“A policeman was standing there and saw her do it. He came up and asked me what the trouble was about. Here is where I may get help, I thought, so I told him I had just left the hospital, that my money was all spent, and that I had been put out of my room. He asked how old I was. I told him I was eighteen—that’s two years ago, I’m twenty now. He asked if I lived here in the city. I told him I lived in the country, but was going to stay in the city and work. He wrote something on a card and gave it to me, saying: ‘I’ll get a hack driver to take you to a hotel. When you get there give that card to the landlady.’ “The driver took me a few blocks to a place where he stopped, let me out, and helped me up the steps. He rang the bell and went away. I gave the card to a colored girl who opened the door. She came back in a minute and asked me to come in—and,” she finished wearily, “I’ve been in Miss Kate’s ever since, kid. “Miss Kate took me in and dressed me up. She charged me double for my clothes. I pay her, she pays the milliner. It’s the same with all her girls. No girl ever goes into her place unless she is broke and ragged and sick and hungry. I’ve been there two years, and if I stay there twenty years I will still be in debt to her. The longer I stay the more I owe. Everybody charges us double for what we buy. We have to go to a certain drug store where we get robbed. On our days off, Miss Kate takes us around to her friends in the saloons and restaurants, and they rob us. We go out with her because we can wear our best clothes and look good and she shows us off to her customers. “Once in a while a girl gets so discouraged that she runs out into the street in her wrapper, but she don’t get out of the block. Some other landlady’s door is open and she goes in hoping to get fairer treatment and a chance to save part of the money she earns, but it’s the same old thing. What the madam don’t get goes to the doctors, druggists, hack drivers, and messengers. All we get is enough to eat, enough to wear, and plenty to drink if we’re foolish enough to go that route. God only knows what becomes of these girls when they get too old and ugly. They go down and down from one place to another till they finally land in the street, old, worn out, dissipated and diseased. No man will have them. I guess they go to the river or to the hospital.