On the street, on the street,To and fro with weary feet;—Aching heart and aching head;Homeless, lacking daily bread;Lost to friends, and joy, and name;Sold to sorrow, sin, and shame;Wet with rain, and chilled by storm;Ruined, wretched, lone, forlorn;—Weak and wan, with weary feet,Still I wander in the street.On the street, on the street,Still I walk with weary feet;Lonely 'mid the city's din,Sunk in grief, and woe, and sin;Far from peace, and far from home;No one caring where I roam;No kind hand stretched forth to save;No bright hope beyond the grave;Feeble, faint, with weary feet,Still I wander, "on the street."
On the street, on the street,To and fro with weary feet;—Aching heart and aching head;Homeless, lacking daily bread;Lost to friends, and joy, and name;Sold to sorrow, sin, and shame;Wet with rain, and chilled by storm;Ruined, wretched, lone, forlorn;—Weak and wan, with weary feet,Still I wander in the street.
On the street, on the street,Still I walk with weary feet;Lonely 'mid the city's din,Sunk in grief, and woe, and sin;Far from peace, and far from home;No one caring where I roam;No kind hand stretched forth to save;No bright hope beyond the grave;Feeble, faint, with weary feet,Still I wander, "on the street."
By Mrs. Ophelia Amigh, Superintendent of the Illinois Training School for Girls.
One of the most disheartening things in the work of protecting innocent girls and restoring to useful lives those who have been betrayed from the path of right living is the blind incredulity of a very large part of the public. There are hundreds of thousands of women in the homes of this country who know as little of what is going on in the world, so far as the safety of their daughters is concerned, as so many children. They are almost marvelously ignorant of the terrible conditions all about them—and all about their children, too.
Of course, their blindness to these awful actualities makes them more comfortable, for the time being, than they could possibly be if awake to the perils which beset the feet of their daughters and the daughters of their friends and neighbors. But there is no permanency to this sort of peace—and thousands of mothers of this class are annually brought to their senses and recalled to earth by discovering that their own daughters have made the fatal misstep and have passed under the brand ofthe pariah. The awakening of such parents comes too late, generally, to do much good. Not always, but in a majority of cases. Many, many times after I have related to a casual woman visitor the simple details of a typical "case" brought here to the State Home, the caller has exclaimed: "How terrible! I didn't dream that such things were going on in the world!"
Now, if you had something of great value which needed to be protected day and night, would you select for such a task a blind watchman? or one who was firmly possessed of the idea that there was really no danger, no occasion for watchfulness? Certainly not! There is nothing in the world of such priceless value to a father or a mother as the honor, the purity, the good character of a daughter. No parent will possibly question this statement. And still there are many thousands of parents entrusted by Providence with the safe-keeping of this priceless treasure who are themselves in the position of discharging that great responsibility with closed eyes, with dull ears and with a childish belief that there is no real peril threatening the safety of their daughters! These parents do not live on earth, their heads are in the clouds and their ears are filled with the cry of "'Peace! Peace!' when there is no peace."
As one whose daily duty it is to deal with wayward and fallen girls, as one who has had to dig down into the sordid and revolting details of thousands of these sad cases (for I have spent the best part of my life in this line of work) let me say to such mothers:
In this day and age of the world no young girl is safe! And all young girls who are not surrounded by the alert, constant and intelligent protection of those who love them unselfishly are in imminent and deadly peril. And the more beautiful and attractive they are the greater is their peril!
The first and most vital step for the protection of the girls who walk in this path of pitfalls is to arouse the sleeping watchmen who are, by reason of their parenthood, responsible for the safekeeping of their daughters. This is why the "White Slave" articles by Hon. Edwin W. Sims and others, which have been published in the Woman's World, have done great good. They have stirred to a sense of alarm thousands of parents who were asleep in a false sense of security. If they accomplish nothing beyond this they will fully have justified their publication.
But it is evident that they will also result in the enactment of much needed legislation, of laws which will make it easier to convict and punish those who live from this foul traffic in the shame of girls whose natural protectors are asleep in this false sense of security. Of course, practically every state has some laws against that traffic—but I do not know of any state in which the laws now on the statutebooks are adequate to deal with the situation as it should be dealt with.
One of the things which comfortable and trusting parents seem to find especially hard to believe is the point upon which both United States District Attorney Sims and his assistant, Mr. Parkin, have placed so much stress—the existence of an active and systematic traffic in girls. There is no safety for the daughter of any parents who are not awake and alive to the actuality of this fact!
It is one of the satisfactions of my life to reflect that I have been one of the agents in sending a dozen—perhaps more—persons to the penitentiary for participating in this traffic.
