"Nobody vat knows," he said, "could belief it. Nobody vat knows could belief girls'd go into such a life, or once dey got into it stay dere, because dey vanted to. Vell, vat den? Ve must find out vhy is it dey gets in und vhy dey stay. It is because all de whole luckier vorld lets dem be kep' fast, und, first und foremost, because all de whole luckier vorld lets dose factories dey come from be bad blaces, und couldn't gif dose ozzer sixty-two-per-cent girls no ozzer vay to earn a livin' yet." Violet thought again, as she still so often thought, of Max. "An' what about the men that start them?" she inquired. Hermann brought his heavy fist down upon his knee. "Dem too!" he said. "Dem is de vorst mens in de vorld. If I can hate any man, dey is him. It makes my red blood to steam und my skin to get all brickly to see dem or sink of dem. But I know dot dey, too, are results of conditions, und dey sink dot dey are doing kindness to de girls by not letting dem go to chail or starve. De vorst mens in de vorld--next to politicians as lets dem live und takes most dot dey earn! Und de politicians demselves are only vat dot big system as makes us all vork for less as ve earn, und makes us all pay more as ve can--only vat de big system makes dem!" Violet understood but partially; yet she had seen enough to know that the slavery must have its political side, and it was concerning this that she now asked. That Hermann made wholly clear. He told her the story of the growth of political parties, the development of political machines, the necessary preying of these machines, in every city, first upon gambling and then, as that passed, upon prostitution, and of how this meant both money and votes. As he talked, she learned how this brought into being the "cadets"--the followers of the low heelers--who scoured their own and other towns, hanging about the doors of factories, tenements, shops--wherever the life was so hard as to drive those who lived it to despair--themselves impelled by economic conditions, by the choice between hard work and small pay on the one hand and base work and better pay on the other, and themselves forced into the "gangs" of childish marauders while at the primary schools, and so trained upward, step by step, to the "gang" of the politician. She learned how, after the last outcry, a popular leader had struck a cadet, in the presence of the press-agents, and then, when this one blow was taken as the end of the infamous relation, had quietly joined with his fellows in strengthening that relation as it never could have been strengthened with the attention of the public upon it. And she learned how the result had been a whole criminal confederacy, with its capital in the poorer quarters, bound together politically and financially, with its officers, its agents, and its regularly retained lawyers, at once to defend and to attack.