Arizona republican., 1914-05-02
WHITE SLAVERY AND DRINK

If there is anyone on earth who ought to know more about the white slave traffic than any other it is the national president of the Florence Crittenten Mission. This office is filled by Kate Walker Barrett who has made d study of the question under such circumstances that she ought to know what she is talking about when she says.
 If liquor were kept out of houses O. prostitution. these places would in very short time, Of d necessity. disappear. They need the revenue from the liquor sold at enormously high prices in order to get enough money to buy protection from the police and other authorities. They need the inflamng effect of the liquor both upon the women who are the inmates of the houses and upon the men who frequent them. The saIc and the drinking of liquor and the houses oi prostitution are always found together Not only is the IT, cuor always found in the house "t prostitution. but the scarlet wom tn' can always he located from the saloon Not a saloon exists which is not a house of assignati0r, and the saloon is always the heaIqUar- teis of the "rrocurcr' and "caIct The use of l.quor in the seduction of young girls is the most common means of getting them into a con dition to consent to the wishes of tEe seducer The traffic in girls would disappear if the liquor traffic were prohibited"
 This last se:.ten-e is remarkable. |, cCmes from some one Vnp knows the traG" as few .lnoW it. r. means much
 It is idle to talk about low wages being the principal cause of delin- i quencv. The poor girl is more for tified, as usual proposition. than the middle and upper class girls. Low wages is often used as an eX- cuse for moral delinquency because il does not sound so bad as the real cause
 1 However, the economic phase of the question of liquor is most ap- palling It has so much to do with poverty on large scale, with the divergence between wages and the cost of living. with the unmarried condition of both sexes. with g dozen and one contributing causes for the
 white slave traffic that we feel like
 emphasizing this feature of the ar gument
 Drink causes an average loss of ef-
 ficiency in labor of T per cent. Here
 is an economic destruction of one
 fifth of the labor of the country SC
 far as earning power is concerned
 Il closes the door of opportunity tc
 labor because of the discriminate
 against drinkers. Ninety per cent O
 the railroads; sevcnty-nine per cen
 of the manufacturers: cighty-eigh
 per cent of the trades, and even sev : enty-two per cent of the agricutur alists discriminate against the use of intoXicants. His sphere of use fitness is thus narrowed an averag of more than eighty per cent.
 The direct cost of the liquor beini more than two billions of dollars an } the indirect cost bringing the tota up to over fifteen billions of dol lars. it is small wonder that labor i , opening it's eyes to the facts. Whit slavery finds fertile field in thes l figures.
 7 There are so few men employed i
 the liquor business in proportion t the amount of capital invested tha the so-called industry could be wipe out without being missed The capi |. tai invested would find other produc tive employment that would not Onl l keep it's employees but add man more The diversion of fifteen bil