TRAVELLERS' AID.

WE published two weeks ago a letter from the Secretary of the " Travellers' Aid Society for Girls and Women" (Head Office, 3 Baker Street, London, W.) confirming statements already printed in the Spectator as to the resource- fulness and perseverance of those who try to decoy girls to their ruin. Since then we have read some of the reports of the Society, which has been in existence for twenty-seven years, and we are not sure whether we are more impressed by the reality of the dangers to which working-class girls are exposed or by the simplicity, ignorance, and carelessness of the girls themselves. Every one is disinclined to believe in the reality of what he does not happen to see. In writing about the "white slave traffic" we said that most English people think that while it may be possible in Vienna, Now York, and other cities to decoy girls away and keep them prisoners, so that they are never heard of again, it is impossible in London. But it is not only possible in London, but it actually happens, though, we admit, less often than in New York or Chicago.

The letter of the Secretary of the Travellers' Aid Society, which we published, shows that the great London railway stations are watched by vultures who keep "their eyes skinned" for a sign of hesitation or bewilderment on the part of girls arriving from the country or from abroad. The secretary gave us one instance of a woman who tried to induce a girl to go away with her by actually pretending that she was the official of the Travellers' Aid Society for whom the girl was on the look-out. In another ease a girl speaking only German arrived in London and failed to meet the lady who should have been on the platform to receive her. In- stantly a man who spoke her own language was offering his help. One does not know whether he had found out that the girl was expected or whether ho himself had engaged the girl by a stratagem, or whether ho was merely waiting for such a. chance as this to turn up. Perhaps the last. The gulls appear mysteriously out of the void wherever there is fish to catch. The stationmaster remonstrated with the German and per- suaded the girl to reject his help and go to the Travellers' Aid Society.

One of the most satisfactory things which the Society

records is the universal willingness of railway officials to co-operate with the Society. The waiting-room attendants are in touch with the Society, and can give girls who are in doubt precise information as to what they ought to do. A leaflet is circulated among porters indicating how they may help. Thus, if a girl is seen standing about a platform, apparently not knowing what to do, it is suggested that a porter should advise her to go to the attendant in the waiting-room. Of course the greatest difficulty is to protect those who come to London in answer to advertisements and who believe that they are going to a good situation or to a reputable registry office. Porters would seldom have an opportunity of putting a question to such girls, who probably leave the station at once in complete confidence ; but they are invited, whenever they do see a favourable opening, to offer some such warnings as these: " Did you expect friends to meet you P " " If you have not been in London before you should be very careful indeed where you go. . . . First take advice from the attendant in the waiting-room."

The agents of the Society meet girls by appointment on their arrival, and the Society is also prepared to inquire into

the respectability of situations. At the large London terminus stations and at certain of the docks there are paid officials permanently on duty. It is obviously impossible to have agents regularly at work everywhere, and outside London the Society depends upon local agents, who will always meet girls or make inquiries for them by arrangement. Making inquiries as to the respectability of advertisers is necessarily a very delicate business. Those who are respectable are sometimes resentful when they discover that their characters have been, as it seems to' hem, canvassed behind their backs. Sensible people could have no objection in the world to such inquiries, but it is easily understood how some persons who know nothing of the work of the Society may be annoyed if the nature of the investigation is stupidly or mischievously represented by the girl in whose interest it has been made.

The chief part of the dangers against which girls who travel alone have to be protected is their own stupidity, ignorance, and recklessness. For example, one of the reports tells of a girl who was found at a London railway station asking to be allowed to travel to her home, although she was unable to pay for a ticket. A railway official sent her to the Society. It was found that she had been in domestic service, but had not tried to do her work properly. Her mother, though willing to have the girl back, was unable to pay the fare. The father earned only 13s. a week and had other children. The fare was advanced by the Society, and the mother wrote : "It was all her own silly fault, but I trust, please God, this will be a lesson to her." The mother then went on to the following curiously fatalistic comment, which suggests a disastrous maternal philosophy: "I know we are not all born to do alike. It's well for them that are born to do well." Yet this compliant woman was not only thoroughly honest but honourable. She repaid the fare in due course and offered to pay 5s. for the other expenses. The Society replied that nothing more than the fare was expected from one of her means, but that the daughter might pay the 5s. out of her wages when she was able to do so. The mother replied again honourably, and again fatalis- tically, that she insisted on paying the 5s., as her daughter certainly never would.

