advantages from the fact that, in that case the
parents would themselves be unfamiliar with the usages and pitfalls of
metropolitan life, and would not be able to protect their daughters as
carefully as if they had spent their own lives in the city.
One thing should be made very clear to the girl who comes up to the
city, and that is that the ordinary ice cream parlor is very likely to
be a spider's web for her entanglement. This is perhaps especially true
of those ice cream saloons and fruit stores kept by foreigners. Scores
of cases are on record where young girls have taken their first step
towards "white slavery" in places of this character. And it is hardly
too much to say that a week does not pass in Chicago without the
publication in some daily paper of the details of a police court case in
which the ice cream parlor of this type is the scene of a regrettable
tragedy. The only safe rule is to keep away from places of this kind,
whether in a big city like Chicago or in a large country town. I believe
that there are good grounds for the suspicion that the ice cream parlor,
kept by the foreigner in the large country town, is often a recruiting
station, and a feeder for the "white slave" traffic. It is certain that
this is the case in the big city, and many evidences point to the
conclusion that there is a kind of free-masonry among these foreign
proprietors of refreshment parlors which would make it entirely natural
and convenient for the proprietor of a city establishment of this kind,
who is entangled in the "white slave" trade, to establish relations with
a man in the same business and of the same nationality in the country
town. I do not mean to intimate by this that all the ice cream and fruit
"saloons" having foreign-born proprietors are connected with the "white
slave" traffic--but some of them are, and this fact is sufficient to
cause all careful and thoughtful parents of young girls to see that they
do not frequent these places.
In this article it is of course impossible to more than hint at the
protective measures which conscientious parents of girls should employ
in order to make the way safe for their daughters. There can be no doubt
that Judge Lindsay of Denver, Judge Mack of Chicago, and Mr. Edward W.
Bok of the Ladies' Home Journal, are right in insisting upon greater
frankness between parents and children and that every child should have
a sex education at home instead of being compelled to pick it
|