4 6o TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



a net half million of, in great part, poverty-stricken immigrants — and 

 this in face of the fact that our country is no longer able to provide work 

 for those already here. If it be true that the alleged number of children 

 die because they or their parents have insufficient nourishment, one 

 must concede that their deaths are a blessing to themselves and to the 

 community. Such children should not have been born. But the asser- 

 tions are a priori, they can not be proved and are closely related to the 

 other assertion that poverty is the cause, not merely a cause of crime. 

 The statement of an abandoned woman before a State Commission is 

 accepted as final, despite the counter assertion of the associated social 

 workers, whose close relations with the impoverished classes should 

 make their statements authoritative. But the slanderous statement is 

 spread broadcast and wage-earning women are viewed with suspicion. 



It may well be that not a low wage, but a wage too low to gratify 

 vanity or the desire for luxuries, may be the determining cause in a 

 great proportion of cases. Sexual desire is the strongest natural appetite 

 in every normal young man or woman. If there be a deep-seated moral 

 sense, the wage will make no difference. If there be no moral sense, 

 the wage is unimportant. So long as the chief deterrent from gratifica- 

 tion of the desire is the fear of inconvenience and social disgrace, yield- 

 ing to temptation will be dependent on the danger of exposure. Un- 

 questionably, the majority of fallen women come from the poorer classes, 

 because those classes are by far the most numerous ; but a very consider- 

 able proportion have come from among those whose wages are far from 

 low, while the record of divorce courts make very clear that even the 

 possession of wealth can not prevent women from straying. This ques- 

 tion of morals in women employees answers well as a slogan in attacks 

 upon wage-payers, but it appears to sink into insignificance when it 

 involves the rights of wage-earners as against the wage-payer. A tele- 

 gram from Everett, Washington, dated October 23, of last year and pub- 

 lished in the New York papers, gives the illustration. The manager of 

 a telephone company, appearing before the State Industrial Commission, 

 held that employers should weed out from their service all immoral girls 

 and women. But two women members of the commission maintained 

 that employers should not concern themselves about the morality or 

 immorality of women employees, provided these perform their tasks 

 efficiently; these commissioners insisted that the employer has no right 

 to exercise any control over the conduct of employees outside of working 

 hours. 



The demand that all should be able to live according to the " Amer- 

 ican " standard, whatever that may mean, is coupled with the assertion 

 that wages have not kept pace with the increased cost of living. Tables 

 of comparative prices are published in the daily papers, which prove 

 that the cost of food has increased incredibly within a decade or two. It 

 is well understood that one can prove almost anything by means of 



