JULIA. Yes, dear. I know . . .

ANNIE. [Seeing the others.] Who? . . .

JULIA. They are all friends; they will help you. Come, dear . . . lie
down again.

ANNIE. Oh, what shall I do?

[Is led off, sobbing.]

JULIA. It will be all right, dear.

[Exit; a pause.]

HEGAN. What does this mean?

JACK. [Promptly and ruthlessly.] It means that you have been seeing
the white- slave traffic in action.

HEGAN. I don't understand.

JACK. [Quietly, but with suppressed passion.] Tens of thousands of
girl slaves are needed for the markets of our great cities . . . for
the lumber camps of the North, the mining camps of the West, the
ditches of Panama. And every four or five years the supply must be
renewed, and so the business of gathering these girl- slaves from our
slums is one of the great industries of the city. This girl, Annie
Rogers, a decent girl from the North of Ireland, was lured into a
dance hall and drugged, and then taken to a brothel and locked in a