The finery which is provided for the girl for house wear is of a nature to make her appearance on the street impossible. Then added to this handicap, is the fact that at once the girl is placed in debt to the keeper for a wardrobe of "fancy" clothes which are charged to her at preposterous prices. She cannot escape while she is in debt to the keeper--and she is never allowed to get out of debt--at least until all desire to leave the life is dead within her. The examination of witnesses has brought out the fact that not many of the women in this class expect to live more than ten years after they enter upon their voluntary or involuntary life of white slavery. Perhaps the average is less than that. Many died painful deaths by disease, many by consumption, but it is hardly beyond the truth to say that suicide is their general expectation. "We all come to it sooner or later," one of the witnesses remarked to her companions in the jail, the other day, when reading in the newspaper of the suicide of a girl inmate of a notorious house. A volume could be written on this revolting subject, but I have no disposition to add a single word to what will open the eyes of parents to the fact that white slavery is an existing condition--a system of girl hunting that is national and international in its scope, that it literally consumes thousands of girls--clean, innocent girls--every year; that it is operated with a cruelty, a barbarism that gives a new meaning to the word fiend; that it is an imminent peril to every girl in the country who has a desire to get into the city and taste its excitements and its pleasures. The facts I have stated are for the awakening of parents and guardians of girls. If I were to presume to say anything to the possible victims of this awful scourge of white slavery it would be this: "Those who enter here leave hope behind." The depths of debasement and suffering disclosed by the investigation now in progress would make the flesh of a seasoned man of the world creep with horror and shame. CHAPTER IV. MENACE OF THE WHITE SLAVE TRADE. By Edwin W. Sims, United States District Attorney, Chicago. Right at the outset let me say in all frankness that I would never, from personal choice, write upon a subject of this character. Its sensationalism is personally repellent to me. On the other hand, no matter how carefully the public prosecutor may preserve the legal viewpoint and the legal temperament, his work may lead him into situations where he feels that he cannot, in common humanity, withhold from the public a knowledge of the things which he knows cannot fail to be of actual protective benefit to many homes; that to withhold the facts and disclosures which have come to him as an officer of the law would be to deprive the innocent and the worthy of a protection which might save many a home from sorrow, disgrace and ruin.