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"FOR GOD'S SAKE DO SOMETHING!" _Gen. Booth_
FIGHTING THE TRAFFIC IN YOUNG GIRLS
Or War on the White Slave Trade
[Illustration: My God! If I only could get out of here.]
The Greatest Crime in the World's History
[Illustration: HON. EDWIN W. SIMS
The man most feared by all white slave traders]
[Illustration: THE FIRST STEP.
Ice cream parlors of the city and fruit stores combined, largely run by
foreigners, are the places where scores of girls have taken their first
step downward. Does her mother know the character of the place and the
man she is with? (See page 71.)]
"FOR GOD'S SAKE DO SOMETHING"--General Booth
FIGHTING THE TRAFFIC IN YOUNG GIRLS
or
War on the White Slave Trade
A complete and detailed account of the shameless traffic in young girls,
the methods by which the procurers and panders lure innocent young girls
away from home and sell them to keepers of dives. The magnitude of the
organization and its workings. How to combat this hideous monster. How
to save YOUR GIRL. How to save YOUR BOY. What you can do to help wipe
out this curse of humanity. A book designed to awaken the sleeping and
protect the innocent.
by
ERNEST A. BELL
Secretary of the Illinois Vigilance Association--Superintendent of
Midnight Missions, etc.
with Special Chapters by the following persons:
HON. EDWIN W. SIMS, United States District Attorney, Chicago.
HON. HARRY A. PARKIN, Assistant United States District Attorney,
Chicago.
HON. CLIFFORD G. ROE, Assistant States Attorney, Cook County, Ill.
WM. ALEXANDER COOTE, Secretary of the National Vigilance Association,
London, England
JAMES BRONSON REYNOLDS, of the National Vigilance Committee, New York.
CHARLES N. CRITTENTON, President of the National Florence Crittenton
Mission.
MRS. OPHELIA AMIGH, Superintendent of the Illinois Training School for
Girls.
MISS FLORENCE MABEL DEDRICK Missionary of the Moody Church, Chicago.
MISS LUCY A. HALL, Deaconess of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Chicago.
PRINCIPAL D. F. SUTHERLAND, Red Water Institute, Red Water, Texas.
DR. WILLIAM T. BELFIELD, Professor in Rush Medical College, Chicago.
DR. WINFIELD SCOTT HALL, Professor in Northwestern University Medical
School, Chicago
MELBOURNE P. BOYNTON, Pastor of the Lexington Avenue Baptist Church,
Chicago.
THIRTY-TWO PAGES OF STRIKING PICTURES
Showing the workings of the blackest slavery that has ever stained the
human race.
Copyright, 1910
by
G. S. BALL
CONTENTS
Chapters not otherwise designated are by the Editor.
Preface 9
Introduction 13
Edwin W. Sims.
I. History of the White Slave Trade 18
II. The Suppression of the White Slave Traffic 29
William Alexander Coote.
III. The White Slave Trade of Today 47
Edwin W. Sims.
IV. Menace of the White Slave Trade 61
Edwin W. Sims.
V. A White Slave Clearing House; A White Slave's Own Story 74
VI. The True Story of Estelle Ramon of Kentucky 80
D. F. Sutherland.
VII. Our Sister of the Street 98
Florence Mabel Dedrick.
VIII. More about the Traffic in Shame 117
Ophelia Amigh.
IX. The Traffic in Girls 127
Charles N. Crittenton.
X. Warfare Against the White Slave Traffic 139
Clifford G. Roe.
XI. The Boston Hypocrisy 155
Clifford G. Roe.
XII. The Auctioneer of Souls 163
Clifford G. Roe.
XIII. The White Slave Trade in New York City 174
By a Special Contributor.
XIV. Barred Windows: How we Took up the Fight 190
XV. The Nations and the White Slave Traffic 199
James Bronson Reynolds.
XVI. The Yellow Slave Trade 213
XVII. How Snakes Charm Canaries 223
XVIII. Procuresses, and the Confession of One 234
XIX. Wanted--Fathers and Mothers 246
XX. Chicago's White Slave Market 253
XXI. The Failure and Shame of the Regulation of Vice 271
XXII. The White Slaves and the Black Plagues 280
XXIII. The White Slave Traffic and the Public Health 289
Dr. Winfield Scott Hall.
XXIV. The Vice Diseases 299
Dr. William T. Belfield.
XXV. Recruiting Grounds of White Slave Traffickers 305
Harry A. Parkin.
XXVI. Practical Means of Protecting Our Girls 314
Harry A. Parkin.
