ken by the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics, because it never
carried the investigation any farther. It never tried to find out _why_
so many girls left their homes to enter evil lives. It never tried to
find out _why_ housework was a trade dangerous to morals.

Fortunately it did occur to the women's organizations to examine the
facts a little more carefully. In this article I am going to take you
over some of the ground they have covered and show you where their
investigations have led them.

South Chicago is a fairly good place to begin. Its ugliness and
forlornness can be matched in the factory section of almost any large
city. South Chicago is dominated by its steel mills,--enormous drab
structures, whose every crevice leaks quivering heat and whose towering
chimneys belch forth unceasingly a pall of ashes and black smoke. The
steel workers and their families live as a rule in two and three family
houses, built of wood, generally unpainted, and always dismally
utilitarian as to architectural details.

In South Chicago, four years ago, there was not such a thing as a park,
or a playground, or a recreation center. One lone social settlement was
just seeking a home for itself. There were public schools, quite
imposing buildings. But these were closed and locked and shuttered for
the day as soon as the classes were dismissed.

In a certain neighborhood of South Chicago there lived a number of young
girls, healthy, high-spirited, and full of that joy of life which always
must be fed--if not with wholesome food, then husks. For parents these
girls had fathers who worked twelve hours a day in the steel mills and
came home at night half dead from lack of rest and sleep; and mothers
who toiled equally long hours in the kitchen or over the washtub and
were too weary to know or care what the girls did after school. For
social opportunity the girls had "going downtown." Perhaps you know
what that means. It means trooping up and down the main street in lively
groups, lingering near a saloon where a phonograph is bawling forth a
cheerful air, visiting a nickel theater, or looking on at a street
accident or a fight.

About this time the panic of 1907 descended suddenly on South Chicago
and turned out of the steel mills hundreds of boys and men. Some of
these were mere lads, sixteen to eighteen years old. They, too, went
"downtown." There was no other place for them to go.

As a plain matter of cause and effect, what