f supply, would
seem to show that the chastity of women is holding its own in that
slow-growing civilization which ever demands more self-control and
conscious direction on the part of the individuals sharing it.

Successive reports of the United States census indicate that
self-supporting girls are increasing steadily in number each decade,
until 59 per cent. of all the young women in the nation between the ages
of sixteen and twenty, are engaged in some gainful occupation. Year
after year, as these figures increase, the public views them with
complacency, almost with pride, and confidently depends upon the inner
restraint and training of this girlish multitude to protect it from
disaster. Nevertheless, the public is totally unable to determine at
what moment these safeguards, evolved under former industrial
conditions, may reach a breaking point, not because of economic freedom,
but because of untoward economic conditions.

For the first time in history multitudes of women are laboring without
the direct stimulus of family interest or affection, and they are also
unable to proportion their hours of work and intervals of rest according
to their strength; in addition to this for thousands of them the effort
to obtain a livelihood fairly eclipses the very meaning of life itself.
At the present moment no student of modern industrial conditions can
possibly assert how far the superior chastity of woman, so rigidly
maintained during the centuries, has been the result of her domestic
surroundings, and certainly no one knows under what degree of economic
pressure the old restraints may give way.

In addition to the monotony of work and the long hours, the small wages
these girls receive have no relation to the standard of living which
they are endeavoring to maintain. Discouraged and over-fatigued, they
are often brought into sharp juxtaposition with the women who are
obtaining much larger returns from their illicit trade. Society also
ventures to capitalize a virtuous girl at much less than one who has
yielded to temptation, and it may well hold itself responsible for the
precarious position into which, year after year, a multitude of frail
girls is placed.

The very valuable report recently issued by the vice commission of
Chicago leaves no room for doubt upon this point. The report estimates
the yearly profit of this nefarious business as conducted in Chicago to
be between fifteen and sixteen millions of dollars. Altho