daughters, a result doubtless of the early freedom of the street
accorded city children. Too often the mothers themselves are totally
ignorant of covert dangers. A few days ago I held in my hand a pathetic
little pile of letters written by a desperate young girl of fifteen
before she attempted to commit suicide. These letters were addressed to
her lover, her girl friends, and to the head of the rescue home, but
none to her mother towards whom she felt a bitter resentment "because
she did not warn me." The poor mother after the death of her husband had
gone to live with a married daughter, but as the son-in-law would not
"take in two" she had told the youngest daughter, who had already worked
for a year as an apprentice in a dressmaking establishment, that she
must find a place to live with one of her girl friends. The poor child
had found this impossible, and three days after the breaking up of her
home she had fallen a victim to a white slave trafficker, who had
treated her most cruelly and subjected her to unspeakable indignities.
It was only when her "protector" left the city, frightened by the
unwonted activity of the police, due to a wave of reform, that she found
her way to the rescue home, and in less than five months after the death
of her father she had purchased carbolic acid and deliberately "courted
death for the nameless child" and herself.

Another experience during which a girl faces a peculiar danger is when
she has lost one "job" and is looking for another. Naturally she loses
her place in the slack season and pursues her search at the very moment
when positions are hardest to find, and her un-employment is therefore
most prolonged. Perhaps nothing in our social order is so unorganized
and inchoate as our method, or rather lack of method, of placing young
people in industry. This is obvious from the point of view of their
first positions when they leave school at the unstable age of fourteen,
or from the innumerable places they hold later, often as high as ten a