know personally many of the characteristic white slaves of the west
and south side “levees.” One “Alice” I shall never, never forget.
Beautiful, aside from her dissipation, a high-school graduate, grammar
and syntax perfect, manner exquisite, “Alice,” seduced at eighteen,
was at the age of twenty-one away down the line in the west side levee
underworld. I used to talk many times with Alice as she sat in the back
parlor of the “house” on Peoria street that gave her shelter, awaiting
her call of “next” to go “upstairs” with whatsoever—negro, white or
Chinese—might buy possession for one dollar (one of our dollars of the
Republic on which is eternally stamped the blessed words, “In God we
trust”) of her beautiful body for one hour. Smoking, always smoking
her doped Turkish cigarette, Alice told me much of her life, both in
years gone forever and of a daily “levee” existence. She told me of
a father and mother and a beautiful home, of a lover who came into
it and led her away by night into “levee” slavery—of awful disgrace
and inheritance, of a little baby that she only knew one hour, of
hours of insane remorse and anguish, until at last she would stand
and scream and scream with mental pain until some whoremonger knocked
her senseless, and then she told me how she would crawl away to a
nearby shanty saloon and drink herself helpless, to forget. As far as
I know, Alice is still on Peoria street, and oh, men and women, there
are twenty-two thousand of these “Alices,” your sisters and mine, in
Chicago’s great blasting soul market today. United States Attorney
Sims puts the average life of a prostitute at ten years or less, while
other excellent authorities as low as five years, as these women must
constantly drink any and all drinks purchased for them (as much of the
business revenue is from the sale of these drinks) by visitors, thus
forcing them at all times into a continual half-drunken condition,
rendering them helpless to control or resist the abnormal, sickening,
mind and body-wrecking demands made upon them. Very few women live
therein an average more than three, four or six years, and at the
end of that time twenty-two thousand pure young girls gathered from
prairie homes and village firesides and from our own suburban and city
families must march out in this great soul market to take the place of
the broken wretches whose decaying bodies are cast into the refuse of
our alleys and sewers to become the menace of every girl and boy and
drunken man who comes within their clutches or sets foot within their
alley hovels.
The End of the Way.
At about ten o’clock on Saturday evening, September 19th, I boarded
a West Madison street car and, transferring north at Halsted street,
alighted at Lake and walked west to L——'s saloon. I discovered in the
wine and back rooms of the wretched place a crowd of perhaps fifty
drunken, dirty men and women, young white girls, huddled in with the
worst mob of negroes, whites and Chinese I have seen in Chicago’s
slums, all cursing, drinking, singing and blaspheming in plain view and
hearing of the street. I stopped a moment to make sure I was making no
mistake in what I saw and then crossed the street to interview the
dark-eyed little foreigner who at its door was boldly soliciting trade
for the saloon and its adjacent evils just opposite. I walked down to
Peoria and south on that notorious street. In the row of houses running
from Lake to Randolph street there are approximately 300 white slaves,
and diseased, crippled prostitutes of the lowest class, dumped from the
city’s cleaner dives. And on that night it was almost impossible to
push one’s way through the mass of men and boys—whites, negroes, Turks
and Pollocks, gathered in front of these public abominations. At the
corner of Randolph and Peoria streets several earnest looking men and
women were holding a little gospel street meeting, and stopping with
them, I counted during the thirty minutes I stayed there, six hundred
and forty (approximately) men and boys stop in front of or enter this
horrible flesh market. As I left the scene a young girl in a drunken,
filthy condition, slipped out of an alley and followed me, asking
me to help her, and as we sat on the steps of Saints Peter and Paul
Cathedral, corner of Washington boulevard and Peoria street, she told
me the worst, heart-breaking story of wrong and vice and ruin I have
ever listened to. As I left that West Side levee of vice I knew I had
seen prostitution at its lowest ebb and that out from these holes of
horror finally went those awful alley women of the night to sell their
souls to any young boy or drunken man who could give them a few cents
or even the price of a drink of whiskey.
This girl was turned over to the Chicago Rescue Mission, cleaned and
clothed and fed and pointed to Jesus Christ. Her story was investigated
and found true and after receiving medical attention she was quietly
returned to her country home.
