Even this exceptionally well informed audience may not be fully aware of the extent and power of the evil forces which Europe and America have through this treaty combined to oppose. That the treaty was originally drafted without the assistance of our own government, indicates that Europe first realized the necessity of governmental action. The adhesion of our own government to the treaty proves its subsequent recognition of the seriousness of the evil. Briefly stated, the status of the white slave traffic is this: It is a traffic with local, interstate, national and international ramifications. It has the complete outfit of a large business; large capital, representatives in various countries, well paid agents, and able, high salaried lawyers. Its victims are numbered yearly by the thousands. They include not only the peasant girls of European villages, but also the farmers' daughters of our own country. Some are uneducated and wholly ignorant; others have enjoyed good education. While most of them come from the homes of poverty, occasionally a child of well-to-do parentage is numbered among the victims. The alert agents of the traffic move from place to place, alluring peasant girls and farmers' daughters from their homes, entrapping innocent victims at railway stations and public resorts. Not a few girls who go to the cities to seek their fortunes and fail are caught by these harpies. And remember, I am alluding now not to those who go astray because of incidental misfortunes of circumstance, condition, or blind trust in some unworthy lover, but only to those who are entrapped by the agents of the organized white slave traffic system. The above statements have been abundantly established by the investigations of the National Vigilance Committee within the past two years and have been confirmed by other competent authorities. These conditions have been due not to the wish or the intention of our people, but to our blindness or our ignorance. We forget that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, as one declaiming of political freedom has said. The same price must be paid for every other civic excellence or right. The liberty of woman, quite as much as the liberty of man, should be protected, and woman's moral freedom, quite as much as man's political freedom, demands for its protection unceasing vigilance. Without going further into general conditions, I wish to present a statement regarding America's relations to the white slave traffic in China and Japan and to the yellow slave traffic in the Pacific Coast states of our own country. My information regarding China and Japan is based primarily on my own personal observations and inquiries in those countries. My information regarding conditions in California is based upon the report of a special agent of the National Vigilance Committee and upon the reports of missionaries and other workers among the Chinese and Japanese women on our Western coast.