"An' people like Miss Rose——?"
"They buy the girls and pay a percentage on their work, my dear, till the debt's cleared. Sometimes they give their girls nothing but brass checks for every job, but whether we get brass checks or real cash, it's all the same: board and lodging and clothes are so high that we never get out of debt to the madam. Trust her for that!"
She had a thorough knowledge of her subject, and she ran on as if her only interest in it were economic. She talked of Denver, with its two-room houses in which the front seemed one large window where the sole inmate displayed her wares; of Chicago with the curtained doors through which was thrust only a hand to receive the varying price of admission, even a quarter of a dollar occasionally sufficing; of the same city's infamous club maintained by politicians for their own debauches. She told of the proprietresses making a specialty of "sending out" for girls that worked at other and ill-paid tasks by day; of women conducting flats on a partnership basis; of those who rented, for high prices, houses that would otherwise be tenantless because of poor conditions or the opening of some street that must soon be cut through the premises. She said that young girls unsoiled would sometimes fetch their owners fifty dollars for their initial destruction, but that, as a rule, the sums were relatively small.
"And Miss Rose has to pay the police," asked Violet; "don't she?"
"She does just, little innocent. And the police have to pay the officers above them, and the officers above them have to pay the ward-bosses above them—and there you are. It's all the worse since the bosses can't make any money from gambling-houses, and it's all the worse since the business got organized and meant votes for the gang at every election.—Oh," Evelyn broke off—"I tell you it's the same in every city the world over, my dear, and you and I haven't even the comfort of being exceptions."
"Don't people know about it?"
"People don't want to know about it. People don't want to feel badly. People say that it isn't true, and that, if it is true, it isn't fit to mention."
"Did you ever go to a dance-hall?"
Forgetting her recent attitude of democracy, Evelyn raised her pointed chin.
"I should say not," she answered. "Only a year ago I had that apartment of my very own. An Africander took me out of the chorus at the 'Gaiety' over home,—and a good job, too—and, when he died and I came here, one of the best doctors in this town took care of me. He said he was going to marry me," she ended with a short laugh, "but when his old wife died, he forgot that, and forgot me, and married a society girl young enough to be his grandchild. Of course he died himself after a few months, but that didn't help me, my dear: I had to strike out, and now, from the best places I've come down as far as this."