A New Conscience

In this complicated text, Addams lays bare the race and class implications of the anti-prostitution movement. At the same time, the workers of Hull House were closest in proximity to the Dearborn Station area, which was a heavily populated by Italian, Irish, and Eastern European immigrants. There were beaters on the streets to make sure the girls didn’t escape the brothels. Hull House could not determine wages for these women—they may not have even existed. But they did mark the location on their maps with white boxes, a ghostly bookmark in what would become a future debate for “sex work is work.”