The dragnets of the inhuman men and women who ply this terrible trade are spread day and night and are manipulated with a skill and precision which ought to strike terror to the heart of every careless or indifferent parent. The wonder is not that so many are caught in this net, but that they escape! I count the week—I might almost say the day—a happy and fortunate one which does not bring to my attention as an officer of the state a deplorable case of this kind.
Just to show how tightly and broadly the nets of these fishers for girls are spread, let me tell of an instance which occurred from this institution:
This girl, whom I will call Nellie, is a very ordinary looking girl and below the average of intelligence, but as tractable and obedientas she is ingenuous. She is wholly without the charm which would naturally attract the eye of the white slave trader.
Because of her quietness, her obedience and her good disposition, she was, in accordance with the rules of the institution, permitted to go into the family of a substantial farmer out in the west and work as a housemaid, a "hired girl"—her wages to be deposited to her credit against the time when she should reach the age of twenty-one and leave the Home.
She had been in her position for some time and was so quiet and satisfactory that one Sunday when the family were not going to church the mistress said:
"Nellie, if you wish to go to church alone you may do so. The milk wagon will be along shortly and you can ride on that to the village—and here is seventy-five cents. You may want to buy your dinner and perhaps some candy."
When Nellie reached town and was on her way past the railroad station to the church, the train for Chicago came in, and the impulse seized her to get aboard, go to the city and look up her father, whom she had not seen for several months. She went to the city and had hardly stepped from the train into the big station when she heard a man's voice saying: "Why, hello, Mary!"
Instantly—foolishly, of course—she answered him and replied:
"My name's not Mary, it's Nellie."
"You look the very picture," he responded, "of a girl I know well whose name is Mary—and she's a fine girl, too! Are any of your folks here to meet you?"
"No," she answered. "My father's here in the city, somewhere, but he doesn't know I'm coming. I've been working out in the country for a long time and I didn't write him about coming back."
Her answers were so ingenuous and revealing that the man saw that he had an easy and simple victim to deal with. Therefore his tactics were very direct.
"It's about time to eat," he suggested, "and I guess we're both hungry. You go to a restaurant and eat with me and perhaps I can help you to find your father quicker than you could do it alone."
She accepted, and in the course of the meal he asked her if she would not like to find a place at which to work. "I know of a fine place in Blank City," he added. "The woman is looking for a good girl just like you."
"Yes, I'd be pleased to get the place, but I haven't any money to pay the fare with," was her answer.
"Oh, that's all right," he quickly replied. "I'll buy your ticket and give you a little money besides for a cab and other expenses. The woman told me to do that if I could find her a girl. She'll send me back a check for it all."
After he had bought the ticket and put her aboard the train going to Blank City, he wrotethe name of the woman to whom he was sending her, gave her about $2 extra and then delivered this fatherly advice to her:
"You're just a young girl and it's best for you not to talk to anybody on the train or after you get off. Don't show this paper to anybody or tell anybody where you're going. It isn't any of their business, anyway. And as soon as you get off the train you'll find plenty of cabs there. Hand your paper to the first cab driver in the line, get in and ride to Mrs. A——'s home. Pay the driver and then walk in."
Believing that she was being furnished a position by a remarkably kind man, the poor girl followed his directions implicitly—and landed the next day in one of the most notorious houses of shame in the state of Illinois outside of Chicago. How she was found and rescued is a story quite apart from the purpose which has led me to tell of this incident—that of indicating how tightly the slave traders have their nets spread for even the most ordinary and unattractive prey. They let no girl escape whom they dare to approach!
It may be well and to the point to add, however, that two other girls who had been in care of the State Home were found to be in the same house to which the girl had been lured, and they were also recovered.
Almost at the beginning of my experience I received a penciled note which I have kept on my desk as a stimulus to my energies andmy watchfulness along the line of checkmating the work of the white slavers. It is very brief and terse—but what a story it tells! Here is a copy of it—with the substitution of a fictitious name:
"Ellen Holmes has been sold for $50.00 to Madame Blank's house at —— Armour avenue."
"Ellen Holmes has been sold for $50.00 to Madame Blank's house at —— Armour avenue."
The statement was true—and the man who sold her and the woman who bought her were both sent to the state penitentiary as a penalty for the transaction!
