A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil

To the Juvenile Protective Association of Chica-
go, whose superintendent and field officers have
collected much of the material for this book, and
whose president, Mrs. Joseph T. Bowen, has
so ably and sympathetically collaborated in its
writing.



CONTENTS

A NEW CONSCIENCE IN REGARD TO AN ANCIENT EVIL

CHAPTER I       [Original Page]
As inferred from An Analogy [3]

CHAPTER II
As indicated by Recent Legal Enactments [17]

CHAPTER III
As indicated by the Amelioration of Economic Conditions [55]

CHAPTER IV
As indicated by the Moral Education and Legal Protection of Children [97]

CHAPTER V
As indicated by Philanthropic Rescue and Prevention [141]

CHAPTER VI
As indicated by Increased Social Control [179]



PREFACE

The following material, much of which has
been published in McClure's Magazine, was
written, not from the point of view of the expert,
but because of my own need for a counter-knowl-
edge to a bewildering mass of information which
came to me through the Juvenile Protective
Association of Chicago. The reports which its
twenty field officers daily brought to its main
office adjoining Hull House became to me a
revelation of the dangers implicit in city condi-
tions and of the allurements which are designedly
placed around many young girls in order to draw
them into an evil life.

As head of the Publication Committee, I read
the original documents in a series of special
investigations made by the Association on dance
halls, theatres, amusement parks, lake excursion
boats, petty gambling, the home surroundings of
one hundred Juvenile Court children and the
records of four thousand parents who clearly
contributed to the delinquency of their own fami-
lies. The Association also collected the personal
histories of two hundred department-store girls,
of two hundred factory girls, of two hundred
immigrant girls, of two hundred office girls, and
of girls employed in one hundred hotels and
restaurants.

While this experience was most distressing, I
was, on the other hand, much impressed and at
times fairly startled by the large and diversi-
fied number of people to whom the very existence
of the white slave traffic had become unen-
durable and who promptly responded to any
appeal made on behalf of its victims. City offi-
cials, policemen, judges, attorneys, employers,
trades unionists, physicians, teachers, newly ar-
rived immigrants, clergymen, railway officials,
and newspaper men, as under a profound sense of
compunction, were unsparing of time and effort
when given an opportunity to assist an individual
girl, to promote legislation designed for her pro-
tection, or to establish institutions for her rescue.

I therefore venture to hope that in serving my
own need I may also serve the need of a rapidly
growing public when I set down for rational
consideration the temptations surrounding multi-
tudes of young people and when I assemble, as
best I may, the many indications of a new con-
science, which in various directions is slowly
gathering strength and which we may soberly
hope will at last successfully array itself against
this incredible social wrong, ancient though it
maybe.

HULL HOUSE,
Chicago.