THE investigations of the white slave traffic that are going on in so many different parts of the country are eliciting considerable discussion as to the cause of the downfall of so many girls. Low wages in department stores and other lines of business is given as one of the great causes, and much is said to compel these employers to pay better wages. No doubt can enter the intelligent mind in regard to some of the large employers of women paying altogether too low wages. For instance, a big firm in Chicago, which employs 4,732 women, and which had a gain of $7,000,000 last year, and which has $12,000,000 in its reserve fund, paid its women an average of only $9.20 a week, while many of its girls and women got only $5.00 and $5.50.
Clinedinst Photo, Washington, D. C.
New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, Washington, D. C. A half dozen or more presidents have worshiped in this church, and it was expected that both Mr. Wilson and Mr. Marshall would attend it, since they are Presbyterians. But they chose instead to go separately to two of the smaller churches.
The girl who has to work for such small wages is almost invariably unprotected by a strong brother or father, and that leaves her open to the wiles of the designing men and women who are constantly looking for girls for immoral purposes.
Some of the women from this underworld have written to the investigating committee in Chicago, while others have testified in person, telling them of the way in which girls in the stores of the great cities are constantly besieged by men. One of these said:
"Girls don't go wrong because they are hungry or because they need clothes. They go wrong because they are tempted by lies and overpowered by the evil in men. They listen to the pretty things that men tell them, and they fail because they think they can trust themselves and trust the tempters."
Another one testifies:
"I was a good girl and I worked in a store. I didn't get much money, but that didn't matter. I lived on $8.00 a week, and would be living like that now—but I met men. They seemed to consider me their prey. And all the time it was fight, fight. They said they wanted to be nice to me, and to take me to the theater and treat me fair, and give me a chance to enjoy life.
"I didn't know men were bad—all bad—where a girl is concerned. I thought only women were bad. I thought all a girl had to do to remain good was to be truthful with herself. God pity women who think that, and who keep their trust in men until it is too late! Every day it was some one else—always smiling at me—always trying to give me a 'fair chance' to be happy. In the street they followed me. These I could avoid—but the 'friends' who hung around! That is the big, big secret of the thing that makes a good girl bad. If they had only left me be, only let me live as I wanted to, I wouldn't have had to slink into the room when your commission was trying to solve things, and wouldn't have had to sit in a corner with my veil down, afraid to look good women in the face."
Copyright by Paul Thompson, N. Y.
These expressions from those unfortunate women give something of an idea of the determination with which men work to accomplish the ruin of girls. It is estimated that 60,000 girls are required each year to recruit the ranks of the prostitutes that are broken down and who go into untimely and very frequently into unknown graves. Leading men and women are raising the note of warning that the vices of Sodom are an impending peril, which is international, and which threatens the extinction of our race.
There are those who will tell us that these conditions have always existed. There is no denial of the truth of that statement; and yet at the same time there is no denying the fact that conditions are getting worse and worse each year. And the worst feature of it all is that such things are practised in the so-called Christian nations of the world. The Author of Christianity proclaims in His word that He is "of purer eyes than to behold evil, and that canst not look on perverseness." We are a long way from being up to the standard called for by the term "Christian nation" so long as we do not have enough moral sentiment to sweep from the earth the awful traffic in girls that is in every part of this land.
The greater part of the sentiment of the country is either in favor of the white slave evil or else is indifferent to it, otherwise the thing could not exist for a moment. It is hard to believe such a thing, but the facts will not warrant any other conclusion. We have the army of men and women who11are engaged in the evil traffic for the gain they get out of it; we have another army of men and women who have properties they rent at high rates to those who are engaged in this traffic in sin; we have another army of officials that get immense sums of bribe money to pay them for protecting prostitution instead of driving it away as is the sworn duty of the officer of the law; and in addition to all these who are interested in the curse of Sodom from a money standpoint, we have the great army of those who are wholly indifferent to the subject. And while we have these conditions, the warnings and entreaties of the comparatively few who are aroused to the danger make but little impression on those invasions of vice that are ruining so many thousands of our young girls, to say nothing of our boys, each year.
While we have such conditions as this, we should be ashamed to call ourselves a Christian nation. There are many thousands of Christian men and women in the nation, it is true; and because of these, conditions are a great deal better than they otherwise would be. But the preponderating numbers of the nation come far short of the ideals and standard of righteousness that belong to the righteous Christ.
