a silence.] Mr. Grimes, I had the good fortune to be
brought up in a beautiful and luxurious home; but not long ago I began
to go down into the slums and see the homes of the people. I saw sights
that made me sick with horror.

GRIMES. No doubt, ma'am.

LAURA. I found the people in the grip of a predatory organization that
had bound them hand and foot, and was devouring them alive.

GRIMES. You've been listening to tales, ma'am. We do a lot for the
people.

LAURA. You treat them to free coal and free picnics and free beer, and
so you get their votes; and then you sell them out to capitalists like
my father.

GRIMES. Humph!

LAURA. You sell them out to any one, high or low, who will pay for the
privilege of exploiting them. You sell them to the rum-dealer and the
dive-keeper and the gambler. You sell them to the white-slave trader.

GRIMES. There's no such person, Miss Hegan.

LAURA. You offer an insult to my intelligence, Mr. Grimes. I have met
with him and his work. There was a girl of the slums... her name was
Annie Rogers. She was a decent girl; and she was lured into a dive and
drugged and shut up in a brothel, a prisoner. She escaped to the street,
pursued, and a friend of mine saved her. And, high and low, among the
authorities of this city, we sought for justice for that girl, and there
was no justice to be had. Yesterday afternoon I learned that she cut her
own throat.

GRIMES. I see.

LAURA. And that happened, Mr. Grimes! It happened in the City of New
York! I saw it with my own eyes!

GRIMES. Such things have been, ma'am.

LAURA. And you permit them.

GRIMES. I?

LAURA. You permit them

GRIMES. I can't attempt to discuss prostitution with a lady. Such things
existed long before I was born.

LAURA. You could use your power to drive the traffic from the city.

GRIMES. Yes, ma'am; I suppose I could. But if I'd been that sort of a
man, do you think I'd ever had the power?

LAURA. How neatly parried! What sort of a man are you, anyway?

GRIMES. [Looks at hey fixedly.] I'll tell you the sort of man I am,
ma'am. [A pause.] I wasn't brought up in a beautiful, luxurious home.
I was brought up with five brothers, in two rooms on the top floor of a
rear tenement on Avenue B; I was a little street "mick," and then I was
a prize "scrapper," and the leader of a gang. When a policeman chased
me upstairs, my mother stood at the head and fought him off with a
rolling-pin. That was the way we stood by