What eight million women want

building by day is rather inconspicuous. But when night falls, swallowing up the neighborhood of tangled streets and obscure alleyways, Jefferson Market assumes prominence. High up in th

be of light, and beneath its glare, through the iron-guarded door, there

nt only on the small fry caught in the dragnet of the police. Tramps, vagrants, drunkards, brawlers, disturbers of the peace, speeding chauffeurs, licenseless peddler

electric lights. There is never an hour, from nine at night until three in the morning, when the prisoners' bench in Jefferson Market Court is without its full quota of women. Old-prema

ried probation officer, modern substitute for the old-time volunteer mission worker. The probation officer's serious blu

e judge turns to her to inquire: "

e diagnoses her cases like a physician

he appears, young in evil, if she has a story which rings true, a story of poverty and misfortune, rather than of depravity, she goes not back to the prisoners' bench. When her turn at judgment comes

ower, whose clock has begun all over again its monotonous race toward midnight. No policeman accompanies the group. The girls are under no manner of duress. They have promised to go hom

ast year, over three hundred girls. Out of that number one hundred and nin

n point of numbers this is a melancholy showing, but in comparis

nder sixteen are now considered, in all enlightened communities, subjects for the Juvenile Court. They are hardly ever associated with older delinquents. But a girl over sixteen is likely to be c

rm. The District Attorney of New York County, Charles S. Whitman, is president of the Association, Maude E. Miner is its secretary, Mrs. Russell Sage, Miss Anne Morgan, Miss Mary Dreier, president of the New York Women's Trade Union League, Mrs. Richard Aldrich, formerly

ng studied. Girls arrested for moral delinquency and paroled to probation officers are taken to Waverley House, where they remain, under closest study and searching

led the minds of the wisest since civilization dawned. They have set themselves to combat an evil fate which every year overtakes countless thousands of young girls, dragging them down to misery, disease, and death. At the

nt," declares Miss Miner, "if only we could

now regarded as an economy of effort. That is what educators are trying to do with juvenile delinq

et that any large number of girls enter upon such a horrible career, willingly, voluntarily, is unbelievable to one who knows any

had, and we still have, in cities east and west, committees and societies and law and order leagues earnestly engaged in "stamping out" the evil. It is like trying to stamp out a fire consta

igure as missionaries, "prison angels," and the like. As evangelists to sinners women have been permitted to associate with their fallen sisters without losing caste. Likewise, when elderly enough, they have been allowed to serve on governing boards of "homes" and "refuges." Their act

organized themselves into an International Council of Women, and began their remarkable surve

beth Gad of Denmark, Dr. Agnes Bluhm of Germany, and others interested in the moral welfare of girls, urged upon the Council action against the "White Slave" traffic. No extensive argument

tly women must do the work. The fussy old gentlemen with white side whiskers and silk-stocking reformers and the other well meaning amateurs, who are engaged i

udiated by a body of organized women. The arguments on which the double standard of morals is based was, for the first time, seriously scrutinized by women of intelligence and social importance. The desirability of the desce

of children, were brought forth-facts concerning infantile blindness, almost one-third of which is caused by excesses on the part of the fathers; facts concerning certain forms of ill health in married women, and the increase of sterility due to the spread of specific diseases among men. The horrible results to innocent women and children of these ma

committees of women in many cities have courageously undertaken the study of this problem, i

ned. It is true that we have suspected that the unsteady and ill-adjusted economic position of women

ort to determine how far the entrance of women into the industrial world, usually under the disadvantage of low wages, was contributing to

as paper-box making, millinery, laundry work, rope and cordage making, ciga

rs, dressmakers, and seamstresses, but how far

shop so far as wages and long hours of work were concerned

s were what the investiga

no previous occupation. The next largest group, 1,115, or nearly thirty per cent, had been domestic servants. The largest group of all had gone straight from their homes into lives

m were too lazy to work, and the rest preferred a life of soiled luxury to one of honest toil in somebody's nice kitchen. Apparently this was the view taken by the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics, be

ittle more carefully. In this article I am going to take you over some of the

steel mills,-enormous drab structures, whose every crevice leaks quivering heat and whose towering chimneys belch forth unceasingly a pall of ashes and black smoke. The ste

ter. One lone social settlement was just seeking a home for itself. There were public schools, quite imposin

in the steel mills and came home at night half dead from lack of rest and sleep; and mothers who toiled equally long hours in the kitchen or over the washtub and were too weary to know or care what the girls did after school. For social opportunity the girls had "

f the steel mills hundreds of boys and men. Some of these were mere lads, sixteen to e

hat kind of a moral situation would you

described in these pages were so young that their cases were tried in the Juvenile Court. Most of them went to rescue homes, refo

out of ten. It means that the girl lived in a home which was no

gh for four. Some of these homes were never warm in winter. In some there was hardly any furniture. But we need not turn to these extreme cases

days and holidays included. Before the cab drivers' strike, a year or two ago, Donnelly's wages were fifteen dollars a week, and the family lived in a four-room tenement, for which they p

ere were three children younger than Annie, who was fourteen. The family of five made a fairly tight fit in four rooms. Nevertheless, when the rent

that her mother would not allow her to go. Once a year the entire family, including the baby, attended the annu

itable except at night. The kitchen, the one living-room, was uncomfortably crowded at meal times. At no time was there any privacy

