to work in the Night Court, is one of an increasing number of women who
are attempting a great task. They are trying to solve a problem which
has baffled the minds of the wisest since civilization dawned. They have
set themselves to combat an evil fate which every year overtakes
countless thousands of young girls, dragging them down to misery,
disease, and death. At the magnitude of the effort these women have
undertaken one stands appalled. Will they ever reach the heart of the
problem? Can they ever hope to do more than reclaim a few individuals?
This much did the missionaries before them.

"We could reclaim fully seventy-five per cent," declares Miss Miner, "if
only we could find a way to begin nearer the beginning."

To begin the reform of any evil at the beginning, or near the beginning,
instead of near the end is now regarded as an economy of effort. That is
what educators are trying to do with juvenile delinquency; what
physicians are doing with disease; what philanthropists are beginning to
do with poverty.

Hardly any one has suggested that the social evil might have a cause,
and that it might be possible to attack it at its source. Yet that any
large number of girls enter upon such a horrible career, willingly,
voluntarily, is unbelievable to one who knows anything of the facts.
There must be strong forces at work on these girls, forces they find
themselves entirely powerless to resist.

Miss Miner and her fellow probation officers are the visible signs of a
very important movement among women to discover what these forces are.
Meager, indeed, are the facts at hand. We have had, and we still have,
in cities east and west, committees and societies and law and order