property itself liable to forfeiture, absolute security against this kind of thing is established, thereby preventing many a miscarriage of justice and of just penalties. Since the beginning of the recent prosecutions in Chicago a score of keepers, realizing their guilt and fearing prosecution, have fled the country and have not yet been apprehended. If both the federal and the state governments had a law of this kind the escape of these criminals would not have involved a complete defeat of the law in their cases, for prosecution could have been brought against some person connected with their establishments, and when a conviction was secured the property occupied by them could have been closed out. A statute of this kind, wherever enacted, can scarcely fail to prove one of the most powerful and effective of all possible weapons against the white slave traffic. And the smaller the city, the more effective will this weapon be found--which is only another way of saying that the larger the city the larger the toleration of the social vice. One of the greatest weapons in the hands of the white slavers and of the keepers of houses of ill-fame to prevent the escape of fresh recruits and to submerge them into hopeless slavery is the system of indebtedness which is practiced in these places. The one object of those concerned in the subjugation of a girl who has become a victim of the wiles of the white slaver is to break down all hope of escape from the life of shame and bitterness into which she has been entrapped. Nothing has been found so effective a means to this end as the debtor system. The first thing a girl is compelled to do on being thrown into one of these houses is to buy an expensive wardrobe at from five to six times its actual value. To be more definite, I have in my possession bills rendered against certain inmates taken from the dens. In these bills stockings costing 75 cents have been charged at $3.00; shoes costing $2.50 are charged at $8.00, and kimonos costing $4.00 are charged at $15.00. As the goods themselves were seized as well as the bills for them, I am able to make this statement. In every case I have found that the girl was compelled to renew her outfit of finery whenever the keeper so dictated, without regard to her need of it. Our investigations have all shown that when a keeper imagined that a girl, an inmate, is intending to leave the place either openly or secretly, a new outfit is forced upon her at absurd figures and she is told that she cannot leave until every cent of her indebtedness has been wiped out, and that if she attempts to do so, they will "put the law on her." In the dozens of cases which I have examined there has not been a single one which has failed to show evidence of this kind. I have in my possession numerous copies of bills rendered against these wretched women in which their costumes reach as high a figure at $1,200 and even $1,500. This indebtedness system is