recruits for this life as coming from domestic service and the second
largest number from girls who live at home with no definite occupation
whatever. Therefore, although in the economic aspect of the social evil
more than in any other, do we find ground for despair, at the same time
we discern, as nowhere else, the young girl's stubborn power of
resistance. Nevertheless, the most superficial survey of her
surroundings shows the necessity for ameliorating, as rapidly as
possible, the harsh economic conditions which now environ her.

That steadily increasing function of the state by which it seeks to
protect its workers from their own weakness and degradation, and insists
that the livelihood of the manual laborer shall not be beaten down below
the level of efficient citizenship, assumes new forms almost daily. From
the human as well as the economic standpoint there is an obligation
resting upon the state to discover how many victims of the white slave
traffic are the result of social neglect, remedial incapacity, and the
lack of industrial safeguards, and how far discontinuous employment and
non-employment are factors in the breeding of discouragement and
despair.

Is it because our modern industrialism is so new that we have been slow
to connect it with the poverty and vice all about us? The socialists
talk constantly of the relation of economic law to destitution and point
out the connection between industrial maladjustment and individual
wrongdoing, but certainly the study of social conditions, the obligation
to eradicate vice, cannot belong to one political party or to one
economic school. It must be recognized as a solemn obligation of
existing governments, and society must realize that economic conditions
can only be made more righteous and more human by the unceasing devotion
of generations of men.