on," "I
got sick and ran behind," "Needed more money," "Impossible to feed and
clothe myself," "Out of work, hadn't been able to save." Of course a
girl in such a strait does not go out deliberately to find illicit
methods of earning money, she simply yields in a moment of utter
weariness and discouragement to the temptations she has been able to
withstand up to that moment. The long hours, the lack of comforts, the
low pay, the absence of recreation, the sense of "good times" all about
her which she cannot share, the conviction that she is rapidly losing
health and charm, rouse the molten forces within her. A swelling tide of
self-pity suddenly storms the banks which have hitherto held her and
finally overcomes her instincts for decency and righteousness, as well
as the habit of clean living, established by generations of her
forebears.

The aphorism that "morals fluctuate with trade" was long considered
cynical, but it has been demonstrated in Berlin, in London, in Japan, as
well as in several American cities, that there is a distinct increase in
the number of registered prostitutes during periods of financial
depression and even during the dull season of leading local industries.
Out of my own experience I am ready to assert that very often all that
is necessary to effectively help the girl who is on the edge of
wrong-doing is to lend her money for her board until she finds work,
provide the necessary clothing for which she is in such desperate need,
persuade her relatives that she should have more money for her own
expenditures, or find her another place at higher wages. Upon such
simple economic needs does the tried virtue of a good girl sometimes
depend.

Here again the immigrant girl is at a disadvantage. The average wage of
two hundred newly arrived girls of various nationalities, Poles,
Italians, Slovaks, Bohemians, Russians, Galatians, Croatians,
Lithuanians, Roumanians, Germans, and Swedes, who were interviewed by
the Immigrants' Protective League, was four dollars and a half a week
for the first position which they had been able to secure in Chicago. It
often takes a girl several weeks to find her first place. During this
period of looking for work the immigrant girl is subjected to great
dangers. It is at such times that immigrants often exhibit symptoms of
that type of disordered mind which alienists pronounce "due to conflict
through poor adaptation." I have known several immigrant young men as
well as