Another fact which the public finds hard to believe—especially the public of mothers—is that girls who are lured into the life of shame find it impossible to make their escape, and that they are prisoners and slaves in every sense of the word. I recall one instance of a girl from a good home who had fallen into the hands of a white slave trader and been sold to a house in the red-light district. Her people were frantic over her disappearance and made every possible effort to locate her, but without success. Several months after the excitement and publicity aroused by her disappearance died away, a newsboy who had delivered papers at her home—which was in a very good residence district of the city—happened to be passing along a cross street of the red-light section—just on the fringe of it, in fact. Suddenly he heard a tap on the window, looked up and sawthe anxious face of the lost girl. Then she disappeared.
Knowing the story of her strange disappearance, he hurried straight to her home and told of his experience. Instantly the father secured officers and the little newsboy led the posse back to the house, in the window of which he had caught a glimpse of her face. They raided the place and rescued the girl. The story of the terrible treatment which she had received cannot be told here. It is enough to say that she had been held as a captive, imprisoned as much as any inmate of a penitentiary is imprisoned, and that if the friendly newsboy had not happened to pass as he did, the window from which she was looking out, she would undoubtedly be there today or in some other similar prison of shame through the process of exchange.
One other matter in this connection needs to come in for clear and decisive emphasis: the fact that the runaway marriage is the favorite device of the white slaver for landing victims who could not otherwise be entrapped. These alleged summer resorts and excursion centers which are well advertised as Gretna Greens, and as places where the usual legal and official formalities preliminary to respectable marriage are reduced to a minimum, are star recruiting stations for the white slave traffic. I have never seen this point brought out with any degree of clearness in any article, and I earnestly urge all mothers to give this statement themost serious consideration, and never to allow a daughter to go to one of these places on an excursion or under any pretext whatever, unless accompanied by some older member of the family. And even then there is something unwholesome and contaminating in the very atmosphere of such a place.
Do you think that I overstate the perils of places of this kind? Of these gay excursion centers, these American Gretna Greens? I hesitate to say how many girls I have had under my care who were enticed into a "runaway marriage" at these places—and then promptly sold into white slavery by the men whom they had married, the men who married them for no other purpose than to sell them to the houses of the red-light district and live in luxury from the proceeds of their shame.
Let every mother teach her daughter that the man who proposes an elopement, a runaway marriage, is not to be trusted for an instant, and puts himself under suspicion of being that most loathsome of all things in human form—a white slave trader!
By Charles Nelson Crittenton, President of the National Florence Crittenton Mission.
Twenty-six years ago in New York City when I first began to feel an interest in unfortunate girls and established the first Florence Crittenton Home, now known as the Mother Mission, one of the things which surprised and impressed me most in coming close in touch with the subject, was that almost every girl that I met in a house of sin was supporting some man from her ill-gotten earnings. Either the man was her husband, who had driven her on the street in order that he might live in luxury and ease, or else he was her paramour, upon whom with a woman's self-forgetful devotion she delighted to shower everything that she could earn. In addition to this form of slavery I also found that the majority had to pay a certain percentage of their earnings to some individual or organization who had promised them immunity from arrest and to whom they looked for protection.
These were well recognized facts. Every policeman and every judge of the police court knew the true conditions and no one thought of denying them. Although frequently thepoor girls would be kept at their trade by slaps and blows and threats of death, the authorities would contend that they were "willing slaves" and that they therefore deserved no consideration or sympathy.
But when we began to get closer to the hearts of the girls, to know their true history, we discovered that the commencement of this form of slavery had been even in a baser form—that before the girls had become so-called "willing slaves" they were "unwilling slaves." Many of them had fought for their liberty and had submitted only because they had been overcome by superior force. Some of them had been drugged; others kept under lock and key until such time when either their better nature had been drugged into unconsciousness or hardened into a devil-may-care recklessness. Some had had their clothes taken from them, others had been cajoled into quietness by promise of great rewards or by intimidation, which with this young and inexperienced class is one of the most potent methods. But when we, who knew, made these statements, people began to think those interested in the welfare of these girls were going too far, that no such conditions existed. They pointed to the fact that it was beyond human possibility. Many times in those early days, when I would talk to my friends and business associates and tell them of the conditions which existed in New York City, although upon ordinary subjects they had the greatest respect for my truthfulness and conservativeness, having known me in business for a good many years, they would look at me with pity for my misguided opinions. While they would mildly express unbelief at my statement to my face, when they got behind my back they would shake their heads and say, "Crittenton has gone crazy, do you know he even believes now that girls are held in slavery in New York City, against their wills, for immoral purposes."
But I have been familiar with so many cases of this form of slavery that they are too numerous even to recall. I remember well one night, being on one of the streets in lower New York, when a girl came down a flight of steps leading from a disreputable house where rooms were rented. At the foot of the steps stood a man waiting to receive her earnings. As she stepped upon the pavement in full light of the gas above the entrance, she handed him the money. He looked at it, and finding it was less than he expected or needed, with a terrible oath he felled her to the ground and said, "I will show you how to bring me such a little amount of money as this, you ought to have gotten a great deal more."
