lover, upon a home, adorned with the most enticing of the household goods about her, upon a child dressed in the filmy fabrics she tenderly touches, and yet the only man who approaches her there acting upon the knowledge of this inner life of hers, does it with the direct intention of playing upon it in order to despoil her.  Is it surprising that the average human nature of these young girls cannot, in many instances, endure this strain?  Of fifteen thousand women employed in the down-town department stores of Chicago, the majority are Americans.  We all know that the American girl has grown up in the belief that the world is hers from which to choose, that there is ordinarily no limit to her ambition or to her definition of success.  She realizes that she is well mannered and well dressed and does not appear unlike most of her customers.  She sees only one aspect of her countrywomen who come shopping, and she may well believe that the chief concern of life is fashionable clothing.  Her interest and ambition almost inevitably become thoroughly worldly, and from the very fact that she is employed down town, she obtains an exaggerated idea of the luxury of the illicit life all about her, which is barely concealed.

The fifth volume of the report of “Women and Child Wage Earners” in the United States gives the result of a careful inquiry into “the relation of wages to the moral condition of department store women.”  In connection with this, the investigators secured “the personal histories of one hundred immoral women,” of whom ten were or had been employed in a department store.  They found that while only one of the ten had been directly induced to leave the store for a disreputable life, six of them said that they had found “it was easier to earn money that way.”  The report states that the average employee in a department store earns about seven dollars a week, and that the average income of the one hundred immoral women covered by the personal histories, ranged from fifty dollars a week to one hundred dollars a week in exceptional cases.  It is of these exceptional cases that the department store girl hears, and the knowledge becomes part of the unreality and glittering life that is all about her.

Another class of young 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.