Hermann looked at her quickly.
"Vould you?" he asked.
She shivered and shook her head and Hermann, seeing that the heat of his zeal had led him into a personal appeal that all his normally slow instincts prompted him to avoid, hurried back to the safe ground of generalities.
"Nobody vat knows," he said, "could belief it. Nobody vat knows could belief girls'd go into such a life, or once dey got into it stay dere, because dey vanted to. Vell, vat den? Ve must find out vhy is it dey gets in und vhy dey stay. It is because all de whole luckier vorld lets dem be kep' fast, und, first und foremost, because all de whole luckier vorld lets dose factories dey come from be bad blaces, und couldn't gif dose ozzer sixty-two-per-cent girls no ozzer vay to earn a livin' yet."
Violet thought again, as she still so often thought, of Max.
"An' what about the men that start them?" she inquired.
Hermann brought his heavy fist down upon his knee.
"Dem too!" he said. "Dem is de vorst mens in de vorld. If I can hate any man, dey is him. It makes my red blood to steam und my skin to get all brickly to see dem or sink of dem. But I know dot dey, too, are results of conditions, und dey sink dot dey are doing kindness to de girls by not letting dem go to chail or starve. De vorst mens in de vorld—next to politicians as lets dem live und takes most dot dey earn! Und de politicians demselves are only vat dot big system as makes us all vork for less as ve earn, und makes us all pay more as ve can—only vat de big system makes dem!"
Violet understood but partially; yet she had seen enough to know that the slavery must have its political side, and it was concerning this that she now asked.
That Hermann made wholly clear. He told her the story of the growth of political parties, the development of political machines, the necessary preying of these machines, in every city, first upon gambling and then, as that passed, upon prostitution, and of how this meant both money and votes.