Among those who came to take shelter at the Florence Crittenton Home in those early days were beautiful twins, not sixteen years old, from a country village. We called them "Mary and Martha." Both of them had been brought to New York under a promise of marriage and sold into a life of sin. We did all we could tofree them from their masters, but it was impossible. They were determined that they would not be robbed of their prey which was so valuable a financial investment. Time and time again they were hunted down by their masters and lost their positions through the interference of these men. In two years one of the girls died from the mistreatment and shame she had endured. It is not unusual for me to see the other one in New York whenever I am there, still under the bondage of her so-called husband, and for her to tell me that it is no use trying to escape. Long since she has given up all hope, and that she expects to die where she is, earning money to supply her master with the luxuries of life, by selling her poor little body.
DAISY UNDER TWENTY, DYING IN THE POOR-HOUSE
DAISY UNDER TWENTY, DYING IN THE POOR-HOUSELess than three years after leaving her home she was found in the poor-house, forgotten by family and friends, and dying of a loathsome disease
DAISY'S LONELY FUNERAL PAID FOR BY CHARITY
DAISY'S LONELY FUNERAL PAID FOR BY CHARITYThe charity nurses took up a subscription and saved her from the potter's field. No flowers. No friends. No relatives. Only the undertaker and his assistants
Among the many methods used by these fiends in human form to trap girls into houses of sin, is courtship and false marriage. These men go into the country districts and, under the guise of commercial men, board at the best hotels, dress handsomely, cultivate the most captivating manners, and then look for their prey. Upon the streets they see a pretty girl and immediately lay plans to become acquainted. Then the courtship begins. In the present condition of society it is a very easy thing for well reared girls to begin a promiscuous acquaintance, with ample opportunity for courtship. There was never a time when the bars were so low. With the public dance, or even the more exclusive german, the skating rinkand the moving picture arcades, all of which lend themselves to the making of intimate and promiscuous acquaintances under questionable surroundings, it is easy for a man to come into a community and in a few days meet even the best class of girls, to say nothing of the girls who are earning a living and who have no home influence. These girls are flattered by the handsome, well-dressed stranger paying them marked attention, and are quick to accept invitations to the theater or to walk or drive with him. If the girl is religious, he is not above using the cloak of religion, expressing fondness for church and prayer meetings and is frequently to be found at such places. When a girl's confidence and affection have been won, it is a comparatively easy thing to accomplish her ruin, by proposing an elopement. Her scruples and arguments are easily overcome by the skilled deceiver, and trusting him implicitly as her accepted lover, she unwittingly goes to her doom. When they arrive in the city a mock marriage is performed, for there are accomplices on every hand, and the child wife is taken into a house of sin, which she has been told by her pretended husband is an elegant boarding house.
Can you imagine any greater horror than that of this trusting child wife, when she realizes she is a prisoner and a slave in that den of shame? And such slavery! the blackest that has ever stained human history. Shut up beyond the reach of friends—for no letter shemay write finds its way beyond the doors of her prison house. Should she call a police officer the chances are he is receiving bribes from her keeper and he will not help her to freedom. Is it strange that soon she eagerly drinks the wine that is constantly offered her, and sometimes actually forced down her throat, and smokes the cigarette with its benumbing effect of opium and tobacco, so that under the influences of these fatal drugs she may forget her awful fate and hasten her early death, for surely no hell in the other world can be more dreadful than a house of shame in this world.
And then good women and good men who see her poor painted face later peering out between the lace curtains of her dread abode, or, if meeting her on the street, draw away from her and say, "Oh! I guess she is there because she wants to be."
This expression is one of the reasons that this condition has existed so long unchanged. It is frequently made because of the ignorance of the general public upon the subject. But the thought that when one sees a woman in a life of sin, she is there because she likes it and wants to be, has become so deeply engraved upon the human mind that it is difficult to change it. Some people are conscientious in thinking this, because they are ignorant. Others know better, but in order that they may not feel called upon to take an active part against these conditions, try to salve their conscience by saying that a fallen girl cannot behelped—nothing can be done for them. And so it goes—anything to remove the responsibility of bettering conditions from their shoulders.
But today we are facing a very different condition from that which has existed ever since I have been interested in rescue work, and for centuries before. The International Agreement for the Abolition of the White Slave Traffic between the civilized nations of the world, which was entered into some ten years ago by all of the civilized nations except the United States, and which was subscribed to by the United States last June, has put an entirely different aspect upon the whole subject. The abolition of the white slave traffic is now no longer to be considered as the feverish dream of enthusiastic reformers, but its effacement has become a part of a great international agreement between nations of the world, and takes its place along with other great international questions which are adjudicated by the same process.
