nine-tenths of the
parents of these thousands of girls who are every year snatched from
lives of decency and comparative peace and dragged under the slime of an
existence in the "white slave world" have no idea that there is really a
trade in the ruin of girls as much as there is a trade in cattle or
sheep or other products of the farm. If these parents had known the real
conditions, had believed that there is actually a syndicate which does
as regular, as steady and persistent a "business" in the ruination of
girls as the great packing houses do in the sale of meats, it is wholly
probable that their daughters would not now be in dens of vice and
almost utterly without hope of release excepting by the hand of death.

Is not this, then, reason enough for a little plain speech to parents?

The purpose of all our laws and statutes against crime is the
suppression of crime. The protection of the people, of the home, of the
individual is the purpose which inspires the honest and conscientious
prosecutor. This is what the law is for, and if this result of
protection to individuals and homes can be made more effective and more
general by a statement such as this, then I am willing to make it for
the public good. And the most direct and unadorned statement of facts
will, I think, carry its own conviction and make everything like
"preaching" or denunciation superfluous.

The evidence obtained from questioning some 250 girls taken in federal
raids on Chicago houses of ill repute leads me to believe that not fewer
than fifteen thousand girls have been imported into this country in the
last year as white slaves. Of course this is only a guess--an
approximate--it could be nothing else--but my own personal belief is
that it is a conservative guess and well within the facts as to numbers.
Then please remember that girls imported are certainly but a mere
fraction of the number recruited for the army of prostitution from home
fields, from the cities, the towns, the villages of our own country.
There is no possible escape from this conclusion.

Another significant fact brought out by the examination of these girls
is that practically every one who admitted having parents living begged
that her real name be withheld from the public because of the sorrow and
shame it would bring to her parents. One said: "My mother thinks I am
studying in a stenographic school"; another stated, "My parents in the
country think I have a good position in