ugh these
enormous profits largely accrue to the men who conduct the business side
of prostitution, the report emphasizes the fact that the average girl
earns very much more in such a life than she can hope to earn by any
honest work. It points out that the capitalized value of the average
working girl is six thousand dollars, as she ordinarily earns six
dollars a week, which is three hundred dollars a year, or five per cent.
on that sum. A girl who sells drinks in a disreputable saloon, earning
in commissions for herself twenty-one dollars a week, is capitalized at
a value of twenty-two thousand dollars. The report further estimates
that the average girl who enters an illicit life under a protector or
manager is able to earn twenty-five dollars a week, representing a
capital of twenty-six thousand dollars. In other words, a girl in such a
life "earns more than four times as much as she is worth as a factor in
the social and industrial economy, where brains, intelligence, virtue
and womanly charm should bring a premium." The argument is specious in
that it does not record the economic value of the many later years in
which the honest girl will live as wife and mother, in contrast to the
premature death of the woman in the illicit trade, but the girl herself
sees only the difference in the immediate earning possibilities in the
two situations.

Nevertheless the supply of girls for the white slave traffic so far
falls below the demand that large business enterprises have been
developed throughout the world in order to secure a sufficient number of
victims for this modern market. Over and over again in the criminal
proceedings against the men engaged in this traffic, when questioned as
to their motives, they have given the simple reply "that more girls are
needed", and that they were "promised big money for them". Although
economic pressure as a reason for entering an illicit life has thus been
brought out in court by the evidence in a surprising number of cases,
there is no doubt that it is often exaggerated; a girl always prefers to
think that economic pressure is the reason for her downfall, even when
the immediate causes have been her love of pleasure, her desire for
finery, or the influence of evil companions. It is easy for her, as for
all of us, to be deceived as to real motives. In addition to this the
wretched girl who has entered upon an illicit life finds the experience
so terrible that, day by day, she endeavor