The recent splendid immigration laws which have been passed by the United States, protecting immigrant girls until they have been in this country three years, has been the law under which most of the cases of white slave traffic have been prosecuted. The records of the Federal courts, wherever the authorities have taken cognizance, are full of the records of cases which have been brought to trial. Many of the guilty parties have been prosecuted and are now behind prison bars. Others are awaiting trial, and many others have escaped because of the difficulty of getting people to testify against them. One of the most dangerous leaders in the traffic has recently forfeited handsome holdings of real estate in Chicago, which she had put up for her bond, and escaped to France. Although fleeing from the United States into France, which is also one of the countries co-operating in the abolition of the white slave traffic, her passion for the business was so great that, when recently arrested in France, under a similar charge, she was found to have several young women from America in her clutches.
But as this law protects only immigrant girls, all the cases brought have been in the interest of these foreign girls. Thus far no one has undertaken to prosecute the offenders against American-born girls. When the curtain is drawn back upon the iniquitous system in which they have been the victims, a new chamber of horrors will be opened to the public gaze. But, thank God, good will follow, as is always the case when the light is turned on. Already laws have been presented before a number of state legislatures looking to the prosecution of those guilty of this inhuman traffic in native-born girls, and it will not be long before every state in the Union will have laws under which they can prosecute any man or woman guilty of this crime.
One of the great troubles in fighting this evilis the prejudice against fallen girls and the fact that because a woman is fallen seems to be just cause to convict her of every other crime in the decalogue, thus removing her from the pale of helpful sympathy which is extended to almost every other class of unfortunate beings. Even convicted murderers and kidnapers are treated with more intelligent sympathy. Every statement which she makes is at once considered to be untrue. So far has this prejudice gone that in the state of Missouri, in a decision by its supreme court, made some years ago, it was declared that a woman of immoral life was debarred from giving testimony in the courts of that state, as the fact of her immorality prevented her from being a credible witness. It declared at the same time that immorality did not in the same way unfit or debar a man. The difficulty of convicting a person under trial for such a crime as this is largely increased because of this attitude of the public mind. The evidence must be so overwhelming against the person that all of the quibbles and questions and flaws which is possible for the human mind to make, are answerable, and even then many will feel the guilty person has been unjustly punished, and that if the girl had really wanted to make her escape from her captors she could have done so.
The prosecuting of any other character of cases where the sex question does not enter is very much easier. Take the two last cases of kidnaping, which have interestedthe entire public and press of the country, as an example of what I mean. In the well-known Philadelphia case of 1908, in which an unusually bright boy of ten years was the victim, it was found that the kidnaper, a man, had taken the boy with him to lunch at several restaurants, had left him alone for hours in a vacant house, from the window of which he might at any moment have called to a passer-by and told him of his sad plight; had even sat several hours with him in the crowded Broad Street Station in Philadelphia, and yet, with all of these opportunities of making his trouble known, and escaping from the clutches of the man, the boy had taken advantage of none of them, but had sat silent and apparently a willing victim. In spite of these extenuating circumstances, it only took the jury a few moments to convict and send the guilty man to the penitentiary for a long period. Had the boy been a girl, and had she not made any more effort than he did to escape from her captor, and had the fact been known that the man had taken advantage of her innocence not only to kidnap her, but also rob her of her virtue, it would have been absolutely impossible to convict him of kidnaping. A recent case prosecuted in Baltimore, of a similar character, with these added features, proves the truth of this statement, the child being a girl eleven years old. The man was given a sentence of twenty-one years only, and that upon the ground of the child beingunder the age of consent. Even this verdict was considered extreme by many who believed that the child was willing to go with him because she had written a letter to her father and mother, in which she had not complained of ill treatment. It was proven that the little girl was made to write the letter by the man, who took it out and mailed it himself, and who forced her to write just what he said. Had little Billy Whitla been a little girl, and it was proven that she had sat in a buggy and had taken candy and accepted favors, and had been perfectly happy, as a child might, with her captor, it would have been a very much more difficult case to prosecute than that when the victim was a boy. In one the sex question would almost certainly have been introduced to the further undoing of the punishment for the crime.
