Take the lust of sex. If alcoholism is stimulated in many ways, it is as nothing compared with the incessant appeals to lust. We all hear of the profits from the drink traffic. We are only beginning to hear of the profits from the traffic in women, which are often closely bound up with the profits of drink. But we must insist on knowing very much more than we do about these profits. The Chicago Commission asserts that in their belief Chicago “is far better proportionately to its population than most of the other large cities of the country,” and this statement is based upon a careful study of fifty-two of the largest cities. In this city of Chicago (with a population of two millions) prostitution, they assert, is a “Commercialised Business of large proportions with tremendous profits of more than fifteen million dollars (over £3,000,000) per year, controlled largely by men, not women. Separate the male exploiter from the problem and we minimise its extent and abate its flagrant outward expression. In addition we check an artificial stimulus which has been given to the _business_ so that larger profits may be made by the men exploiters.” A Committee of Fourteen, which made inquiry in New York City, declared: “Some of the profit-sharers must be dispensed with through the force of public opinion or by means of heavy penalties, before the growth of vice can be checked. These include those who profit off the place—the landlord, agent, janitor, amusement dealer, brewer, and furniture dealer; those who profit off the act—the keeper, procurer, druggist, physician, midwife, police officer, and politician; those who profit off the children—employers, procurers, and public service corporations; those who deal in the futures of vice—publishers, manufacturers, and vendors of vicious pictures and articles; those who exploit the unemployed—the employment agent and employers; a group of no less than _nineteen_, middle-men, who are profit-sharers in vice.” It is evident that if so many people can make a profit, this constitutes a temptation to exploiters, and if the business could be made unprofitable, it would be greatly reduced. Demand creates supply. Some of the demand comes from the natural lustfulness of men. But this is immensely stimulated by those who make profits, and the supply is secured very largely by fraud and deception, by persistent siege, by the ruining of girls under promise of marriage. In Chicago the average wage of a shop girl is six dollars a week; it takes at least eight dollars a week to support life there; the prostitute can make twenty-five dollars a week. Yet even so, she could not be secured in sufficient numbers without the carefully calculated traffic. A prominent social worker in Chicago said in his evidence: “A lot can be done, if we believe that a very large percentage of those who pass through a period of prostitution are capable of climbing upward instead of downward by the momentum of their own better nature. We will