WOMAN'S HELPING HAND TO THE PRODIGAL DAUGHTER Annie, Sadie, Edna, thousands of girls like them, girls of whom almost identical stories might be told, help to swell the long procession of prodigals every succeeding year.

They joined that procession ignorantly because they thirsted for pleasure.

Their days were without interest, their minds were unfurnished with any resources.

At fourteen most of them left public school.

Reading and writing are about as much intellectual accomplishments as the school gives them, and the work waiting for them in factory, mill, or department store is rarely of a character to increase their intelligence.
Ask a girl, "Why do you go to the dance hall?
Why don't you stay home evenings ?" Nine times in ten her answer will be: "What should I do with myself, sitting home and twirling my fingers ?" If you suggest reading, she will reply: "You can't be reading all the time." In other words, there is no intellectual impulse, but instead an instinct for action.
The crowded tenement, the city slum, an oppressive system of ill-paid labor, these are evils which a gradually developing social conscience must one day eliminate.