Prevention
It is not merely by drastic legislation directed immediately at the social evil that women are attempting to solve the problem. They know full well the complexity of the disease. They are coming more and more to the view that the indirect attack on low wages, bad housing conditions, and the other evils which lower standards of living is more effective than the frontal assault. They are also attacking the problem with measures designed to safeguard young girls who for economic reasons must work out of the home.
In their efforts to trace the whereabouts of immigrant girls, to do follow-up work, to establish immigrant homes, to secure matrons on steamers and women inspectors, women are constantly controlling some portion at least of the social evil. Miss Sadie American, Executive Secretary of the Council of Jewish Women, states that her organization, which does so much to safeguard Jewish girls, could do vastly more if it had the facilities that the government has in the way of registered lists of newly arrived citizens with their destinations. Certainly the organization of women as a social service adjunct to the Department of Immigration would be a step acceptable to women and of incalculable preventive value to the country.
The women of California are preparing to establish preventive and assimilative work among the foreigners who will doubtless pour into that state in a little while as a result of the opening of the Panama Canal.
“A committee for the protection of girls will be organized by Mrs. F. G. Sanborn, president of the Woman’s Department of the Panama-Pacific exposition. This work is regarded as very important when it is remembered that 6,000 girls were lost during the Chicago World’s Fair. Club women in San Francisco are actively interested in the Woman’s Department of the exposition.”[[15]]
Intercommunity and interstate responsibility for the diminution of the social evil receives increased emphasis in the writings and the civic work of women. They have learned that suppression of disorderly houses in one city may only drive evil doers into a neighboring city or a neighboring state. Even eternal vigilance to prevent the return of the traffickers and their victims does not satisfy those parents who read of surrounding iniquity and whose young people travel or work from place to place. By the organization of travelers’ aid societies, women and men have sought to protect girls and women in their travel by train and by boat from kidnapping or allurement on misunderstanding or misdirection. Such societies exist in every large urban center and are of the greatest value as preventive work in safeguarding women and girls from criminals.