I was grimly reminded of that moment a year later when I heard
the tale of this seventeen-year-old girl, who had worked steadily
in the same factory for four years before she resolved "to see
life." In order not to arouse her parents' suspicions, she
borrowed thirty dollars from one of those loan sharks who require
no security from a pretty girl, so that she might start from home
every morning as if to go to work. For three weeks she spent the
first part of each dearly bought day in a department store where
she lunched and unfortunately made some dubious acquaintances; in
the afternoon she established herself in a theater and sat
contentedly hour after hour watching the endless vaudeville until
the usual time for returning home. At the end of each week she
gave her parents her usual wage, but when her thirty dollars was
exhausted it seemed unendurable that she should return to the
monotony of the factory. In the light of her newly acquired
experience she had learned that possibility which the city ever
holds open to the restless girl.
That more such girls do not come to grief is due to those mothers
who understand the insatiable demand for a good time, and if all
of the mothers did understand, those pathetic statistics which
show that four fifths of all prostitutes are under twenty years
of age would be marvelously changed.
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