Association says, “The majority of girls who work in hotels go wrong sooner or later.”  The modern department stores, which employ the majority of young working-girls, offer temptations.  Mrs. Florence Kelley refers to work in these stores as “the most dangerous to morals and health, of all occupations into which children can go."[26] Of course, it may be said that a “good girl” will not go wrong.  It may also be said that a good social order will not place even good girls daily under conditions that are liable to bring about a physical or moral breakdown.  Closer analysis of human character reveals the fact that physical and moral health are more closely associated than we have hitherto believed them to be.

According to statistics about female offenders, domestic service is morally the most dangerous employment.[27] The reasons for this are two:  the social ostracism and the loneliness, and the low grade of worker.  Each of these causes augments the influence of the other.  The application of industrial standards to this neglected form of work should lead to improvements.

For those dependent upon employment offices, the seeking of a job may involve moral danger.  The practice of private employment bureaus in sending unsuspecting girls to immoral places under the pretext of finding legitimate employment is common.  The director of the Municipal Employment Bureau in Portland says that, the managers of houses are sometimes so bold as to telephone to the bureau for girls, telling for what purpose the girls are wanted.[28] One of the private bureaus was detected several times cooeperating in such practices.  The menace of such places can scarcely be overestimated.

We may now conclude our review of the economic phases of social hygiene.  Economic conditions to-day are under indictment as endangering the health and morals of working-girls and women.  Moral delinquency may arise through temptations met and hardships endured at the place of work; through scanty wages, inadequate for daily necessities; through lack of sympathetic consideration on the part of employers; through the stupidity of the community in adhering to worn-out educational methods that do not train wage-earners for earning a livelihood; through lack of protective legislation in regard to hours and conditions of labor.  As a matter of fact, each of these conditions has been found to be an accompaniment of vice; and taken all together they constitute an environment that makes clean living difficult.  Against the dark background of modern industry should be portrayed the luxurious conditions that are apparently enjoyed by those who have taken “the easiest way.”  In ancient society the status of the prostitute was that of slave:  to-day it is that of an industrial citizen.[29] If the program of social hygiene comprehended only talking about sex to working-girls—­to laundry-girls, for example, who, after a day’s work of ten hours at the machines, go at night to their boarding-houses where they wash dishes to eke out a living,—­then this program would not be unlike the advice of a physician who tells a poor man with tuberculosis that he must go to the country for a year and live on cream and eggs.