n mother would not approve
of this plan, which she called "the American way of getting married,"
the girl had risen one morning even earlier than factory work
necessitated and had taken the first train to Chicago. The young man met
her at the station, took her to a saloon where he introduced her to a
friend, an older woman, who, he said, would take good care of her. After
the young man disappeared, ostensibly for the marriage license, the
woman professed to be much shocked that the little bride had brought no
luggage, and persuaded her that she must work a few weeks in order to
earn money for her trousseau, and that she, an older woman who knew the
city, would find a boarding-house and a place in a factory for her. She
further induced her to write postal cards to six of her girl friends in
Milwaukee, telling them of the kind lady in Chicago, of the good chances
for work, and urging them to come down to the address which she sent.
The woman told the unsuspecting girl that, first of all, a newcomer must
register her place of residence with the police, as that was the law in
Chicago. It was, of course, when the woman took her to the police
station that the situation was disclosed. It needed but little
investigation to make clear that the girl had narrowly escaped a
well-organized plot and that the young man to whom she was engaged was
an agent for a disreputable house. Mr. Clifford Roe took up the case
with vigor, and although all efforts failed to find the young man, the
woman who was his accomplice was fined one hundred and fifty dollars and
costs.

The one impression which the trial left upon our minds was that all the
men concerned in the prosecution felt a keen sense of outrage against
the method employed to secure the girl, but took for granted that the
life she was about to lead was in the established order of things, if
she had chosen it voluntarily. In other words, if the efforts of the
agent had gone far enough to involve her moral nature, the girl, who
although unsophisticated, was twenty-one years old, could have remained,
quite unchallenged, in the hideous life. The woman who was prosecuted
was well known to the police and was fined, not for her daily
occupation, but because she had become involved in interstate white
slave traffic. One touch of nature redeemed the trial, for the girl
suffered much more from the sense that she had been deserted by her
lover than from horror over the fate she had escaped, and s