proportion of wage-earning women and the resultant keenness of competition
for places; another is the fact that women workers are for the most part
unorganized and unprotected; another is the occasional effect of
supplementary wages of vice in lowering the wages of women in industry;
still another is the constant temptation of shop-girls to imitate their
patrons' vulgar displays of finery. But of all the economic factors
contributing to the moral breakdown of girls, the most general and
inexcusable is the failure of our public schools to provide vocational
training, although it is certain that above fifty per cent of all girls
leave the schools to become wage-earners. Failure to gain a living wage is
undoubtedly one of the causes, though seldom the sole cause, of the first
delinquency of some girls.

Other economic conditions serve to promote and intrench the business of
prostitution. These conditions are as real as any other factors and will
block reform until they are squarely met. One of these is the excessive
profit on property used for immoral purposes. The fact that such property
is often owned by persons who pass as respectable members of society does
not make the problem easier. Then there is the intimate connection between
the sale of intoxicating liquors and commercialized prostitution, as
definitely revealed by the investigations of every vice commission.

Another economic factor intrenching prostitution as a business is the
commercial organization which continues to do an international and
interstate business, partly because of our inadequate white-slave laws and
inadequate appropriation for enforcement.

Most important among the economic aids to prostitution as a business are
the high immediate wages of vice in contrast with the low wages of virtue.
A girl in the shop, or factory, or office may be capitalized at six