a department store--as I did
have for a time--and I've sent them a little money from time to time; I
don't care what happens, so long as they don't know the truth about me."
In a word, the one concern of nearly all those examined who have homes
in this country was that their parents--and in particular their
mothers--might discover, through the prosecution of the "white slavers,"
that they were leading lives of shame instead of working at the
honorable callings which they had left their homes and come to the city
to pursue. There are, to put it mildly, hundreds--yes, thousands--of
trusting mothers in the smaller cities, the towns, villages and farming
communities of the United States who believe that their daughters are
"getting on fine" in the city, and too busy to come home for a visit or
"to write much," while the fact is that these daughters have been swept
into the gulf of white slavery--the worst doom that can befall a
woman. The mother who has allowed her girl to go to the big city and
work should find out what kind of life that girl is living and find out
from some other source than the girl herself. No matter how good and
fine a girl she has been at home and how complete the confidence she has
always inspired, find out how she is living, what kind of associations
she is keeping. Take nothing for granted. You owe it to yourself and to
her and it is not disloyalty to go beyond her own words for evidence
that the wolves of the city have not dragged her from safe paths. It is,
instead, the highest form of loyalty to her.

[Illustration: AT THE LEFT WHITE SLAVE CLEARING HOUSE, AT THE RIGHT
GOSPEL MEETING

That the white slave organization is strong and wealthy is attested by
the large stone and brick building on the left. It is the respectable
appearance of the outside of this place that disarms suspicion until the
girls are inside.]

[Illustration: SORDID END OF THE LIFE OF SHAME

A few years is all that human nature can stand of the life in a resort.
Then they are cast out a mental, moral and physical wreck to live to the
end in some ramshackle building, shunned by everyone.]

Again, there is, in another particular, a remarkable and impressive
sameness in the stories related by these wretched girls. In the
narratives of nearly all of them is a passage describing how some man of
their acquaintance had offered to "help" them to a good position in the
city, to "look after" them, and to "take an interest" in