ows, I have conversed
personally and I have not the slightest doubt that her story is true. It
surprised me to hear her say that she was and is a member of a Baptist
church, with an implication in her words and manner that members of
other churches are not quite so safe as members of her denomination. Her
story was published January 28, 1909. She was brought to justice by the
Chicago Law and Order League.

BY PRISONER NUMBER 503.

I am writing this message to the readers of The National Prohibitionist
and to the world from behind the bars in that gloomy pile of buildings
alongside the Drainage Canal, where Chicago every year spends some
millions of dollars to protect herself from the criminal classes which
she constantly creates and breeds.

It may shock the respectable people who read these lines to find that
their author is an imprisoned criminal. I lay emphasis on the word
"imprisoned," because my not very long experience with the world has
taught me that violation of the law is not particularly offensive to the
mass of the world's inhabitants so long as it is not attended with the
"pains and penalties" that are prescribed for the law's violation.

I may as well shock my readers still more at once by the frank
confession that I am in prison convicted of being what is commonly known
as a "white slave trader" and I was justly convicted and was guilty of
the offense charged.

And having made this confession, let me introduce myself.

Behold me, a very common sort of a woman, twenty nine years old, an
ex-schoolteacher, born and piously brought up in the good state of
Arkansas, fairly well educated, and, until within the last few months,
almost wholly inexperienced in the ways of the wicked world.

Six years ago, in my Arkansas home, I married a man whom I believed to
be in every way worthy of the respect and love that I gave him and,
bidding goodby to my mother and my childhood friends in the old home,
went with him to St. Louis.

I wonder if the good men who let the saloons flourish in all our cities
and excuse themselves with the assertion that if a man will drink it is
his own business, and if he makes a fool of himself, he is the only one
that suffers--I wonder if those men really know what they are doing for
thousands of women who do not drink but who SUFFER?

Years ago, somewhere I read an article about the saloons written by some
great minister or bishop, whose name I have forgotten, and, indeed, I
ha