mutually recognized and enforced between the keepers of all houses; in other words, no girl can leave one house and enter another unless she is able to show that she leaves no indebtedness behind her. [Illustration: HON. CLIFFORD G. ROE] [Illustration: HON. HARRY A. PARKIN] As this phase of business in the underworld is one of the main props of white slavery it is well to go into it with definiteness and to give examples which illustrates its operation. In one of the recent raids a big Irish girl was taken and held as a witness. She was old enough, strong enough and wise enough, it seemed to me, to have overcome almost any kind of opposition--even physical violence. She could have put up a fight which few men, no matter how brutal, would care to meet. I asked her why she did not get out of the house, which was one of the worst in Chicago. Her answer was: "Get out--I can't. They make us buy the cheapest rags and they are charged against us at fabulous prices; they make us change outfits at intervals of two or three weeks, until we are so deeply in debt that there is no hope of ever getting out from under. Then, to make such matters worse, we seldom get an accounting oftener than once in six months and sometimes ten months or a year will pass between settlements--and when we do get an accounting it is always to find ourselves deeper in debt than before. We've simply got to stick and that's all there is to it." To frame an enactment which will knock this prop of indebtedness system out from under the white slave business might appear to be a most difficult matter, and yet I believe that the legislature which enacts a statute of which the following clause is the essential part will go a long way towards accomplishing this most desired result: "And whoever shall hold, detain, restrain, or attempt to hold, detain or restrain in any house of prostitution or other place, any female for the purpose of compelling such female, directly or indirectly, by her voluntary or involuntary service or labor, to pay, liquidate or cancel any debt, dues or obligation incurred therein or said to have been incurred in such house of prostitution or other place, shall be deemed guilty of a felony and, upon conviction thereof, shall be imprisoned in the penitentiary at hard labor for not less than two or more than ten years."