the employees of the anthracite coal mines in Pennsylvania were children.
In 1918 investigators of the children's bureau of the Department of Labor reported that the number of minors employed in factories, mines and quarries has increased at a rapid rate since the U.S. Supreme Court, on June 5th, 1918, nullified the child-labor act of 1916 as unconstitutional. Not only are a greatly increased number of children employed, but they are kept at work longer hours than before. Since the future of such children as well as the future of the country depend to a very great extent upon what legislators do in regard to children, it is obvious that women are deeply concerned in this question.—
The need of women's participation in government and of an "occasional house-cleaning" in the Legislatures as well as in the Municipal Administrations becomes evident, when we realize that one of the most revolting crimes is committed daily in our communities, quite often with the silent protection of corrupt officials and politicians. We refer to the White Slave Trade. As few people have any definite idea of its extent and terrors, some authentic facts are here given, which, at the same time, demonstrate men's indifference as well as the urgent need of woman's interference for its suppression.
As everybody knows, the traffic in young girls for purposes of prostitution is as old as humanity. It has flourished in all ages and in all countries. But it was during the 19th Century that it found its systematic organization and its most extensive development.
With alarming frequency, the papers report that some young woman or girl is "missing," having stepped out of her home on some household errand, and from this moment having vanished as though swallowed by the earth. Such was the case of Dorothy Arnold, who some years ago left her cosy home in New York, to do some shopping in a department store. She never returned and no trace of her was ever discovered. This particular case attracted wide attention all over the United States, as Miss Arnold, a beautiful girl of eighteen, was the daughter of wealthy parents, who spent a fortune in desperate but futile attempts to recover their child.—
Every year hundreds of similar cases occur in our country, some in San Francisco, some in New York, Baltimore, St. Louis, Chicago and elsewhere. If the exact number of such missing girls could be known, the public might well be shocked; and horrified if it would know the sad lot that befalls the majority of these unfortunate girls. Where efforts to ascertain their fate have met with success, it was found that in ninety out of a hundred cases such girls became victims of the most detestable fiends on earth, human ghouls, who make fortunes
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