all instincts has therefore no chance for diffusion or social expression
and like all confined forces, tends to degenerate. The girl is equipped
with no weapon with which to contend with those poisonous images which
arise from the senses, and these images, bred of fatigue and loneliness,
make a girl an easy victim. This is especially true of the colored girl,
who because of her traditions, is often treated with so little respect
by white men, that she is constantly subjected to insult. Even the
colored servants in the New York apartment houses, who live at home and
thus avoid this loneliness, because their hours extend until nine in the
evening, are obliged to seek their pleasures late into the night.
American cities offer occupation to more colored women than colored men
and this surplus of women, in some cities as large as one hundred and
thirty or forty women to one hundred men, affords an opportunity to the
procurer which he quickly seizes. He is often in league with certain
employment bureaus, who make a business of advancing the railroad or
boat fare to colored girls coming from the South to enter into domestic
service. The girl, in debt and unused to the city, is often put into a
questionable house and kept there until her debt is paid many times
over. In some respects her position is not unlike that of the imported
white slave, for although she has the inestimable advantage of speaking
the language, she finds it even more difficult to have her story
credited. This contemptuous attitude places her at a disadvantage, for
so universally are colored girls in domestic service suspected of
blackmail that the average court is slow to credit their testimony when
it is given against white men. The field of employment for colored girls
is extremely limited. They are seldom found in factories and workshops.
They are not wanted in department stores nor even as waitresses in
hotels. The majority of them therefore are engaged in domestic service
and often find the position of maid in a house of prostitution or of
chambermaid in a disreputable hotel, the best-paying position open to