After more than four years of experience, and after having visited in
various capacities, disguised, etc., many of the worst haunts of vice and
houses of prostitution in Chicago, =I= have personally come to this
conclusion:
There is but a small chance for a girl, once having been sold into or
entered upon a life of prostitution, to ever escape therefrom. Invariably
she is kept in debt to her masters; excessive bills for parlor clothes,
board, dentistry, laundry and all conceivable expenses are kept charged up
against her. She is under constant threat of personal violence and
blackmail in every form (her owners securing whenever possible, some
knowledge of her home and friends, and continually holding this knowledge
as a dagger over her), and there is the ever-present whore-masters and
madams with drugs, drinks and bolts and bars, guarding every avenue of
escape with blows and curses and brutality beyond conception. Very few
young girls enter a life of prostitution voluntarily, and few, having once
entered, ever escape therefrom.