Such work as the Woman's World is doing, as well as the Ladies' Home Journal and other well-known magazines, in giving publicity to these facts, will be of inestimable value in the protection of youth. Soon it will be impossible for human ingenuity to devise schemes for the undoing of girls that have not already been exposed by the daily papers and magazines, thus warning girls and their parents or guardians of the conditions under which they are placed. Had this information been given to the mothers alone, many of them are so ignorant of the present conditions that they would not have seen the necessity of informing their daughters. But coming, as it does, through the avenues of daily reading, it reaches the daughter as well as the mother, thus giving her the knowledge gleaned at a frightful cost by others, to protect her.
By Clifford G. Roe, Assistant State's Attorney of Cook County, Ill.
There is a problem of slavery today for the people to solve. The question is: "How shall the warfare against White Slavery be waged to blot out this cloud upon civilization expeditiously?" Over two years ago I learned that there was a gigantic slave trade in women, and with a handful of people we began to fight the traders. That a system of slavery, debasing and vile, had grown to enormous proportions before our very doors seemed beyond belief, an impossibility, and even romantic. Most people were skeptical of the existence of a well defined and organized traffic in girls, and they seemed to think that those advocating the abolition of this nefarious trade were either visionists or fanatics. The struggle against this trade in women was a hard one at first. The ministry, although dazed, were finally aroused to an appreciation of the truth.
Having faith in the people, and believing that this republic lauds and honors the chastity and sanctity of women, I believed in bringing this hideous traffic in girls to the public notice,and when our citizens fully realized its importance they would rise to the occasion and aid in the warfare to exterminate white slavery. The result has been most gratifying, for churches, clubs, associations, newspapers, men and women in all walks of life have taken up the cause. Great armies like those of a generation ago cannot uproot this slavery, but the slavery of today must be eliminated by publicity, education, legislation and law enforcement. That is the reason magazines have brought to their readers facts concerning this hideous trade. The results of this heroic work have been wonderful, for thousands of letters inquiring about white slavery have been received, and associations and clubs have formed to fight white slavery, and legislation upon the subject has been introduced in many states. If this great good to our social life could not be brought about by publicity, there would not be any reason for bringing before the people and into the midst of the family circle facts which are so black and revolting. But to know and understand we must cast aside false modesty, take off our kid gloves and handle this great social problem with our naked hands.
The trade in women is domestic and foreign, local and international. The Honorable Edwin W. Sims, United States District Attorney at Chicago, and Harry A. Parkin, his Assistant, have been waging valiant warfare against the foreign and international trade during the past year. Articles in leading magazines whichwere written by them have dealt chiefly with that phase of the white slave trade. They have explained, also, the debt system as a means of keeping the girls in resorts after they are procured and sold. It is with the domestic and local trade I have been mostly concerned. In Chicago alone there are more than 5,000 women leading a life of shame, and statistics show that the average life of a fallen woman is five years. One thousand persons must, therefore, be recruited every year in Chicago alone. How many voluntarily go into this life? It is estimated about forty per cent! This shows us that sixty per cent are led into it by some scheme or entrapped and sold, and at least two-thirds of this number are from our own country, being inveigled from farms, towns and cities. One may inquire, "How is it that girls are procured so easily without the public being aware of what is going on?"
The answer is that love and ambition are the baits which the procurers flaunt in the faces of their proposed victims. Often it happens that promises of positions on the stage, in stores, and various occupations alluring to young girls cause many to fall, captives in the great net set for them.
During the past two years there have been more than two hundred and fifty white slave cases tried in Chicago under the Illinois law, resulting in scores of confessions made by the procurers, and statements by hundreds of thegirls who were procured as to the methods employed by the traders.
To show how easily it is done, let me tell you a story of a girl from Elgin, Illinois, who was caught by the love scheme. One day this pretty little German lass was in a Chicago store buying sheet music when a well-dressed, handsome, young man, apparently looking at music, too, asked her the names of some of the latest popular songs, as he wanted to buy them. At first she turned away and did not heed him, but he was not to be repulsed, and pressing his attentions further upon her, he finally engaged her in conversation. A luncheon at a nearby restaurant, in which she joined him, was the result, and there he told her how at first sight he had fallen in love with her beauty. After lunch he suggested a visit to his bachelor apartments, but this she refused. Seeing that this plan was a failure, he asked her to marry him then and there. The silly girl, believing he loved her, and enchanted by the picture he had painted of his father's wealth and fine home in New York City, consented, and they were married. After the ceremony he told her that he was about "broke," and said that he would take her to a place where she could make enough money in a few days to pay their way to New York, where everything would be lovely, and as they were married it would be no one's business how she got the money. Immediately accounts of white slave procurers which she had read came to her mind, and shethen realized what she had fallen into. Lest she might arouse in him suspicion, she consented to do as he asked, but told him that before going out to the resort she wanted to buy some clothing, and arranged to meet him at a certain down-town corner toward evening. She hurried to the County Court, where an escort was given her, and she was brought to the court where I was prosecuting. I armed an officer with a warrant and he followed the girl to the appointed place of meeting. The young man was there waiting for his victim. The officer stepped up and put him under arrest, and the next day he was tried and convicted. It was then learned that he was a well known procurer of girls. Thus saved from a life of ruin, the Elgin girl went home heart-broken, but wiser for her experience. Recently she secured in the County Court an annulment of the marriage. Inquiry proved that the girl was from a very respectable home, and that she had always been a good, honest, industrious girl. Many similar cases have come out in the courts; however, the girls in most instances were not favored by the same good fortune which blessed the little girl from Elgin, and the outcome was much more disastrous. This is an illustration of the ease with which panderers make use of love as a means of securing girls for immoral houses.
