ct to ungentlemanly, if not insulting,
conduct. There are in every community a number of men who are decent only
under restraint, and the economic position of wage-earning girls weakens
that restraint.

Moreover, the phrase "the weaker sex" has lost some of its significance.
Many occupations, such as clerking, stenographing, laundering, and certain
kinds of unskilled factory work are almost entirely taken over by women,
who labor throughout the same working-day as men, and usually at a lesser
wage than men would receive for the same kind of work. Under these
conditions, to talk of the physical weakness of women is to accuse our
civilization of cruelty.

Around wages most of the discussion has centered concerning the economic
aspect of vice. The investigations conducted throughout the country have
revealed a great variety of opinion concerning the relation between low
wages and immorality. There has been much confusion of thought on the
question. It is true, on the one hand, that injustice is done to
wage-earning girls and women of the country when the report is circulated
that the difference between morality and immorality is only one of dollars
and cents. On the other hand, to deny that low wages paid to working-girls
has any bearing on the question of vice is evidence of failure to grasp
the moral problem involved. Morality, to be sure, is always expressed in
the overcoming of difficulties. Yet we can hold a person blameworthy only
if in the full possession of his or her faculties. A poorly nourished,
fatigued girl has no such self-possession. If she does not earn enough on
which to live, and "goes wrong," her inadequate wage is a factor in her
wrong-doing, and the one who pays it to her cannot be rid of his share of
the responsibility. "Sin is misery, misery is poverty. The antidote for
poverty is income,"[7] says Professor Simon N. Patten, who is doing a vast
deal toward bringing economics and morals on speaking terms with each
other.

Vice investigations in Chicago, Minneapolis, Portland, Oregon,
Philadelphia, and elsewhere snow that there are many economic factors
besides wages involved as causes of vice. Some of these other factors are
housing, hours of work morally dangerous employments, associations at
work, and fatigue. The wage, however, is more important than all of these,
for the wage largely governs living conditions, associations and
recreation. The wage often makes the difference between life as mere