rents which houses in certain districts of the city can command if
rented for purposes of vice. I recall two small frame houses identical
in type and value standing side by side. One which belonged to a citizen
without scruples was rented for $30.00 a month, the other belonging to a
conscientious man was rented for $9.00 a month. The supposedly
respectable landlords defend themselves behind the old sophistry: "If I
did not rent my house for such a purpose, someone else would," and the
more hardened ones say that "It is all in the line of business." Both of
them are enormously helped by the secrecy surrounding the ownership of
such houses, although it is hoped that the laws requiring the name of
the owner and the agent of every multiple house to be posted in the
public hallway will at length break through this protection, and the
discovered landlords will then be obliged to pay the fine to which the
law specifically states they have made themselves liable. In the
meantime, women forced to find cheap rents are subjected to one more
handicap in addition to the many others poverty places upon them. Such
experiences may explain the fact that English figures show a very large
proportion of widows and deserted women among the prostitutes in those
large towns which maintain segregated districts.

The deprivation of a mother's care is most frequently experienced by the
children of the poorest colored families who are often forced to live in
disreputable neighborhoods because they literally cannot rent houses
anywhere else. Both because rents are always high for colored people and
because the colored mothers are obliged to support their children, seven
times as many of them, in proportion to their entire number, as of the
white mothers, the actual number of colored children neglected in the
midst of temptation is abnormally large. So closely is child life
founded upon the imitation of what it sees that the child who knows all
evil is almost sure in the end to share it. Colored children seldom roam