The other method used by the traders is the one which appeals to the girl's ambitions. Sometimes the procurers have gained the parents' consent to allow their daughters to accompany the supposed theatrical or employment agent, as the case may be, to some city, thinking that through the daughter's success their station in life would be raised. A girl in a country community, or say factory town, is working for four or five dollars each week, when one of these procurers, traveling under the guise of an agent, meets her and promises ten to twenty dollars a week for work in the city. She may be perfectly sincere and honest in her intention to better her condition. She may want finer clothes, a wider knowledge of the world, or an education, and so she consents to go with him, and finally, against her will, ends up as an inmate in some immoral place.
One of the most recent cases shows how readily girls jump at an opportunity to better their station in life. This case first came before the court the day after last Christmas, when Frank Kelly was arrested for carrying a revolver, with which he tried to shoot an old man. During the trial the story developed as follows:
A year ago last summer fifteen-year-old Margaret Smith was working about the simple home near Benton Harbor, Michigan. The father, employed by the Pere Marquette Railroad, was away from home a good share of the time. One day a graphophone agent called at the house and the family became much interested in one of his musical machines. Shortly afterward this agent brought with him to theSmith home Frank Kelly, and introduced him to Maggie, as she was called by her folks. In a day or two Margaret was on her way to Chicago with Kelly, who promised her an excellent position in the city. Upon her arrival Margaret was sold into one of the lowest dives in Chicago, located in South Clark street, and owned by an Italian named Battista Pizza. Here she learned that her captor was not Frank Kelly, but an Italian whose real name is Alphonse Citro. For a year she was kept as a slave in this resort, which was over a saloon, and the entrance was through a back alley. The only visitors were Italians, who came for immoral purposes. Learning last summer that Margaret's father, who had been hunting relentlessly for his daughter, was on the track of her, the girl was taken by Alphonse Citro, alias Kelly, to Gary, Indiana. When the father came to the resort with a policeman he found that his daughter had gone. She was kept in Gary about two months, and then returned to this disreputable place, from which she escaped finally, the Monday before Christmas. A young barber took pity on her after hearing her sad story and enlisted the sympathy of his parents, who took her to their home. Alphonse Citro (Kelly) looked for her for almost a week, and at last saw her going from a store to this home, where she was staying. He went to the house and demanded at the point of a revolver that she be given up, as he said:
"I am losing money every day she is gone."
There was a quarrel over the girl, during which some people from the outside were attracted to the house by the commotion. Citro, becoming frightened, fled down the street, and as he ran threw the revolver, with which he tried to shoot the father of the barber during the quarrel, over a fence into a coal yard. After running two blocks, he was caught and arrested. Upon these facts this procurer, Citro, alias Kelly, was prosecuted and found guilty under the new pandering law in Illinois, and received a sentence of one year's imprisonment and a fine of five hundred dollars. The poor old father and mother, distressed and broken-hearted, were in court during the trial with their arms around each other, sobbing with joy because their little girl had been found. Pizza, the owner of the place, was indicted by the state grand jury, but escaped to Italy. This case is only one of the hundreds which might be told to show how the girls leave home upon the promise of securing employment and are in this way procured for places of ill-repute.
"MY GOD! IF ONLY I COULD GET OUT OF HERE."
"MY GOD! IF ONLY I COULD GET OUT OF HERE."The midnight shriek of a young girl in the vice district of a large city, heard by two worthy men, started a crusade which resulted in closing up the dens of shame in that city. (See page 450.)