Every one does the same in a crowded city neighborhood. There comes a time in a girl's life when this sort of thing becomes monotonous. The time came when Annie found si

as a combination of saloon and tenement house. In one of the front windows of

winging in a waltz, their forms indistinctly seen through the clouds of dust which followed them in broken swirls through air s

cious only that the music was piercing, sweet, and that she was swinging in blissful time to it. When the waltz t

yuh have to. The Sullivans gets the room rent free, but the fellers upstairs has bar privileges

sts who furnish dance halls rent free, and also to quench a thirst rendered unbearable by heat and dust. They seldom open t

as viciously inclined; not because she was abnormal; but beca

nd benches, on the floors, and even on the bar itself. They are locally known as "throw-aways." Here are a few specimens, from which you may form an idea of the quality of dance halls, and the kind of people-almost

at New Starlight Hall, 143 Suffolk Street, December 25. Mus

the Greaser, and Sam Rosenstock, a

ll given by Max Pascal and Little Whity, at

nd Sam Lande, better known as Mechuch, at Appollo Hall, Chrystm

living in this and in yet more unspeakable ways, there are hundreds of saloon dance halls, not only in New York, but in other

three nights and on Sunday afternoons. Some dancing academies, even in tenement house quarters, are reputable institutions, but to most of them the lowes

and whirling round and round at the highest possible speed. The girl's skirts are blown immodestly high, which is a detail. The effect of the sp

estion. It is really a very primitive form of the dance, and probably goes back to the pagan harvest and bacchic festivals. You may see traces of it in certain crude peasant dances i

ome. There was nothing the matter with that home except that it was too crowded for the family to stay in it. Father and mother were respe

in every city in the United States. It is a straight chute down which, every year, thousands of girls descend to the way of the

to avoid actual collision with the law. That is, the latter lived quietly and plied their trade on the street so unostentatiously that they were seldom arrested.

. A dance lasts about five minutes, and the interval between dances is from ten to twenty minutes. Waiters circle among the dancers, importuning them to drink. The dance hall

ct connections with Raines Law hotels and their prototypes. Of hardly a single dance hall can a good word b

and in New York, Revere Beach in Boston, The White City in Ch

ils are characteristic of most of them. There are parts of Coney Island where no beer is sold, where the vaudeville and the moving pictures are clean and

ctable establishments where people paid for dancing lessons. Now they are a mélange of dancing classes and public entertainments. The dancing m

by a man, must dance with him, or if she accepts another partner, she must ask his permission. An escort is deemed a somewhat doubtful advantage. Those who go unattended are always sure of partners. Often the

is considerable. A girl receiving six or seven dollars a week in wage

st be called the mark of the dance-hall habitué, the girl who is dance mad and who spends all her evenings going fr

ancer. The business of the spieler is to look after the wall-flowers. He seeks the girl who sits alone against the wall; he dances with her and brings othe

ives on the earnings of unfortunate girls. The dance hall, and especially the dancing academ

to associate together, and distorts that instinct into evil. The boy and girl of the tenement-dwelling classes, especially where the foreign element is strong, do not share their pleasures in the normal, healthy fashion of other young people. The position of the women of this class is not very high. Men

ze her ambition. As soon as she finished grammar school she was served, so to speak, with her working papers. The family needed additional income, not to meet actual living expenses, for the Greenbaums were not acutely poor, but in order that the

ock, and for four hours watched with straining eyes a tucking foot which carried eight needles and gathered long strips of muslin into eight fine tucks, at the rate of four thousand stitches a minute. The needles, mere flickering

generally too weary when lunch time came to enjoy the black bread and pickles which, with a cup of strong tea,

muslin. In return, the community had rendered her back something less than three hundred dollars, for th

her food and shelter. Consequently, Sadie's unceasing vigil of the needle paid for her existence and purchase

rday night Sadie and a girl friend, Rosie by name, put on their best clothes and betook themselves to S

o dance to. It was great! The girls never lacked part

ther gossip. Some of the girls were nice and some, it must be admitted, were "tough." What was the difference? The tough girls, with

on nearly always ended with one remarking: "Well, if they don't get any

Of course, if you have a number of other resources, you can keep the dress hunger in its proper p

roduced, men and women of the lowest class, who are paid to inspire the other dancers to lewd conduct. These wretched people are immodestly clothed, and they perform immodest or very tough dances. They are usually known as "Twisters," a descriptive title. When the

dancing, the reckless drinking, and the fighting which resulted in several men being thrown out. The second time they were not quite so horrified, but they decide

hion indeed. They dance in the rays of all kinds of colored lights thrown upon them from upper galleries. During part of a waltz the dancers are bathed in rose-colored lights, which change suddenly to purple, a blue, or a green. Some very weird effects are made, the lights being so manipulated that the dance

t morning. She remembered that she had tolerated familiarities which had been foreign to her experience h

cended on her with a torrent of coarse abuse, whereupon Sadie rose suddenly from her machine, and in a burst of hysterical profanity

o it?" wailed Rosie t

han the factor

ocolate icing. The table beside Edna's tank was kept constantly supplied with freshly baked "lady-fingers," and these in delicate handfuls Edna seized and plunged into the hot ooze of the ch

the other girls, although her leanings were toward lively pleasures. She was engaged to a young man who worked in a foundry

e dance. Now she was not permitted to dance with any one but her prospective husba

ssibly know what she did with those evenings he remained in the foundry. If she chose to go with a group of girls to a dance hall, wh

playing cards, reading aloud, or talking. On the other evenings she danced, madly, incessantly. Her mother thought she spent the evenings with her girl f

as usual, with a group of girls, but their men were waiting for them near the door of the open-air dancing pavilion. Standing just outside, the angry lover watched the girl "spiel" round and round with a man of doub

der, called her a name she did not yet deserve, and threw her violently to

e policy, an over-righteous judgment, plus a mother ignorant of the facts of l