department stores are often breeding stations of prostitution by reason of two factors—extremely low wages and environment. There can be no disputing the fact that these two working together, and perhaps superinduced by other compelling influences, do bring about a condition the upshot of which is prostitution. Such supine reports as those of the Consumers' League, an organization of well-disposed dilletantes, and of superficial purposes, give no insight into the real estate of affairs. In his rather sensational and vitriolic raking of Chicago, W. T. Stead strongly deals with the effects of department store conditions in filling the ranks of prostitutes. He quotes Dora Claflin, the proprietress of a brothel, as saying that such houses as hers obtained their inmates from the stores, those in particular where hours were long and the pay small.3
Mockery of mockeries that in this era of civilization, so-called, a system should prevail that yields far greater returns from selling the body than from honest industry!
It has been estimated that the number of young women who receive $2,500 in one year by the sale of their persons is larger than the number of women of all ages, in all businesses and professions, who make a similar sum by work of mind or hand.4 But one of the most significant recognitions of the responsibility of department stores for the prevalence of prostitution, was the act of a member of the Illinois legislature, a few years ago, in introducing a resolution (which failed to pass) to investigate the department stores of Chicago on the ground that conditions in them led to a shocking state of immorality. The statement has been repeatedly made that nearly one-half of the outcast girls and women of Chicago have come from the department stores.5
It was not only by these methods that the firm of Marshall Field & Co. was so phenomenally successful in making money. In the background were other methods which belong to a different category. Whatever