nditions, try to salve their conscience by saying that a fallen girl
cannot be helped--nothing can be done for them. And so it
goes--anything to remove the responsibility of bettering conditions from
their shoulders.

But today we are facing a very different condition from that which has
existed ever since I have been interested in rescue work, and for
centuries before. The International Agreement for the Abolition of the
White Slave Traffic between the civilized nations of the world, which
was entered into some ten years ago by all of the civilized nations
except the United States, and which was subscribed to by the United
States last June, has put an entirely different aspect upon the whole
subject. The abolition of the white slave traffic is now no longer to be
considered as the feverish dream of enthusiastic reformers, but its
effacement has become a part of a great international agreement between
nations of the world, and takes its place along with other great
international questions which are adjudicated by the same process.

The recent splendid immigration laws which have been passed by the
United States, protecting immigrant girls until they have been in this
country three years, has been the law under which most of the cases of
white slave traffic have been prosecuted. The records of the Federal
courts, wherever the authorities have taken cognizance, are full of the
records of cases which have been brought to trial. Many of the guilty
parties have been prosecuted and are now behind prison bars. Others are
awaiting trial, and many others have escaped because of the difficulty
of getting people to testify against them. One of the most dangerous
leaders in the traffic has recently forfeited handsome holdings of real
estate in Chicago, which she had put up for her bond, and escaped to
France. Although fleeing from the United States into France, which is
also one of the countries co-operating in the abolition of the white
slave traffic, her passion for the business was so great that, when
recently arrested in France, under a similar charge, she was found to
have several young women from America in her clutches.

But as this law protects only immigrant girls, all the cases brought
have been in the interest of these foreign girls. Thus far no one has
undertaken to prosecute the offenders against American-born girls. When
the curtain is drawn back upon the iniquitous system in which they have
been the victims, a new