A GILDED PALACE OF SIN
A GILDED PALACE OF SINShowing the gay and attractive front entrance where the white slave trader sells young girls into a life of shame
The methods employed to entice young women are quite similar, but as to the particulars each case varies to some extent. After the girls are once within the resort, the stories are about the same. Their street clothes are seized and parlor dresses varying in length are put upon them. They are threatened, never allowed to write letters, never permitted the use of the telephone, never trusted outside thehouse without the escort of a procurer, until two or three months have elapsed, when they are considered hardened to the life and too ashamed to face parents and friends again. If they should ask some visitor to the house to help them, would he care to expose his name to the police, as he would have to, by reporting the matter? Would he want his friends, or the folks at home to know that he had visited such a place? No; he would let the girl get out the best way she could; even though he might promise to help her. Girls are told of or perhaps have witnessed others who tried to escape, have seen their failure and punishment, and are thereby cowed into submission. They are always held upon the pretense of being indebted to the house, and this indebtedness has long been the backbone of the white slave system. From the time the girl is first sold into the house she is constantly in debt. First, for the money the owner gave to the procurer for her, next, for her parlor clothes, then for the money her procurer borrows from the owner on her as his property, goods and chattel. The bonds of slavery are thus fastened upon these poor mortals by a system of debt and vice that the people of this great country little realized existed until lately.
Fighting against this slave trade under the archaic Illinois laws was quite disheartening because it was almost impossible to get more than a fine upon the charge of disorderly conduct. The laws were so full of loopholes thatthe traders laughed at the idea of being prosecuted. However, in Illinois, at least, we have choked the laugh. The features once wreathed in smiles begin to show the lines of worry and fear, for a new law called the Pandering Act has been passed. This went into force July 1st, 1908. The new law is good, but experience has shown where improvement is necessary. Without exception, in cases I have tried, certain wholesome-minded jurors have said after concluding the case, that the penalty was too light for the first offender. It should be made more severe. Therefore an effort is now being made to make the first offense punishable by imprisonment in the penitentiary from one to ten years. Then, also, there should be a new law covering the bringing a female person of any age into the state or taking her out of the state for immoral purposes. The age limit should be omitted from the present Illinois law, which does not punish those bringing girls over the age of eighteen into the state. While other states are sending for copies of the Illinois pandering and other white slave laws, the state legislation will soon be uniform upon this subject, the United States government should be alive to the situation also. At present it has only the immigration laws regulating the importation of immoral women to fall back upon. A federal law under the interstate and foreign commerce act should be passed at once. The federal government has better and more effective machinery for getting at the facts in the foreign and interstate traffic in girls than have the various states. Commerce consists in intercourse and traffic, including in these terms the transportation and transit of persons and property, as well as the purchase, sale and barter of persons and property and agreements therefor. A federal law might be enacted as follows:
"Be it Enacted by the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, that whoever shall procure, entice or encourage any female person to leave one of the states of the United States of America to go into any other state in the United States of America for the purpose of prostitution or to become an inmate of a house of prostitution or to enter any place where prostitution is practiced or allowed, or shall attempt to procure or entice any female person to leave one of the states of the United States of America to go into any other state for the purpose of prostitution, or to become an inmate of a house of prostitution or to enter any place where prostitution is practiced or allowed, or shall receive or give, or agree to receive or give any money or thing of value for procuring or attempting to procure any female person to leave one of the states of the United States of America to go into any other state in the United States of America for the purpose of prostitution or to become an inmate of a house of prostitution, or to enter any place where prostitution is practiced or allowed,shall, in every case, be deemed guilty of a felony, and on conviction thereof be imprisoned not more than ten years and pay a fine of not more than ten thousand dollars."
Under the recent federal decisions what can prevent the enactment and enforcement of such a law making the traffic in women illegal? Of course, offenses committed solely within the state could not be reached by the federal government.
Other needed legislative regulations concerning the white slave traffic, such as laws against the procuring system and the indebtedness system, have been set forth in other articles in this magazine. However, besides these laws it will be necessary in each state to create a commission in the various cities, other than the police department, which shall keep a complete record of all houses of ill-fame and their inmates. A public bureau of information should be established by law where parents and friends could easily learn the whereabouts of girls who have not been heard from, and this bureau should have the names of every inmate of a disreputable house. Such a commission should have power to inquire carefully into the life of every girl. Statements should be made, under oath, and the right to ascertain whether or not these statements were true should be given the commission. Thereby the infected spots in every part of the country could be covered, and every girl and woman in immoral places could be accounted for. The fact thatthis has not been done heretofore has greatly aided the slave traders because their success is accomplished by secrecy. Let us drag the monster, white slavery, from under ground and let the light of day show upon it, and then we shall have gone a long way towards extermination of this traffic.
That secrecy is maintained as to who the girls are and where they are from is evidenced by one of the many letters I have received, of which the following is a copy: