cialist exaggerates the effect of
bad wage conditions, and the Woman's Auxiliary Department of the police
exaggerate the influence of home conditions. Again, personal testimony is
unreliable, because, on the one hand, victims of the social evil are
liable to blame external conditions; and, on the other hand, well-fed,
well-housed investigators often underestimate the bad moral effect of poor
nourishment and fatigue.

Of this much we may be certain: low wages poor living, which involves
poor housing, poor food, no savings, and either no recreation or
dependence on others for it. In the federal report on living conditions of
women in stores and factories, it is estimated that in the seven cities
where the investigation took place approximately 65,000 women are
adrift.[20] Since the majority of these are receiving less than the
minimum cost of a decent living, they are "perilously defenseless young
women."

Another federal report,[21] bearing directly on the relation between
conditions of work and vice, concludes that whereas few girls "go wrong"
on account of poverty, the misstep once taken, poverty and want are
powerful deterrents to reform. A fourfold classification is made of
immoral women, as follows: (1) Unmarried mothers; (2) girls who leave and
regain the path of virtue, having their fling for the sake of good times;
(3) occasional prostitutes, who enter the career as a business for a
while; (4) professional prostitutes. Mention should be here made of this
report, because its total effect is to minimize economic causes of
prostitution, placing the responsibility elsewhere than on industrial
conditions. It is to be noted, however, that it does emphasize the
indirect effects of poverty, and does speak of the moral danger lurking in
certain occupations, and of the bad effects of the lack of industrial
education.

More definite responsibility for vice is ascribed to low wages in the
reports of vice commissions. The Chicago _Report_ says that of one group
of 119 immoral women, 18 came from department stores, and 38 said that
they had taken up the career for the need of money. The Portland _Report_
presents 22 women as "Cases in which Low Wage and Vice are closely
associated."[22] The _Report_ continues:--

In presenting the foregoing table and statements from girls, this
commission does not take the position that the low wages of
self-supporting girls is the sole contributing cause of their
delinque