"I'd quit now, but what's the use? If I left here every one would be kicking me down in the gutter. Now suppose I wanted to be good, would mothers you know want their nice, innocent daughters associating with me? No, you know they wouldn't. It would be only a couple of weeks and then I'd be back again." "Have any of the girls in this place saved money except you?" was asked. "There isn't a girl in the place who has ten dollars to her name except me," was the answer. "How long have the majority of them been leading this life?" "Most of them about two or three years. You see, this is a 'dollar house.' We don't get many of the young ones in here," was the reply. "How are you paid in this place?" was asked. "The girls get half of what they get from men. Then they get a tin check for two and a half cents for every bottle of beer they drink with the fellows that come in. They have to accept every drink offered them. "They are charged five dollars a week for their board here by the keeper of the place. They have to buy all their clothes through him, too. They are charged big prices, so they don't have a chance to save." "What does the average girl make in this place?" was asked. "Oh, $12 to $18 a week, I guess. They have to pay their board and for their clothes out of that," replied the girl. In the "red light" district of Chicago is an organized "trust." At its head are five big politicians. They practically control the district. The trust owns a dry goods store, a grocery store, a delicatessen, a drug store, a restaurant and a hotel. It has its own manicure parlors, its own dentist parlor and its own doctors. Every necessity of the denizens of the vice ridden district is catered to by this company. The girls of the district must patronize them. This is an iron-bound order that cannot be broken. Suppose that a girl in one of the dens wishes to purchase a dress. She goes to the dry goods store. There she makes her choice. Before she leaves the house in which she is an inmate, the person in charge there gives her a slip of paper. It certifies that she is an inmate of that house. She hands this to the shop keeper. After she has made her purchase she is handed back another slip. On it is marked the price of the dress. It is always double or triple the amount for which she could have purchased the same article at any other store. When she returns to the house she turns this slip in. At the end of the week, when the house gives her the money she has earned, that exorbitant charge is deducted from the amount. This conveys but a small idea of the bondage system that holds the girls of the district in its grasp. The exorbitant prices charged the girls for commodities keeps them constantly indebted to the keeper of the den where they are inmates. They never get ahead.