In a very few words she told me that she had come from
Germany as a music teacher to an American family. At the end of
two years, in order to avoid a scandal involving the head of the
house, she had come to Chicago where her child was born, but when
the remittances ceased after its death, finding herself without
home and resources, she had gradually become involved in her
present mode of life. By dint of utilizing her family
solicitude, we finally induced her to move into decent lodgings
before her sister arrived, and for a difficult year she supported
herself by her exquisite embroidery. At the end of that time,
she gave up the struggle, the more easily as her young sister,
well established in the dressmaking department of a large shop,
had begun to suspect her past life.
But discouraging as these and other similar efforts often were,
nevertheless the difficulties were infinitely less in those days
when we dealt with "fallen girls" than in the years following
when the "white slave traffic" became gradually established and
when agonized parents, as well as the victims themselves, were
totally unable to account for the situation. In the light of
recent disclosures, it seems as if we were unaccountably dull not
to have seen what was happening, especially to the Jewish girls
among whom "the home trade of the white slave traffic" was first
carried on and who were thus made to break through countless
generations of chastity.
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