Maude E. Miner, who declined a chair of mathematics in a woman’s college to work in the Night Court, is one of an increasing number of women who are attempting a great task.  They are trying to solve a problem which has baffled the minds of the wisest since civilization dawned.  They have set themselves to combat an evil fate which every year overtakes countless thousands of young girls, dragging them down to misery, disease, and death.  At the magnitude of the effort these women have undertaken one stands appalled.  Will they ever reach the heart of the problem?  Can they ever hope to do more than reclaim a few individuals?  This much did the missionaries before them.

“We could reclaim fully seventy-five per cent,” declares Miss Miner, “if only we could find a way to begin nearer the beginning.”

To begin the reform of any evil at the beginning, or near the beginning, instead of near the end is now regarded as an economy of effort.  That is what educators are trying to do with juvenile delinquency; what physicians are doing with disease; what philanthropists are beginning to do with poverty.

Hardly any one has suggested that the social evil might have a cause, and that it might be possible to attack it at its source.  Yet that any large number of girls enter upon such a horrible career, willingly, voluntarily, is unbelievable to one who knows anything of the facts.  There must be strong forces at work on these girls, forces they find themselves entirely powerless to resist.

Miss Miner and her fellow probation officers are the visible signs of a very important movement among women to discover what these forces are.  Meager, indeed, are the facts at hand.  We have had, and we still have, in cities east and west, committees and societies and law and order leagues earnestly engaged in “stamping out” the evil.  It is like trying to stamp out a fire constantly fed with inflammables and fanned by a strong gale.  The protests of most of these leagues amount to little more than vain clamor against a thing which is not even distantly comprehended.

The personnel of these agencies organized to “stamp out” the evil differs little in the various cities.  It is largely if not wholly masculine in character, and the evil is usually dealt with from the point of view of religion and morals.  Women, when they appear in the matter at all, figure as missionaries, “prison angels,” and the like.  As evangelists to sinners women have been permitted to associate with their fallen sisters without losing caste.  Likewise, when elderly enough, they have been allowed to serve on governing boards of “homes” and “refuges.”  Their activities were limited to rescue work.  They might extend a hand to a repentant Magdalene.  A Phryne they must not even be aware of.  In other words, this evil as a subject of investigation and intelligent discussion among women was absolutely prohibited.  It has ever been their Great Taboo.