To combat this wide spread evil a National Vigilance Committee has been organized and a number of states including Illinois, have formed state societies, "to suppress traffic in women and girls." The Chicago Law and Order League, of which Arthur Burrage Farwell is president, has done active work in aiding to prosecute cases. Chicago has also The Midnight Mission of which R. S. Simmons, an attorney of high standing is president, and Rev. Ernest A. Bell is superintendent. Street meetings are held in the "Red-light" districts and work is done to spread the teachings as to the penalties of vice and the blessings of purity, and appeals are made from legal, sanitary, moral and spiritual motives for men and women to be saved.
Judge Mack of Chicago and Judge Ben Lindsey of the Juvenile Court of Denver, with noted physicians and ministers have spoken and written words of warning to parents and also have sent out pleas for wise instruction of children for their protection from the evils of sexual vice.
It is not enough to simply prosecute the monsters who are part of this vile traffic, but there should be a campaign of education in all communities, city and county, with better laws and more strict enforcement of those we now have.
Duncan C. Milner.
Many ministers might well follow Dr. Milner's example and write articles for the newspapers to whose columns they have access, instructing, warning and alarming parents and brothers of girls and the girls themselves against the enemies of every home in the world.
AMERICAN GIRLS IN MOST DANGER.
An able investigator, a lady whose name we cannot divulge, comparing virtuous immigrants and American girls, writes:
"The foreign girls have a safeguard in early marriage. While unmarried and away from home, they usually live with families of their own nationality and are treated as members of the family. Italian girls are further protected by the severe standards of their parents; an Italian father will almost kill a daughter who has gone astray. I have found Russian, Jewish, and Italian girls innocent, very sweet and trustful.
"American wage-earning girls on the other hand present a different picture. While many of them find homes in private families or among friends, many others are rooming in houses where there is no one to look after them. Many of them have no sitting room in which to receive men friends and have to use their bedrooms for this purpose. Some girls speak of this necessity with regret and a serious realization of the situation. Such girls can live under such conditions and be safe. Others resent the implication that these conditions are dangerous, feeling that their own virtue is questioned. Others treat the matter flippantly.
"The men and women who are interested in girls for no good reason have no difficulty in meeting the American girls, working as they do in stores, offices, hotels and restaurants. I believe that the American girl is surrounded by more numerous and far more subtle temptations than is the foreign girl."