eeks ahead, furnishes a splendid chance for the witnesses to
disappear, and the evidence quite often falls through. This bill also
provides a suitable punishment which falls not on the occupants of the
house but on the owner of the property, thereby striking at the profit.
If prostitution is proven against a house, that house is closed for one
year, the owner losing the rent for that time. This puts the
responsibility on property owners, and makes people careful as to their
tenants. Every owner forthwith becomes a morality officer. This is
the greatest and most effective blow ever struck at white slavery, for
it strikes directly at the money side of it. It is a fact worth
recalling that just before women were permitted to vote in California,
this bill was defeated overwhelmingly, but the first time it was
submitted after women were enfranchised it passed easily, although
there was not one woman in the house of representatives; the men
members had a different attitude toward moral matters when they
remembered that they had women constituents as well as men.

When Christian women ask to vote, it is in the hope that they may be
able with their ballots to protect the weak and innocent, and make the
world a safer place for the young feet. As it is now, weakness and
innocence are punished more than wickedness.

One of our social workers, going on her rounds, one day met a young
Scotch girl, aged nineteen, who belonged to that class of people whom
we in our superior way call "fallen women." She was a beautiful girl,
with curling auburn hair and deep violet eyes. The visitor asked her
about herself, but the girl was not disposed to talk. Finally the
visitor asked her if she might pray with her. The girl politely
refused.

"Lady," she said wearily, "what is the use of praying--there is no God.
I know that you think there is a God, Lady," she went on, with a voice
of settled sadness. "I did, too--once--but I know now that there is no
God anywhere."

Then she told her story. When her mother died in Scotland, she came
out to Canada to live with her brother who had a position in a bank.
She traveled in the care of a Scotch family to her destination. At the
station, an elderly gentlemen in a clerical coat met her and told her
that her brother was ill, but had sent him to meet her. She went with
him unsuspectingly. That was six years ago. She was then thirteen
years old.

"So you see, Lady," she said, "I know the