“The wages of sin is death.” Some cherish the hope that after a few years of pleasure, they will reform; but alas, they find it impossible to do so. A few, a very few, do escape, through the aid extended to them by the “missions,” but they are so few that they but help to emphasize the hopelessness of the effort. The doom of the fallen woman is swift and sure! “The wages of sin is death.” Once entered upon a career of shame, the whole world sets its face against her. Even the men who associated with her in her palmy days would turn a deaf ear to her appeals for aid after she has gone down into the depths. I would to God that the women who are about to enter upon this terrible life could walk through the purlieu of the “red-light” district and witness the sights that I have seen there. I would they could see the awful, despairing faces that look out from the bagnios of that terrible neighborhood, and realize that, however brilliant the opening of their career may be, this must be the end of it. It is idle for them to hope to escape the doom of the fallen woman. “The wages of sin is death.” Would anyone know what sort of death? Let her come to Chicago and see. Many of the women of the town never pass through the various gradations of vice that I have described. Many never see the inside of a fashionable house of ill-fame, but begin lower down the scale, as inmates of second-class houses, as waiter girls in concert saloons, as inmates of dance houses—which were so prevalent in Chicago years ago—or as street walkers. These meet their inevitable doom all the more quickly, but not less surely. The city is full of people, men and women, whose object is to lead young girls into lives of shame. They watch the hotels, depots and large stores and lure respectable girls away on various pretexts. Every inducement is held out to working girls and women to adopt the vile trade, and many fall willing victims. Hundreds of these women are from rural districts of adjoining states. They come to the city seeking work and are sometimes successful. Often, however, they can find nothing to do, and when poverty and want stare them in the face, they listen to the voice of the tempter, become street walkers or inmates of houses of ill-fame. Sometimes, while they are in the first days of their success, they will write home that they are pursuing honest callings in the city and earning respectable livings, and will even send money home to their deluded parents. After a while the letters cease—the writer has gone into the depths; they are lost!