g women which is especially exposed to this
alluring knowledge is the waitress in down-town cafes and restaurants. A
recent investigation of girls in the segregated district of a
neighboring city places waiting in restaurants and hotels as highest on
the list of "previous occupations." Many waitresses are paid so little
that they gratefully accept any fee which men may offer them. It is also
the universal habit for customers to enter into easy conversation while
being served. Some of them are lonely young men who have few
opportunities to speak to women. The girl often quite innocently accepts
an invitation for an evening, spent either in a theatre or dance hall,
with no evil results, but this very lack of social convention exposes
her to danger. Even when the proprietor means to protect the girls, a
certain amount of familiarity must be borne, lest their resentment
should diminish the patronage of the cafe. In certain restaurants,
moreover, the waitresses doubtless suffer because the patrons compare
them with the girls who ply their trade in disreputable saloons under
the guise of serving drinks.

The following story would show that mere friendly propinquity may
constitute a danger. Last summer an honest, straightforward girl from a
small lake town in northern Michigan was working in a Chicago cafe,
sending every week more than half of her wages of seven dollars to her
mother and little sister, ill with tuberculosis, at home. The mother
owned the little house in which she lived, but except for the vegetables
she raised in her own garden and an occasional payment for plain sewing,
she and her younger daughter were dependent upon the hard-working girl
in Chicago. The girl's heart grew heavier week by week as the mother's
letters reported that the sister was daily growing weaker. One hot day
in August she received a letter from her mother telling her to come at
once if she "would see sister before she died." At noon that day when
sickened by the hot air of the cafe, and when the clatter of dishes, the
buzz of conversation, the orders shouted through the slide seemed but a
hideous accompaniment to her tormented thoughts, she was suddenly
startled by hearing the name of her native town, and realized that one
of her regular patrons was saying to her that he meant to take a night
boat to M. at 8 o'clock and get out of this "infernal heat." Almost
involuntarily she asked him if he would take her with him. Although the
very nex