As for the wretched girls who follow the dreadful trade in question, a good deal can be done by a change in economic conditions.  This ought to be done.  When girls are paid wages inadequate to keep them from starvation, or to permit them to live decently, a certain proportion are forced by their economic misery into lives of vice.  The employers and all others responsible for these conditions stand on a moral level not far above the white slavers themselves.  But it is a mistake to suppose that either the correction of these economic conditions or the abolition of the white slave trade will wholly correct the evil or will even reach the major part of it.  The economic factor is very far from being the chief factor in inducing girls to go into this dreadful life.  As with so many other problems, while there must be governmental action, there must also be strengthening of the average individual character in order to achieve the desired end.  Even where economic conditions are bad, girls who are both strong and pure will remain unaffected by temptations to which girls of weak character or lax standards readily yield.  Any man who knows the wide variation in the proportions of the different races and nationalities engaged in prostitution must come to the conclusion that it is out of the question to treat economic conditions as the sole conditions or even as the chief conditions that determine this question.  There are certain races—­the Irish are honorably conspicuous among them—­which, no matter what the economic pressure, furnish relatively few inmates of houses of ill fame.  I do not believe that the differences are due to permanent race characteristics; this is shown by the fact that the best settlement houses find that practically all their “long-term graduates,” so to speak, all the girls that come for a long period under their influence, no matter what their race or national origin, remain pure.  In every race there are some naturally vicious individuals and some weak individuals who readily succumb under economic pressure.  A girl who is lazy and hates hard work, a girl whose mind is rather feeble, and who is of “subnormal intelligence,” as the phrase now goes, or a girl who craves cheap finery and vapid pleasure, is always in danger.  A high ideal of personal purity is essential.  Where the same pressure under the same economic conditions has tenfold the effect on one set of people that it has on another, it is evident that the question of moral standards is even more important than the question of economic standards, very important though this question is.  It is important for us to remember that the girl ought to have the chance, not only for the necessaries of life, but for innocent pleasure; and that even more than the man she must not be broken by overwork, by excessive toil.  Moreover, public opinion and the law should combine to hunt down the “flagrant man swine” who himself hunts down poor or silly or unprotected girls.  But we must not, in foolish