of her companions in the maternity ward where, among the fifty per cent,
of the unmarried mothers, at least two or three sophisticated girls are
always to be found, eager to "put wise" the girls who are merely
unfortunate. Occasionally a girl who follows such baneful advice still
insists upon keeping her child. I recall a pathetic case in the juvenile
court of Chicago when such a mother of a five-year-old child was
pronounced by the judge to be an "improper guardian." The agonized woman
was told that she might retain her child if she would completely change
her way of life; but she insisted that such a requirement was
impossible, that she had no other means of earning her living, and that
she had become too idle and broken for regular work. The child clung
piteously to the mother, and, having gathered from the evidence that she
was considered "bad," assured the judge over and over again that she was
"the bestest mother in the world." The poor mother, who had begun her
wretched mode of life for her child's sake, found herself so demoralized
by her hideous experiences that she could not leave the life, even for
the sake of the same child, still her most precious possession. Only six
years before, this mother had been an honest girl cheerfully working in
the household of a good woman, whose sense of duty had expressed itself
in dismissing "the outcast."

These discouraged girls, who so often come from domestic service to
supply the vice demands of the city, are really the last representatives
of those thousands of betrayed girls who for many years met the entire
demand of the trade; for, while a procurer of some sort has performed
his office for centuries, only in the last fifty years has the white
slave market required the services of extended business enterprises in
order to keep up the supply. Previously the demand had been largely met
by the girls who had voluntarily entered a disreputable life because
they had been betrayed. While the white slave traffic was organized