f their own.

The illustrations in this chapter are all taken from the Juvenile
Protective Association of Chicago in connection with its efforts to save
girls from overwhelming temptation. Doubtless many other associations
could offer equally convincing testimony, for in recent years the number
of people to whom the very existence of the white slave traffic has
become unendurable and who are determinedly working against it, has
enormously increased.

A surprising number of country girls have been either brought to Chicago
under false pretences, or have been decoyed into an evil life very soon
after their arrival in the city. Mr. Clifford Roe estimates that more
than half of the girls who have been recruited into a disreputable life
in Chicago have come from the farms and smaller towns in Illinois and
from neighboring states. This estimate is borne out by the records of
Paris and other metropolitan cities in which it is universally estimated
that a little less than one-third of the prostitutes found in them, at
any given moment, are city born.

The experience of a pretty girl who came to the office of the Juvenile
Protective Association, a year ago, is fairly typical of the argument
many of these country girls offer in their own defense. This girl had
been a hotel chambermaid in an Iowa town where many of the traveling
patrons of the hotel had made love to her, one of them occasionally
offering her protection if she would leave with him. At first she
indignantly refused, but was at length convinced that the acceptance of
such offers must be a very general practice and that, whatever might be
the custom in the country, no one in a city made personal inquiries. She
finally consented to accompany a young man to Seattle, both because she
wanted to travel and because she was discouraged in her attempts to "be
good." A few weeks later, when in Chicago, she had left the young man,
acting from what she considered a point of honor, as his invitation had
been limited to the journey which was now completed. Feeling too
disgraced to go home and under the glamour of the life of idleness she
had been leading, she had gone voluntarily into a disreputable house, in
which the police had found her and sent her to the Association. She
could not be persuaded to give up her plan, but consented to wait for a
few days to "think it over." As she was leaving the office in company
with a representative of the Association, they met the young man