chamber of horrors will be opened to the public
gaze. But, thank God, good will follow, as is always the case when the
light is turned on. Already laws have been presented before a number of
state legislatures looking to the prosecution of those guilty of this
inhuman traffic in native-born girls, and it will not be long before
every state in the Union will have laws under which they can prosecute
any man or woman guilty of this crime.

One of the great troubles in fighting this evil is the prejudice
against fallen girls and the fact that because a woman is fallen seems
to be just cause to convict her of every other crime in the decalogue,
thus removing her from the pale of helpful sympathy which is extended to
almost every other class of unfortunate beings. Even convicted murderers
and kidnapers are treated with more intelligent sympathy. Every
statement which she makes is at once considered to be untrue. So far has
this prejudice gone that in the state of Missouri, in a decision by its
supreme court, made some years ago, it was declared that a woman of
immoral life was debarred from giving testimony in the courts of that
state, as the fact of her immorality prevented her from being a credible
witness. It declared at the same time that immorality did not in the
same way unfit or debar a man. The difficulty of convicting a person
under trial for such a crime as this is largely increased because of
this attitude of the public mind. The evidence must be so overwhelming
against the person that all of the quibbles and questions and flaws
which is possible for the human mind to make, are answerable, and even
then many will feel the guilty person has been unjustly punished, and
that if the girl had really wanted to make her escape from her captors
she could have done so.

The prosecuting of any other character of cases where the sex question
does not enter is very much easier. Take the two last cases of
kidnaping, which have interested the entire public and press of the
country, as an example of what I mean. In the well-known Philadelphia
case of 1908, in which an unusually bright boy of ten years was the
victim, it was found that the kidnaper, a man, had taken the boy with
him to lunch at several restaurants, had left him alone for hours in a
vacant house, from the window of which he might at any moment have
called to a passer-by and told him of his sad plight; had even sat
several hours with him in the crowded Broad Street