investigation disclosed that a startling number of Chicago girls had
found their positions through advertisements and had no means of
ascertaining the respectability of their employers. In addition to this,
the girls who seek such positions are sometimes vain and pretentious,
and will take any sort of office work because it seems to them "more
ladylike." A girl of this sort came to Chicago from the country three
years ago at the age of seventeen and secured a position as a
stenographer with a large firm of lawyers. She was pretty and
attractive, and in her desire to see more of the wonderful city to which
she had come, she accepted many invitations to dinners and theatres from
a younger member of the firm. The other girls in the office,
representing the more capable type of business women, among whom a
careful code of conduct is developing, although at present it is often
manifested only by the social ostracism of the one of their number who
has broken the conventions, protested against her conduct, first to the
girl and then to the head of the office. The usual story developed
rapidly, the girl lost her position, her brother-in-law, learning the
cause, refused her a home and she became absolutely dependent upon the
man. As their relations became notorious, he at length was requested to
withdraw from the firm. When brought to my knowledge she had already
been deserted for a year. The only people she had known during that time
were those in the disreputable hotel in which she had been living when
her lover disappeared, and it was through their mistaken kindness in
making an opportunity for her in the only life with which they were
familiar, that she had been drawn into the worst vice of the city.

She was but one of thousands of young women whose undisciplined minds
are fatally assailed by the subtleties and sophistries of city life, and
who have lost their bearings in the midst of a multitude of new
imaginative impressions. It is hard for a girl, thrilled by the mere