too crazy for
clothes, "could never of course comprehend how dangerous a combination is the girlwith an unsatisfied love
for finery and the opportunities for illicitearning afforded on the street. Yet many sad cases may be traced to
suchlack of comprehension. Charles Booth states that in England a largeproportion of parents belonging to the
working and even lower middleclasses, are unacquainted with the nature of the lives led by their
owndaughters, a result doubtless of the early freedom of the streetaccorded city children. Too often the
mothers themselves are totallyignorant of covert dangers. A few days ago I held in my hand a patheticlittle
pile of letters written by a desperate young girl of fifteenbefore she attempted to commit suicide. These letters
were addressed toher lover, her girl friends, and to the head of the rescue home, butnone to her mother towards
whom she felt a bitter resentment "becauseshe did not warn me. " The poor mother after the death of her
husband hadgone to live with a married daughter, but as the son-in-law would not"take in two" she had told
the youngest daughter, who had already workedfor a year as an apprentice in a dressmaking establishment,
that shemust find a place to live with one of her girl friends. The poor childhad found this impossible, and
three days after the breaking up of herhome she had fallen a victim to a white slave trafficker, who hadtreated
her most cruelly and subjected her to unspeakable indignities. It was only when her "protector" left the city,
frightened by theunwonted activity of the police, due to a wave of reform, that she foundher way to the rescue
home, and in less than five months after the deathof her father she had purchased carbolic acid and
deliberately "courteddeath for the nameless child" and herself.
Another experience during which a girl faces a peculiar danger is whenshe has lost one "job" and is looking
for another. Naturally she losesher place in the slack season and pursues her search at the very momentwhen
positions are hardest to find, and her un-employment is thereforemost prolonged. Perhaps nothing in our social
order is so unorganizedand inchoate as our method, or rather lack of method, of placing youngpeople in
industry. This is obvious from the point of view of theirfirst positions when they leave school at the unstable
age of fourteen, or from the innumerable places they hold later, often as high as ten ayear, when they are
dismissed or change voluntarily through sheerrestlessness. Here again a girl's difficulty is often increased by
thelack of sympathy and understanding on the part of her parents. A girl isoften afraid to say that she has lost
her place and pretends to go towork each morning while she is looking for a new one; she postponestelling
them at home day by day, growing more frantic as the usualpay-day approaches. Some girls borrow from loan
sharks in order to takethe customary wages to their parents, others fall victims tounscrupulous employment
agencies in their eagerness to take the firstthing offered.
The majority of these girls answer the advertisements in the dailypapers as affording the cheapest and safest
way to secure a position. These out-of-work girls are found, sometimes as many as forty or fiftyat a time, in
the rest rooms of the department stores, waiting for thenew edition of the newspapers after they have been the
rounds of themorning advertisements and have found nothing.
Of course such a possible field as these rest rooms is not overlooked bythe procurer, who finds it very easy to
establish friendly relationsthrough the offer of the latest edition of the newspaper. Even penniesare precious to
a girl out of work and she is also easily grateful toanyone who expresses an interest in her plight and tells her
of aposition. Two representatives of the Juvenile Protective Association ofChicago, during a period of three
weeks, arrested and convictedseventeen men and three women who were plying their trades in the restrooms
of nine department stores. The managers were greatly concernedover this exposure and immediately arranged
both for more intelligentmatrons and greater vigilance. One of the less scrupulous storesvoluntarily gave up a
method of advertising carried on in the rest roomitself where a demonstrator from "the beauty counter" made
up the facesof the patrons of the rest room with the powder and paint procurable inher department below. The
out-of-work girls especially availedthemselves of this privilege and hoped that their search would be
easierwhen their pale, woe-begone faces were "made beautiful. " The poor girlscould not know that a face thus
made up enormously increased theirrisks.
A number of girls also came early in the morning as soon as the restrooms were open. They washed their faces
and arranged their hair andthen settled to sleep in the largest and easiest chairs the roomafforded. Some of
these were out-of-work girls also determined to takehome their wages at the end of the week, each pretending
to her motherthat she had spent the night with a girl friend and was working all dayas usual. How much of this
deception is due to parental tyranny and howmuch to a sense of responsibility for younger children or invalids,
itis impossible to estimate until the number of such recorded cases ismuch larger. Certain it is that the long
habit of obedience, as well asthe feeling of family obligation established from childhood, is oftenutilized by
the white slave trafficker.
