[CHAPTER V.]
The Tragedy of the Stage.
One thousand innocent girls, the majority of them still in their teens, are lured to a life of shame each year in the city of Chicago alone through the stage.
This is the statement of the police. It is the statement of the keepers of the dives themselves.
A visit to almost any of the dives of the Twenty-second street district will convince even the most skeptical reader of the truth of this statement.
Enter and inquire for a show girl.
True, she will not be the sprightly, supple and pretty creature one sees nightly on the stages of the better theaters of the city. Yet she is a show girl—or, rather, I might say, has been one.
She is a show girl who has fallen. The sparkle of wine, the glare of lights and the happy-go-lucky company of the after-theater parties have proven her downfall. Under their baneful influences she has been led on, until now you see her dull-eyed, disheveled haired, with all ambition gone, her natural appetites ruined—a Magdelen.
When a girl becomes a member of a chorus or ballet of a comic opera company—that is to say, when she enters the profession—she is usually a good girl, of fair education, with supple figure, and usually beautiful in features. As a rule she has never kept company with men, moneyed men, blase men of the world.
In every chorus one will find a number of "old stagers," or girls who have been in the profession for several years. They have been through "the mill." The gay life has attracted them. They know lots of "dandy good fellows" who are more than willing to "show them a good time."