Mr. J. J. Sloan, when he was superintendent of the John Worthy School
(which is the local municipal juvenile reformatory), reported that
one-third of the street boys sent to him were suffering from the
loathsome diseases and distempers of the red-light district, nor is
this to be wondered at when we consider the fact that sexual commerce
may be purchased almost anywhere in the South State street and West
Side alleys for the remarkably low price of ten cents, or even a glass
of beer or whisky from the gonorrheal and syphilitic denizens thrown
out long ago from the better class houses of prostitution to live off
the half drunken men and young boys to be found in swarms along South
State, Halsted and South Clark streets. Almost invariably the street
boy hunting these underworld sections of our city is first led into
sexual sin by one of the crippled, half rotten, yet painted vampires
of the street whose only care or hope is a crust of free lunch and
enough whisky or “dope” to drown for a time at least, the last throb
of heart and conscience and keep life a few days longer within her
wretched body, and the boy, having purchased for the small fee his own
destruction, trails out again into the night and on into disease and
crime and prison, and finally death.
The average parent of today has little idea of the temptations which
constantly surround and beset the growing boy. I recall a case in Des
Moines, Iowa, where a little degenerate girl of sixteen, caused the
moral, and in several cases physical, ruin of five young boys, all this
happening in an exclusive east side neighborhood and under the watchful
care of honest parents and friends, so what must be the temptation
thrown out to the young boys of our city when through block after block
of our certain districts they must come in direct contact with those
whose only mission is to ruin and debauch. It should be the direct
object morally and politically, of every father and mother in this city
to banish these human parasites—these leeches who suck the life blood
of our boys—from Chicago’s streets.
Listen, father, mother, there are twenty-two thousand poor,
dearly-beloved young girls growing up in our midst today who within
five years must, under the present business system of white slavery,
put aside father, mother, home, friends and honor and march into
Chicago’s ghastly flesh market to take the place of the twenty-two
thousand helpless, hopeless, decaying chattles who now daily behind
bolts and bars and steel screens, satisfy the abominable lust of
(approximately) two hundred and ten thousand brutal, drunken adulterers.
I believe, as I write, that the final solving of this reeking, hideous
question lies in the moral and Christian teaching and protection of the
growing girls of our land. I believe in a rigidly enforced law that
keeps girls under legal age and unattended off the down-town streets
at night after a reasonable hour. Harry Balding, the convicted white
slaver, in his confession before Judge Newcomer and Assistant State’s
Attorney Roe, says: “We would be sent out by resort keepers to work
up some girls, for whom we were paid from $10 to $50 each, though the
cash bonus was much more. The majority of them were girls we met on the
street. We would go around to the penny arcades and nickle theatres and
when we saw a couple of young girls we would go up and talk with them.
I will say this for myself—I never took a girl away from her home; the
girls I took down there I met in the stores or on the streets.” There
is a league of masonry worldwide that makes it possible for a mason
anywhere in trouble or distress, to raise his hand toward the heavens
with a certain sign and if there be a brother mason within reach, that
brother, no matter of what nationality, kindred or tongue, is sworn to
give him all needed protection. Listen, father, mother, sister, listen
brother! Today from beneath Chicago’s awful moral sewerage which has
sucked their hearts and souls and bodies under, a thousand trembling
hands are held up to high heaven, and to you for help, hands reeking
with the blood on which some whoremonger has fattened; the hands
though of your sisters and of mine, and I believe that here in Chicago,
the greatest market for white slaves on the continent, should be formed
a league that would become worldwide, of earnest, law-abiding men and
women whose efforts united with those of the proper police, municipal
and Federal authorities, would make it practically impossible for a
girl to be sold into or compelled to lead an immoral life, and through
whose influence such open public flesh markets as our “red-light”
and levee district would be banished forever from Chicago streets. I
believe in helping, God knows, with heart and hand and money, every
fallen woman in our land whom there is the slightest chance to help in
any way, but I believe first of all in using every known measure to
keep our girls from falling. You and I live beneath the only flag in
all the world that has never known defeat, and the very basic principle
upon which that flag is builded is human liberty and human protection,
and so by personal work, by song, prayer and by the power of the cross
let us set ourselves to help these helpless ones in our midst until the
angels shall take up the story of shame and bitterness and wrong and
bear to all the world and to heaven itself the swift acknowledgement
that you are your brother’s keeper.
