Three girls sent to a house of this kind found themselves prisoners. One
girl made such a disturbance by screaming and crying that the proprietor
literally kicked her out of the house. The investigators for the
Intermunicipal Committee on Household Research saw this girl in a
hospital, insane and dying from the treatment she had received. Another
of the three escaped from the place. She, too, was discovered in a state
of dementia. The fate of the third girl is obscure.

[Illustration: THE SERVANT GIRL AND THE EMPLOYMENT AGENCY]

Not all employment agencies cater to this trade. Not all would consent
to be accessory to women's degradation. But the employment agency
business, taken by and large, is disorganized, haphazard, out of date.
It is operated on a system founded in lies and extortion. The offices
want fees--fees from servants and fees from employers. They encourage
servants to change their employment as often as possible. Often a firm
will send a girl to a place, and a week or two later will send her word
that they have a better job for her. Sometimes they arrange with her to
leave her place after a certain period, promising her an easier position
or a better wage. They favor the girl who changes often. "You're a nice
kind of a customer!" jeered one proprietor to a girl who boasted that
she had been in a family for five years. The girl was a _customer_ to
him, and she was nothing more.

To his profitable customer the agent is often very accommodating. If she
lacks references he writes her flattering ones, or loans her a reference
written by some woman of prominence. References, indeed, are often
handed around like passports among Russian revolutionists.