And he proceeded to open Violet's eyes not a little. He told her of the hundreds of thousands of girls that are annually caught in the great net; of how five thousand new ones are every year needed to maintain Chicago's standing supply of twenty-five thousand; of how Boston, Philadelphia, New Orleans, San Francisco--all the cities and the towns--are served proportionately, and of how, above all, from the crowded East Side of New York, there are dragged each week hundreds of children and young women no one of whom, if sold outright, brings as much as a capable horse. "Some ve bring in," he said, "und some ve send out. Ve take from Italy, und ve send to Sous America. From all ofer the vorld ve take, und to all ofer the vorld ve send." "You don't always blame the girls?" "Plame dem? A girl as lived by us, she did tucking in a undervear factory. She has coffee und a roll fur preakfast, tea und a roll fur lunch, von biece of bacon und von egg fur supper effery nighd. Ten hours a day in a bad smelling room, crowded vis ozzer girls, she runs dot machine. Part de year she has no vork, because always de factory does not run, but vhen de years ends, dot machine, makin' four dousand stitches a minute, she has tucked dree miles of undervear und got paid dree hundred dollars. Do I plame such a girl if she easy comes to belief a paid veasel as makes lofe to her und says he marries her und gets her avay from a factory?" "All of the girls don't come from such hard jobs though." "So? Look now!" He took from an inside pocket a fistful of soiled envelopes and shuffled them until he found one on which he had transcribed some figures. "Yesderday afternoon to dis Astor Library I found a report vat vas made by people sent out by de State of Massachusetts. It got a kind of census from four dousand vomen in sixty different cities, all ofer. Before dey vent bad, five hundret vas garment-vorkers, und eight hundret vas rope-makers, milliners, laundry people, paper-box, cigar und cigarette makers, candy-box packers, or vorked in textile mills or shoe factories. All dem, see, vorked in de poor paid trades, und a hundret und sixteen come from department-stores, und dot's as bad as Katie'll tell you. Vorse yet de job of house-servant--sixty per cent. vas dot. Und all de rest--all de ozzer sixty-two per cent.--vere girls who hadn't had not jobs, und dey had to live und couldn't no ozzer vay earn a livin'!" "Then you think," asked Violet, "they wouldn't go wrong if they could get decent work at decent wages?" Hermann looked at her quickly. "Vould you?" he asked. She shivered and shook her head and Hermann, seeing that the heat of his zeal had led him into a personal appeal that all his normally slow instincts prompted him to avoid, hurried back to the safe ground of generalities.