Take another example. A girl who was seriously ill left the home where she was being nursed and telegraphed to a sister saying that she was on her way to London and asking her to meet the train. As might have been expected, the sister could not come at a moment's notice, and the girl was put into a cab by the station officials, and the cabman was told to drive her to the Society's headquarters in Baker Street. On the way the girl, who was in a weak state of nervous excitement, imagined that she was being taken in the wrong direction. She left the cab and began to walk. Two women from whom she inquired the way invited her into a public-house. Still more frightened this feckless but innocent creature said she had never been in a public-house in her life, and—like a man in a sleigh throwing food to pursuing wolves—she bought off what was probably some evil design on the part of the women by giving them threepenoe. She then ran till she met a police- man by whose help she at last reached the office of the Society. When there are people who behave ordinarily in this sort of irrational manner can it be wondered at that there is much work for the Society ?

Examples of what we mean might be quoted indefinitely, but one more will suffice. A delicate little girl of eight arrived in London from Switzerland with a label attached to her. The legend on the label was written both in French and English, and said : " My name is —. I have left Switzer- land to join my mother, who is waiting for me at Victoria Station, London. Please take a little care of me." At Vic-

toria Station there was no mother waiting. The mother was in Lancashire, and had been informed only a day before that the child was coming. She was unable to go to London and was advised to write to the Society. She did not even telegraph. The Society was informed in the morning that the child would arrive in the afternoon, but there was no Con- tinental train arriving in the afternoon at Victoria. Officials were sent to more than one station and the child was found in the evening.

Readers of Clough may remember the simple and strangely moving story which he tells in " Mari Magno " of a girl travelling alone. The story is put into the mouth of the mate of a ship, who describes how a French governess, speaking only her own language, was sent home to France by an Irish family. The journey had not been thought out properly. The vessel sailing from Ireland to Liverpool, on board of which the girl consorted " with pigs and with the Irish reaping horde," did not "connect" with the ship in which she was to have gone to Bordeaux. Clough, with his rich ironical contempt for pretentious humbug, says "Tho pious people, in their careless way, Had made some loose mistake about the day."

The captain, seeing the girl's distress at Liverpool, suggested that she should stay on board his ship for a day and then perhaps some arrangement could be made for her to wait a month for the next steamer if she could pay her board and lodging. She sadly shook her head. She could not pay.

"Think of the hapless creature standing hero Alone, beside her boxes on the pier. Whither to turn, and where to try and go, She knew not ; nay, the language did not know. So young a girl, so pretty too, sat down Here, in the midst of a great seaport town,

What might have happened one may sadly guess."

When all ordinary solutions had perforce been rejected the captain hit on a grand one.

"`There's one thing, Miss,' said he, 'that you can do, It's speaking somewhat sudden-like, it's true, But if you'll marry me, I'll marry you.'"

The gallant and resolute captain was " a young and decent man" and " marry they did, and married live this day."

Unhappily the way of the world does not justify a lost girl in assuming that she will be the heroine of such an idyll.

Alas for honest romance I a sudden offer of marriage on the pier would be more likely to come from a " ponce " than from " a young and decent man" And poor girls, as we have seen, appear to court disaster. It is not the habit of working-class women to use time-tables. They take any train which happens to be going in the right direction, and have the foggiest notion of the details of their journey. In these circumstances a girl is only too ready to fall into an acquaintanceship with any one

who takes the trouble to help her or who gives her a kindly smile. Many of the girls who eventually find their way to the Society have been persuaded by the admirable station officials to leave undesirable chance acquaintances. As Lady Frances Balfour writes in one of the reports—and with her words we may end :— "If it were realized how much wickedness has been thwarted by our work there would be many willing contributors eager to have a part in so noble an undertaking. It is so difficult to make people believe that what they never see really does exist. If they knew how many are employed (both men and women) in getting hold of girls, and receive large sums of money for every girl way- laid and entrapped, then they would believe that there is no work more noble, more worthy of support, than this, which, without any distinction of creed or nationality, will give to a poor girl the moral protection which wealthy parents so gladly provide for their own children."