his great
social problem with our naked hands.

The trade in women is domestic and foreign, local and international. The
Honorable Edwin W. Sims, United States District Attorney at Chicago, and
Harry A. Parkin, his Assistant, have been waging valiant warfare against
the foreign and international trade during the past year. Articles in
leading magazines which were written by them have dealt chiefly with
that phase of the white slave trade. They have explained, also, the debt
system as a means of keeping the girls in resorts after they are
procured and sold. It is with the domestic and local trade I have been
mostly concerned. In Chicago alone there are more than 5,000 women
leading a life of shame, and statistics show that the average life of a
fallen woman is five years. One thousand persons must, therefore, be
recruited every year in Chicago alone. How many voluntarily go into this
life? It is estimated about forty per cent! This shows us that sixty per
cent are led into it by some scheme or entrapped and sold, and at least
two-thirds of this number are from our own country, being inveigled from
farms, towns and cities. One may inquire, "How is it that girls are
procured so easily without the public being aware of what is going on?"

The answer is that love and ambition are the baits which the procurers
flaunt in the faces of their proposed victims. Often it happens that
promises of positions on the stage, in stores, and various occupations
alluring to young girls cause many to fall, captives in the great net
set for them.

During the past two years there have been more than two hundred and
fifty white slave cases tried in Chicago under the Illinois law,
resulting in scores of confessions made by the procurers, and statements
by hundreds of the girls who were procured as to the methods employed
by the traders.

To show how easily it is done, let me tell you a story of a girl from
Elgin, Illinois, who was caught by the love scheme. One day this pretty
little German lass was in a Chicago store buying sheet music when a
well-dressed, handsome, young man, apparently looking at music, too,
asked her the names of some of the latest popular songs, as he wanted to
buy them. At first she turned away and did not heed him, but he was not
to be repulsed, and pressing his attentions further upon her, he finally
engaged her in conversation. A luncheon at a nearby restaurant, in which
she joined him, was the result, and there he