ly depraved. They are
misled by crafty women and villainous young men with smooth manners and
false tongues, on promises of light work, big pay, fine clothes, jewels
and great happiness. The route to the abyss is commonly by way of dance
halls and amusement resorts of all kinds having drinking attachments.
The girl who drinks puts herself at the mercy of the young man in whose
company she may be. The girl who dances is in very great peril, and she
puts young men with whom she dances under greater temptation than
herself.

Soon after the fatal plunge a girl becomes immodest, indecent, lawless,
homeless, a victim and distributer of vile diseases. When the plain
people know the horrors of the white slaves and the black plagues, the
sane plain people will demand the destruction of the white slave market
and the extirpation of the black plagues.

The committee of seven physicians, appointed by the Medical Society of
the County of New York, after elaborate investigation reported that
225,000 persons were treated in New York City in the year 1900 for the
diseases caused by vice. The majority of these were immoral men and
immoral women, but a large and deeply wronged minority consisted of
virtuous wives and children of all ages.

HALF A MILLION BLIND.

Any medical professor can tell any inquirer that there are at least ten
or twelve thousand blind in the United States today, whose blindness
dates from a few days after birth and was caused by disease which their
mothers contracted innocently from their guilty husbands--who in most
cases supposed themselves cured before marriage.

Dr. Neisser, of Berlin, who in 1879 isolated the germ that causes
ophthalmia of the new-born, a vice germ, after careful investigation
throughout Germany concludes from the statistics that there are thirty
thousand blind in Germany from this cause. If the same proportion would
hold throughout Europe, there are two hundred thousand blind in Europe
from this cause--more than the three armies engaged at Waterloo.

But to be very conservative, let us cut the figures in two, and we have
still one hundred thousand sightless persons, blind from babyhood, in
Europe alone. Including America, and adding Asia, Africa and the islands
of the South Seas, we shall find in the world half a million persons
blind or one million sightless eyes, from this pestilent germ--at which
many young men laugh as no worse than a cold and which is on sale all
the time in eve