Twenty-six years ago in New York City, when I first began to feel an interest in unfortunate girls, and established the first Florence Crittenton home, now known as the Mother Mission, one of the things which surprized and imprest me most in coming close in touch with the subject, was that almost every girl that I met in a house of sin was supporting some man from her ill-gotten earnings. Either the man was her husband, who had driven her on the street in order that he might live in luxury and ease, or else he was her paramour, upon whom with a woman’s self-forgetful devotion she delighted to shower everything that she could earn. In addition to this form of slavery, I also found that the majority had to pay a certain percentage of their earnings to some individual or organization who had promised them immunity from arrest and to whom they looked for protection.
But when we began to get closer to the hearts of the girls, to know their true history, we discovered that the commencement of this form of slavery had been even in a baser form—that before the girls had become so-called “willing slaves” they were “unwilling slaves.” Many of them had fought for their liberty and had submitted only because they had been overcome by superior force. Some of them had been drugged; others kept under lock and key until such time when either their better nature had been drugged into unconsciousness or hardened into a devil-may-care recklessness.—Ernest A. Bell, “War on the White Slave Trade.”
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GIVERS, CLASSES OF
First, those who give spontaneously and generously, but only to themselves—auto-givers they might be called.
Second, those who give thoughtlessly, without any real or high motive—givers of the occasion, as it were.
Third, those who give as a sop to conscience and self-esteem; in a species of atonement for the evil they do—penitential givers.
Fourth, those who give as a matter of display, to win public applause for their generosity—theatrical givers.
Fifth, those who give because others give, because they are expected to give, and are ashamed not to give, and therefore give grudgingly—conventional givers.
Sixth, those who give because they feel they ought to give; who give through a sense of duty and not through love—moral givers.