Smashing The Traffic
There are some things so far removed from the lives of normal, decent
people as to be simply unbelievable by them. The “white slave” trade
of today is one of these incredible things. The calmest, simplest
statements of its facts are almost beyond the comprehension or belief
of men and women who are mercifully spared from contact with the dark
and hideous secrets of “the under world” of the big cities.
You would hardly credit the statement, for example, that things are
being done every day in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and other
large cities of this country in the white slave traffic which would,
by contrast, make the Congo slave traders of the old days appear like
Good Samaritans. Yet this figure is almost a literal truth. The man of
the stone age who clubbed a woman of his desire into insensibility or
submission was little short of a high-minded gentleman when contrasted
with the men who fatten upon the “white slave” traffic in this day of
social settlements, of forward movements, of Y. M. C. A. and Christian
Endeavor activities, of air ships and wireless telegraphy.
Naturally, wisely, every parent who reads this statement will at once
raise the question: “What excuse is there for the open discussion
of such a revolting condition of things in the pages of a household
magazine? What good is there to be served by flaunting so dark and
disgusting a subject before the family circle?”
Only one—and that is a reason and not an excuse! The recent examination
of more than two hundred “white slaves” by the office of the United
States district attorney at Chicago has brought to light the fact that
literally thousands of innocent girls from the country districts are
every year entrapped into a life of hopeless slavery and degradation
because parents in the country do not understand conditions as they
exist and how to protect their daughters from the “white slave” traders
who have reduced the art of ruining young girls to a national and
international system. I sincerely believe that nine-tenths of the
parents of these thousands of girls who are every year snatched from
lives of decency and comparative peace and dragged under the slime of
existence in the “white slave world” have no idea that there is really
a trade in the ruin of girls as much as there is a trade in cattle or
sheep or the other products of the farm. If these parents had known the
real conditions, had believed that there is actually a syndicate which
does as regular, as steady and persistent a “business” in the ruination
of girls as the great packing houses do in the sale of meats, it is
wholly probable that their daughters would not now be in dens of vice
and almost utterly without hope or release excepting by the hand of
death.
The purpose of all our laws and statutes against crime is the
suppression of crime. The protection of the people, of the home, of the
individual, is the purpose which inspires the honest and conscientious
prosecutor. This is what the law is for, and if this result of
protection to individuals and home can be made more effective and more
general by a statement such as this, then I am willing to make it for
the public good. And the most direct and unadorned statement of facts
will, I think, carry its own conviction and make everything like
“preaching” or denunciation superfluous.
The evidence obtained from questioning some 250 girls taken in Chicago
houses of ill repute leads me to believe that not fewer than fifteen
thousand girls have been imported into this country in the last year
as white slaves. Of course this is only a guess—an approximate—it
could be nothing else—but my own personal belief is that it is a
conservative guess and well within the facts as to numbers. Then please
remember that girls imported are certainly but a mere fraction of the
number recruited for the army of prostitution from home fields, from
the cities, the towns, the villages of our own country. There is no
possible escape from this conclusion.
Another significant fact brought out by the examination of these girls
is that practically every one who admitted having parents living begged
that her real name be withheld from the public because of the sorrow
and shame it would bring to her parents. One said: “My mother thinks
I am studying in a stenographic school,” another stated, “My parents
in the country think I have a good position in a department store—as I
did have for a time, and I’ve sent them a little money from time to
time; I don’t care what happens so long as they don’t know the truth
about me.” In a word, the one concern of nearly all those examined who
have homes in this country was that their parents—and in particular
their mothers—might discover, through the prosecution of the “white
slavers,” that they were leading lives of shame instead of working at
the honorable callings which they had left their homes and come to the
city to pursue. There are, to put it mildly, hundreds—yes, thousands—of
trusting mothers in the smaller cities, the towns, villages and farming
communities of the United States who believe that their daughters are
“getting on fine” in the city, and too busy to come home for a visit or
“to write much,” while the fact is that these daughters have been swept
into the gulf of white slavery—the worst doom that can befall a woman.