Difficult as is the position of the girl out of work when her family isexigent and uncomprehending, she has
incomparably more protection thanthe girl who is living in the city without home ties. Such girls formsixteen
per cent. Of the working women of Chicago. With absolutely everypenny of their meagre wages consumed in
their inadequate living, theyare totally unable to save money. That loneliness and detachment whichthe city
tends to breed in its inhabitants is easily intensified in sucha girl into isolation and a desolating feeling of
belonging nowhere. Allyouth resents the sense of the enormity of the universe in relation tothe insignificance
of the individual life, and youth, with that intenseself-consciousness which makes each young person the very
centre of allemotional experience, broods over this as no older person can possiblydo. At such moments a
black oppression, the instinctive fear ofsolitude, will send a lonely girl restlessly to walk the streets evenwhen
she is "too tired to stand, " and when her desire for companionshipin itself constitutes a grave danger. Such a
girl living in a rentedroom is usually without any place in which to properly receive callers. An investigation
was recently made in Kansas City of 411 lodging-housesin which young girls were living; less than 30 per
cent. Were found witha parlor in which guests might be received. Many girls quite innocentlypermit young
men to call upon them in their bedrooms, pitifullydisguised as "sitting-rooms, " but the danger is obvious, and
thestandards of the girl gradually become lowered.
Certainly during the trying times when a girl is out of work she shouldhave much more intelligent help than is
at present extended to her; sheshould be able to avail herself of the state employment agencies muchmore than
is now possible, and the work of the newly establishedvocational bureaus should be enormously extended.
When once we are in earnest about the abolition of the social evil, society will find that it must study industry
from the point of view ofthe producer in a sense which has never been done before. Such a studywith
reference to industrial legislation will ally itself on one handwith the trades-union movement, which insists
upon a living wage andshorter hours for the workers, and also upon an opportunity forself-direction, and on
the other hand with the efficiency movement, which would refrain from over-fatiguing an operator as it would
fromover-speeding a machine. In addition to legislative enactment and thehistoric trade-union effort, the
feebler and newer movement on the partof the employers is being reinforced by the welfare secretary, who
isnot only devising recreational and educational plans, but is placingbefore the employer much disturbing
information upon the cost of livingin relation to the pitiful wages of working girls. Certainly employersare
growing ashamed to use the worn-out, hypocritical pretence ofemploying only the girl "protected by home
influences" as a device forreducing wages. Help may also come from the consumers, for an increasingnumber
of them, with compunctions in regard to tempted young employees, are not only unwilling to purchase from
the employer who underpays hisgirls and thus to share his guilt, but are striving in divers ways tomodify
existing conditions.
As working women enter fresh fields of labor which ever open up anew asthe old fields are submerged behind
them, society must endeavor tospeedily protect them by an amelioration of the economic conditionswhich are
now so unnecessarily harsh and dangerous to health and morals. The world-wide movement for establishing
governmental control ofindustrial conditions is especially concerned for working women. Fourteen of the
European countries prohibit all night work for women andalmost every civilized country in the world is
considering the number ofhours and the character of work in which women may be permitted tosafely engage.
Although amelioration comes about so slowly that many young girls aresacrificed each year under conditions
which could so easily andreasonably be changed, nevertheless it is apparently better to overcomethe dangers
in this new and freer life, which modern industry has openedto women, than it is to attempt to retreat into the
domestic industry ofthe past; for all statistics of prostitution give the largest number ofrecruits for this life as
coming from domestic service and the secondlargest number from girls who live at home with no definite
occupationwhatever. Therefore, although in the economic aspect of the social evilmore than in any other, do
we find ground for despair, at the same timewe discern, as nowhere else, the young girl's stubborn power
ofresistance. Nevertheless, the most superficial survey of hersurroundings shows the necessity for
ameliorating, as rapidly aspossible, the harsh economic conditions which now environ her.
That steadily increasing function of the state by which it seeks toprotect its workers from their own weakness
and degradation, and insiststhat the livelihood of the manual laborer shall not be beaten down belowthe level
of efficient citizenship, assumes new forms almost daily. Fromthe human as well as the economic standpoint
there is an obligationresting upon the state to discover how many victims of the white slavetraffic are the
result of social neglect, remedial incapacity, and thelack of industrial safeguards, and how far discontinuous
employment andnon-employment are factors in the breeding of discouragement anddespair.
Is it because our modern industrialism is so new that we have been slowto connect it with the poverty and vice
all about us? The socialiststalk constantly of the relation of economic law to destitution and pointout the
connection between industrial maladjustment and individualwrongdoing, but certainly the study of social
conditions, the obligationto eradicate vice, cannot belong to one political party or to oneeconomic school. It
must be recognized as a solemn obligation ofexisting governments, and society must realize that economic
conditionscan only be made more righteous and more human by the unceasing devotionof generations of men.