slave traffic. One touch of nature redeemed the trial, for the girl
suffered much more from the sense that she had been deserted by her
lover than from horror over the fate she had escaped, and she was never
wholly convinced that he had not been genuine. She asserted constantly,
in order to account for his absence, that some accident must have
befallen him. She felt that he was her natural protector in this strange
Chicago to which she had come at his behest and continually resented any
imputation of his motives. The betrayal of her confidence, the playing
upon her natural desire for a home of her own, was a ghastly revelation
that even when this hideous trade is managed upon the most carefully
calculated commercial principles, it must still resort to the use of the
oldest of the social instincts as its basis of procedure.

This Chicago police inspector, whose desire to protect young girls was
so genuine and so successful, was afterward indicted by the grand jury
and sent to the penitentiary on the charge of accepting "graft" from
saloon-keepers and proprietors of the disreputable houses in his
district. His experience was a dramatic and tragic portrayal of the
position into which every city forces its police. When a girl who has
been secured for the life is dissuaded from it, her rescue represents a
definite monetary loss to the agency which has secured her and incurs
the enmity of those who expected to profit by her. When this enmity has
sufficiently accumulated, the active official is either "called down" by
higher political authority, or brought to trial for those illegal
practices which he shares with his fellow-officials. It is, therefore,
easy to make such an inspector as ours suffer for his virtues, which are
individual, by bringing charges against his grafting, which is general
and almost official. So long as the customary prices for protection are
adhered to, no one feels aggrieved; but the sentiment which prompts an
inspector "to side with the girls" and to destroy thousands of dollars'