many delinquent girls as boys brought into the juvenile court in
Chicago, the charge against the girls in almost every instance involves
a loss of chastity. One of them who was vainly endeavoring to formulate
the causes of her downfall, concentrated them all in the single
statement that she wanted the other girls to know that she too was a
"good Indian." Such a girl, while she is not an actual member of a gang
of boys, is often attached to one by so many loyalties and friendships
that she will seldom testify against a member, even when she has been
injured by him. She also depends upon the gang when she requires bail in
the police court or the protection that comes from political influence,
and she is often very proud of her quasi-membership. The little girls
brought into the juvenile court are usually daughters of those poorest
immigrant families living in the worst type of city tenements, who are
frequently forced to take boarders in order to pay the rent. A
surprising number of little girls have first become involved in
wrong-doing through the men of their own households. A recent inquiry
among 130 girls living in a sordid red light district disclosed the fact
that a majority of them had thus been victimized and the wrong had come
to them so early that they had been despoiled at an average age of eight
years. Looking upon the forlorn little creatures, who are often brought
into the Chicago juvenile court to testify against their own relatives,
one is seized with that curious compunction Goethe expressed in the now
hackneyed line from "Mignon:"

"Was hat Man dir, du armes Kind, gethan?"

One is also inclined to reproach educators for neglecting to give
children instruction in play when one sees the unregulated amusement
parks which are apparently so dangerous to little girls twelve or
fourteen years old. Because they are childishly eager for amusement and