The Girl That Disappears/Chapter 12
XII
SOME RECRUITED THROUGH ALLEGED
EMPLOYMENT AGENCIES
I CANNOT take the space here to discuss every means employed to ruin girls. I can only touch on the broader, more typical aspects of the situation. Among these must be mentioned evilly conducted employment agencies, which are now receiving merited attention by women's clubs and various reform organizations in all parts of the country. Here is a typical story, illustrative of this phase of the evil:
One day a man in Chicago received a note reading as follows:
"Dear Mr. Blank: Please come down and see me at once. I am in trouble. Would like very much to see you. Come to Bob Grey Cafe, Twenty-first street and Armour Avenue. You will be surprised to find me there, but I could not help this.
"Dolly J."
According to the man's story, the girl who signed the note had been a waitress in a country hotel sometimes visited by him. The girl had been lured to Chicago under promise of more remunerative work and by a man who posed as an employment agent. He placed her in a house, which was to all intents and purposes, a prison. The girl had been kept there and most terribly abused for a period of some months. Believing her to be thoroughly broken in, her jailors were now permitting her the liberty of seeking customers in the saloons and cafes of the Levee district. Finding in the telephone book the address of the one man she knew in Chicago, she secretly wrote her pathetic appeal. She was rescued and sent back to her parents.