The lives of 5,000 young girls are laid upon the altar of lust every year in the city of Chicago alone.

The insatiable rapacity of man, the lust of the hunt, the demands of brutish passion ordain it that these 5,000 young innocents be led forth to the slaughter, annually.

This statement is not a matter of guess. It is the estimate of officers of the Chicago Law and Order League, the Illinois Vigilance Society, the police authorities and Assistant State's Attorney Clifford G. Roe.

There are 68,000 women leading a nameless existence in the city of Chicago alone. This is the police estimate, based upon a census made by the captains of the different police districts. It includes the women who live—and die—in the temples of shame on Twenty-second street, on the Strand in South Chicago, on the West Side, and on Wells street and vicinity on the North Side. It includes the "street walkers," the girls who infest such dance halls in Twenty-second street, the women in private flats, and the mistresses of wealthy men.

The average duration of a woman leading a life of shame is from two to twelve years, according to Dr. L. Blake Baldwin, city physician. Dr. Baldwin places his average at four years, basing this upon the life of the woman in the brothel where the majority of fallen women are to be found.

Drink, which goes hand in hand with vice, cigarette smoking, various kinds of "dope," the all night method of living and the daily vicissitudes of existence are the contributing causes, according to Mr. Baldwin. But the chief cause of early demise is the ravages of diseases inseparable from immoral life.

The result is that the market houses are yawning, constantly holding forth an insatiable maw into which new blood must be poured, new lives must be thrown, more young innocents must be devoured.

And this is the reason for the existence of this book. If one mother or father may be warned in time, if one single life may be saved from the traps men make and the lures they bait for the enslavement of the flower and innocence of the nation the author will have been well repaid indeed.

A great many persons are yet skeptical of the existence of an organized traffic in young girls. If they could have been in the courts of Chicago their minds would have been disabused of the idea that organized slavery does not exist in Chicago.—Assistant State's Attorney Clifford G. Roe.

Within one week I had seven letters from fathers, from Madison, Wisconsin, on the north, to Peoria, Illinois, on the south, asking me in God's name to do something to help find their daughters because they had come to Chicago and disappeared. The mothers, the fathers, even the daughters must be educated regarding the lures that men set or white slavery can not be abolished.—Judge John R. Newcomer, of the Municipal Courts.

This book should go into the homes of every family in this wide nation, rich and poor, sophisticated and unsophisticated, city homes or country homes. It is only when parents realize the pitfalls that they will be able to avoid them.—The Rev. R. Keene Ryan, Pastor of the Garfield Boulevard Presbyterian Church.

Weakness and lack of understanding appeal to me as the opportunity for the work of these human vultures. That young women passing the ages of from 15 to 20 years need more counsel and guidance than many good mothers suspect.—Judge Richard S. Tuthill, of the Juvenile Court.

The victims of the traffic are first ensnared, then enslaved, then diseased. Not until honest men take the stand that will result in the abolition of the segregated districts can this practice of white slavery be stopped.—The Rev. Ernest A. Bell, Superintendent of the Midnight Mission and Secretary of the Illinois Vigilance Association.

The recent examination of more than 200 "white slaves" by the office of the United States district attorney has brought to light the fact that literally thousands of innocent girls from the country districts are every year entrapped into a life of hopeless slavery and degradation because their parents do not understand conditions as they exist and how to protect their daughters from the white slave traders who have reduced the art of ruining young girls to a national and international system.—Hon. Edwin W. Simms, United States District Attorney at Chicago.

If parents will shut their eyes to this canker that is feeding on the flower of our nation they may continue to expect their daughters to be "kidnapped," lost or mysteriously missing.—Arthur Burrage Farwell, of the Law and Order League.