Nevertheless the supply of girls for the white slave traffic so far
falls below the demand that large business enterprises have been
developed throughout the world in order to secure a sufficient number of
victims for this modern market. Over and over again in the criminal
proceedings against the men engaged in this traffic, when questioned as
to their motives, they have given the simple reply "that more girls are
needed", and that they were "promised big money for them". Although
economic pressure as a reason for entering an illicit life has thus been
brought out in court by the evidence in a surprising number of cases,
there is no doubt that it is often exaggerated; a girl always prefers to
think that economic pressure is the reason for her downfall, even when
the immediate causes have been her love of pleasure, her desire for
finery, or the influence of evil companions. It is easy for her, as for
all of us, to be deceived as to real motives. In addition to this the
wretched girl who has entered upon an illicit life finds the experience
so terrible that, day by day, she endeavors to justify herself with the
excuse that the money she earns is needed for the support of some one
dependent upon her, thus following habits established by generations of
virtuous women who cared for feeble folk. I know one such girl living in
a disreputable house in Chicago who has adopted a delicate child
afflicted with curvature of the spine, whom she boards with respectable
people and keeps for many weeks out of each year in an expensive
sanitarium that it may receive medical treatment. The mother of the
child, an inmate of the house in which the ardent foster-mother herself
lives, is quite indifferent to the child's welfare and also rather
amused at such solicitude. The girl has persevered in her course for
five years, never however allowing the little invalid to come to the
house in which she and the mother live. The same sort of devotion and
self-sacrifice is often poured out upon the miserable man who in the