The mother who has allowed her girl to go to the big city and work
should find out what kind of life that girl is living and find out from
some other source than the girl herself. No matter how good and fine
a girl she has been at home and how complete the confidence she has
always inspired, find out how she is living, what kind of associations
she is keeping. Take nothing for granted. You owe it to yourself and to
her and it is not disloyalty to go beyond her own words for evidence
that the wolves of the city have not dragged her from safe paths. It
is, instead, the highest form of loyalty to her.
Again, there is, in another particular, a remarkable and impressive
sameness in the stories related by these wretched girls. In the
narratives of nearly all of them is a passage describing how some man
of their acquaintance had offered to “help” them to a good position
in the city, to “look after” them, and to “take an interest” in them.
After listening to this confession from one girl after another, hour
after hour, until you have heard it repeated perhaps fifty times, you
feel like saying to every mother in the country: Do not trust any man
who pretends to take an interest in your girl if that interest involves
her leaving your own roof. Keep her with you. She is far safer in the
country than in the big city, but if, go to the city she must, then go
with her yourself; if that is impossible, place her with some woman
who is your friend, not hers; no girl can safely go to a great city
to make her own way who is not under the eye of a trustworthy woman
who knows the ways and dangers of city life. Above all, distrust the
“protection,” the “good offices” of any man who is not a family friend
known to be clean and honorable and above all suspicion.
Of course all the examinations to which I have referred have been
conducted for the specific purpose of finding girls who have been
brought into this country from other lands in defiance of the federal
statute, passed by Congress February 20, 1907. This act declares that
any person who shall “keep, maintain, support or harbor” any alien
woman for immoral purposes within three years after her arrival in this
country shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and shall be liable to a fine
of $5,000 and imprisonment for five years at the discretion of the
court. When the department of justice at Washington decided that this
law was being violated, the United States district attorney at Chicago
was instructed to take such action as was necessary to apprehend the
violators of the act and convict them. One of the first steps required
was the raiding of the various dives and houses of ill-fame and the
arrest of the girl inmates as well as the arrest of the keepers and the
procurers of the white slaves.
While the federal prosecution is officially concerned only with those
cases involving the importation of girls from other countries—there
being no authority under the present national statutes for the federal
government to prosecute those concerned in securing white slaves who
are natives of this country—it was inevitable that the examination
of scores of these inmates, captured in raids upon the dives, should
bring to officers and agents of the department of justice an immense
fund of information regarding the methods of the white slave traders in
recruiting for the traffic from home fields.
Whether these hunters of the innocent ply their awful calling at home
or abroad their methods are much the same—with the exception that the
foreign girl is more hopelessly at their mercy. Let me take the case
of a little Italian peasant girl who helped her father till the soil
in the vineyards and fields near Naples. Like most of the others taken
in the raids, she stoutly maintained that she had been in this country
more than three years and that she was in a life of shame from choice
and not through the criminal act of any person. When she was brought
into what the sensational newspapers would call the “sweat box,” it
was clear that she was in a state of abject terror. Soon, however,
Assistant United States District Attorney Parkin, having charge of the
examination, convinced her that he and his associates were her friends
and protectors and that their purpose was to punish those who had
profited by her ruin and to send her back to her little Italian home
with all her expenses paid; that she was under the protection of the
United States and was as safe as if the king of Italy would take her
under his royal care and pledge his word that her enemies should not
have revenge on her.
Then she broke down, and with pitiful sobs related her awful narrative.
That every word of it was true, no one could doubt who saw her as she
told it. Briefly this is her story: A “fine lady” who wore beautiful
clothes came to where she lived with her parents, made friends with
her, told her she was uncommonly pretty (the truth, by the way), and
professed a great interest in her. Such flattering attentions from
an American lady who wore clothes as fine as those of the Italian
nobility, could have but one effect on the mind of this simple little
peasant girl and on her still simpler parents. Their heads were
completely turned and they regarded the “American lady” with almost
adoration.
