Tragedies of the White Slave

The lives of 5,000 young girls are laid upon the altar of lust every year in the city of Chicago alone.

The insatiable rapacity of man, the lust of the hunt, the demands of brutish passion ordain it that these 5,000 young innocents be led forth to the slaughter, annually.

This statement is not a matter of guess. It is the estimate of officers of the Chicago Law and Order League, the Illinois Vigilance Society, the police authorities and Assistant State's Attorney Clifford G. Roe.

There are 68,000 women leading a nameless existence in the city of Chicago alone. This is the police estimate, based upon a census made by the captains of the different police districts. It includes the women who live—and die—in the temples of shame on Twenty-second street, on the Strand in South Chicago, on the West Side, and on Wells street and vicinity on the North Side. It includes the "street walkers," the girls who infest such dance halls in Twenty-second street, the women in private flats, and the mistresses of wealthy men.

The average duration of a woman leading a life of shame is from two to twelve years, according to Dr. L. Blake Baldwin, city physician. Dr. Baldwin places his average at four years, basing this upon the life of the woman in the brothel where the majority of fallen women are to be found.

Drink, which goes hand in hand with vice, cigarette smoking, various kinds of "dope," the all night method of living and the daily vicissitudes of existence are the contributing causes, according to Mr. Baldwin. But the chief cause of early demise is the ravages of diseases inseparable from immoral life.

The result is that the market houses are yawning, constantly holding forth an insatiable maw into which new blood must be poured, new lives must be thrown, more young innocents must be devoured.

And this is the reason for the existence of this book. If one mother or father may be warned in time, if one single life may be saved from the traps men make and the lures they