A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil by Addams

Page 1 of 61

Produced by Jeffrey Kraus-yao

A NEW CONSCIENCE AND AN ANCIENT EVIL

By JANE ADDAMS

HULL HOUSE, CHICAGO

Author of Democracy and Social Ethics, Newer Ideals of Peace The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets Twenty Years at Hull-House

New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1912

To the Juvenile Protective Association of Chicago, whose superintendent and field officers have collected much of the material for this book, and whose president, Mrs. Joseph T. Bowen, has so ably and sympathetically collaborated in its writing.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I As inferred from An Analogy CHAPTER II As indicated by Recent Legal Enactments CHAPTER III As indicated by the Amelioration of Economic Conditions CHAPTER IV As indicated by the Moral Education and Legal Protection of Children CHAPTER V As indicated by Philanthropic Rescue and Prevention CHAPTER VI As indicated by Increased Social Control

PREFACE

The following material, much of which has been published in McClure's Magazine, was written, not from the point of view of the expert, but because of my own need for a counter-knowledge to a bewildering mass of information which came to me through the Juvenile Protective Association of Chicago. The reports which its twenty field officers daily brought to its main office adjoining Hull House became to me a revelation of the dangers implicit in city conditions and of the allurements which are designedly placed around many young girls in order to draw them into an evil life.

As head of the Publication Committee, I read the original documents in a series of special investigations made by the Association on dance halls, theatres, amusement parks, lake excursion boats, petty gambling, the home surroundings of one hundred Juvenile Court children and the records of four thousand parents who clearly contributed to the delinquency of their own families. The Association also collected the personal histories of two hundred department-store girls, of two hundred factory girls, of two hundred immigrant girls, of two hundred office girls, and of girls employed in one hundred hotels and restaurants.

While this experience was most distressing, I was, on the other hand, much impressed and at times fairly startled by the large and diversified number of people to whom the very existence of the white slave traffic had become unendurable and who promptly responded to any appeal made on behalf of its victims. City officials, policemen, judges, attorneys, employers, trades unionists, physicians, teachers, newly arrived immigrants, clergymen, railway officials, and newspaper men, as under a profound sense of compunction, were unsparing of time and effort when given an opportunity to assist an individual girl, to promote legislation designed for her protection, or to establish institutions for her rescue.

Prev - Next >>

Share this book

Table of contents (by pages)