The women who operate houses on their own account belong to a rather different type: their establishments are almost always pretentious. Born, as a rule, in this country or in France, they make a show of elegance and refinement. Their houses are elaborately furnished and they and their "boarders" appear in stylish gowns, and endeavor to interest their guests by affecting a knowledge of art or music or literature. Many of them openly boast of influential and prominent friends, on whose good offices they can rely in emergencies. In either case the housekeeper earns money not only from the customers of the house, but from the inmates. Theoretically the inmates receive one-half of all the money they take in. This is not actually the case. They are indeed fortunate if they receive any money at all after weeks of service. At most, they obtain from fifteen to twenty per cent instead of fifty per cent. Sometimes, as the first step in the process of exploitation, the madame tries to induce the girl to give up her pimp, in order that she may have her more directly under control. Having attached the girl to herself, she sells her all sorts of things: coats, suits, dresses, kimonos, chemises, underwear, hosiery, shoes, hats, gloves, feathers, plumes, combs, hairpins, toilet articles, silver meshbags, watches and rings. Hundreds of girls are thus preyed upon. Not infrequently, however, it happens that madames prefer that their girls keep their pimps, because such girls are made to work harder by the aid of the latter. As the madames and pimps divide the gains of the unfortunate creatures, their interests usually agree and they unite to exploit their common property.