The sporting houses ...

One of my favorite Montana books is a big paperback volume called Not in Precious Metals Alone: A Manuscript History of Montana. Long out of print, the book is a collection of primary source materials about the state's past, transcribed and collected by the staff of the Montana Historical Society. There aren't too many monumental things in there ... but there's lots of fascinating reading, mostly on an insightful, personal scale.

Many of the book's entries are old letters, and here's part of one of them. This was written in April 1917 by a young woman who'd worked in the enormous Red Light District of Butte. But then Montana's Attorney General shut the Butte brothels down, and the girls scattered ... including this woman, who was exiled to Deer Lodge where business just wasn't as good. So she wrote to the attorney general to complain:

Dear Sir:

I want to drop you a line to informd you that the [Deer Lodge] sporting house is running Wide open, Music, & selling drinks.

May Carroll charge us girls $15.00 per week, & want us to stay with greeks for $2.00 & A White man for $3.00. She treats us girls like dogs. She is in Butte today gathering more girls . . .

Its a shame to closed the rest of the sporting Houses & leave Deer Lodge run. Its put me out $1000, for I was working [in Butte.] Deer Lodge house [has] 4 to 7 girls working all the time.

All we girls want is justice . . . I am writing to you hoping you will closed Deer Lodge or open the rest of the good towns.