Those dealing with immigrant girls are sometimes filthy rooms in some rear tenement, reached through a saloon or a barber shop facing the street.

Often the other tenants of the building are fortune tellers, palmists, "trance mediums," and like undesirables.
A large number of these agencies operate lodging houses for their patrons.

There is hardly a good word to say for most of these, except that they are absolutely necessary.

Dirty, unsanitary, miserable as they usually are, if they were closed by law, hundreds, perhaps thousands of domestics temporarily out of work, would be turned into the streets.
Many are unfamiliar with the cities they live in.

Many more are barred from hotels on account of small means.