Very shrewdly the woman did not attempt to bring the little girl
back with her, but held out hope that some day a letter might come
with money for her passage to America. Once there she would become
the companion of her American friend and they would have great times
together.
Of course, in due time the money came—and the $100 was a most
substantial pledge to the parents of the wealth and generosity of the
“American lady.” Unhesitatingly she was prepared for the voyage which
was to take her to the land of happiness and good fortune. According
to the arrangements made by letter the girl was met at New York by two
“friends” of her benefactress who attended to her entrance papers and
took her in charge. These “friends” were two of the most brutal of all
the white slave drivers who are in the traffic. At this time she was
about sixteen years old, innocent and rarely attractive for a girl of
her class, having the large, handsome eyes, the black hair and the rich
olive skin of a typical Italian.
Where these two men took her she did not know—but by the most violent
and brutal means they quickly accomplished her ruin. For a week she
was subjected to unspeakable treatment and made to feel that her
degredation was complete and final.
And here let it be said that the breaking of the spirit, the crushing
of all hope for any future save that of shame, is always a part of the
initiation of a white slave. Then the girl was shipped on to Chicago,
where she was disposed of to the keeper of an Italian dive of the
vilest type. On her entrance here she was furnished with gaudy dresses
and wearing apparel for which the keeper of the place charged her $600.
As is the case with all new white slaves she was not allowed to have
any clothing which she could wear upon the street.
Her one object in life was to escape from the den in which she was held
a prisoner. To “pay out” seemed the surest way, and at length, from her
wages of shame, she was able to cancel the $600 account. Then she asked
for her street clothing and her release—only to be told that she had
incurred other expenses to the amount of $400.
Her Italian blood took fire at this and she made a dash for liberty.
But she was not quick enough and the hand of the oppressor was upon
her. In the wild scene that followed she was slashed with a razor, one
gash straight through her right eye, one across her cheek and another
slitting her ear. Then she was given medical attention and the wounds
gradually healed, but her face was horribly mutilated, her right eye is
always open and to look upon her is to shudder.
When the raids began she was secreted and arrangements made to ship
her to a dive in the mining regions of the west. Fortunately, however,
a few hours before she was to start upon her journey the United
States marshals raided the place and captured herself as well as her
keepers. To add to the horror of her situation she was soon to become
a mother. The awful thought in her mind, however, was to escape from
assassination at the hands of the murderous gang which oppressed her.
Evidence shows that the hirelings of this traffic are stationed at
certain points of entry in Canada, where large numbers of immigrants
are landed, to do what is known in their parlance as “cutting out
work.” In other words, these watchers for human prey scan the
immigrants as they come down the gang plank of a vessel which has
just arrived, and “spot” the girls who are unaccompanied by fathers,
mothers, brothers or relatives to protect them. The girl who has been
spotted as a desirable and unprotected victim is properly approached
by a man who speaks her language and is immediately offered employment
at good wages, with all expenses to the destination to be paid by the
man. Most frequently laundry work is the bait held out, sometimes
housework or employment in a candy shop or factory. The object of the
negotiations is to “cut out” the girl from any of her associates and to
get her to go with him. Then the only thing is to accomplish her ruin
by the shortest route. If they cannot be cajoled or enticed by promises
of an easy time, plenty of money, fine clothes and the usual stock
of allurements—or a fake marriage, then harsher methods are resorted
to. In some instances the hunters really marry the victims. As to the
sterner methods, it is of course impossible to speak explicitly,
beyond the statement that intoxication and drugging are often used
as means to reduce the victims to a state of helplessness, and sheer
physical violence is a common thing.
When once a white slave is sold and landed in a house or dive, she
becomes a prisoner. The raids disclosed the fact that in each of these
places is a room having but one door, to which the keeper holds the
key. In here are locked all the street clothes, shoes and the ordinary
apparel of a woman.
The finery which is provided for the girl for house wear is of a nature
to make her appearance in the street impossible. Then added to this
handicap, is the fact that at once the girl is placed in debt to the
keeper for a wardrobe of “fancy” clothes, which are charged to her at
preposterous prices. She cannot escape while she is in debt to the
keeper—and she is never allowed to get out of debt—at least until all
desire to leave the life is dead within her.