XXVII. Laws for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic 333
Harry A. Parkin.
XXVIII. A Pastor's Part 398
Melbourne P. Boynton.
XXIX. The Story of the Midnight Mission 412
XXX. Helen Chambers, Some Other Girls and "Daisy" 432
XXXI. Destruction of the Vice Districts of Los Angeles and 450
Des Moines
XXXII. Conditions in London 463
Lucy A. Hall.
XXXIII. For God's Sake, Do Something 472
POEMS.
Why Are You Weeping, Sister? 477
The Red Rose 480
Dedicated
_To the Army of Loyal Workers who, in the name of God and Humanity, have
enlisted in this Holy war for the Safety and Purity of Womanhood_
PREFACE.
"That glory may dwell in our land" is the motive of the writers of this
book. With a true patriotism, that rejoices not in the iniquities we
expose, that blushes crimson with humiliation over the crimes we record,
that glows hot with indignation against the criminals we denounce, we
have pursued the painful necessary task of telling the truth to the
American people concerning evils that have made us reel with horror.
For the protection of the innocent, for the safeguarding of the weak,
for the warning of the tempted and the alarm of the wicked, the truth
must be told--the truth that makes us free.
Therefore we have used plain words--not coarse or vulgar, but chaste and
true. Lawyers of the highest standing have introduced the legal language
with which the statutes provide penalties for crimes against the honor
and safety of women and girls. Physicians who are professors in medical
colleges among the foremost in the world, men in reputation for their
skill and beloved for their devotion to the people's welfare, have told
here in medical terminology the intolerable consequences, to guilty and
innocent, of the odious business of making commerce of girls and
promoting the debauchery of young men. We are sure the time has come
when millions will thank these lawyers and physicians for breaking the
seal of secrecy and giving the people their birth-right--the truth.
It is told that after Dante had written his "Inferno" the women of
Florence would turn pale and whisper to each other as he passed, "There
goes the man who has been in Hell." Some of us have gone to the abyss
and have seen things which are not lawful for a man to utter. Such as
could fitly be told, and must be told, we have been telling for years
past, knowing that the truth must prevail.
"Stronger than the dark the light,
Stronger than the wrong the right."
To our great joy the magazine having the largest circulation in the
world, "Woman's World," with more than two million subscribers, took up
the appeal for the safety of American and alien women and girls in
September of last year. This magazine has already printed or caused to
be printed and circulated fully fifty million pages, and it is enlisted
for the war--war on the most shameful crime of debauchery and exploiting
the youth of both sexes.
This is a critical time for our nation. We must now decide whether to
stamp out the White Slave Traffic and its attendant vices, or to go the
broad way that has led both ancient and modern nations to destruction.
"Today we fashion destiny,
Our web of fate we spin.
Today for all hereafter,
Choose we holiness or sin;
Today from lofty Gerizim
Or Ebal's cloudy crown,
We call the dews of blessing
Or the bolts of cursing down."
Concerning the effect of vice upon the destiny of nations the
Encylopaedia Britannica (Volume 32, page 32), says truly: "Though it may
coexist with national vigor, its extravagant development is one of the
signs of a rotten and decaying civilization * * * a phase which has
always marked the decadence of great nations."
But though we thus speak we are confident that this is truly the land of
the free--free, glad, safe womanhood--and the home of the brave--men
brave enough to protect our girls and to deal with the White Slave
traders and all their sort as they deserve.
INTRODUCTION.
By Edwin W. Sims,
United States District Attorney, Chicago.
I am firmly convinced that when the people of this nation understand and
fully appreciate the unspeakable villainy of "The White Slave Traffic"
they will rise in their might and put a stop to it. The growth of this
"trade in white women," as it has been officially designated by the
Paris Conference, was so insidious that it reached the proportions of an
international problem almost before the people of the civilized nations
of the world learned of its existence.
The traffic increased rapidly, owing largely to the fact that it was
tremendously profitable to those depraved mortals who indulged in it,
and because the people generally, until very recently, were ignorant of
the fact that it was becoming so extensive. And even at this time, when
a great deal has been said by the pulpit and the press about the horrors
of the traffic, the public idea of just what is meant by the "white
slave traffic" is confused and indefinite.
It is my hope and belief that this work, edited by the scholarly and
devoted Ernest A. Bell, whose life of toil for the wayward and the
fallen has endeared him to all who know of him and his work, will do
much to make the nature, scope and perils of this infamous trade better
understood.
The characteristic which distinguishes the white slave traffic from
immorality in general is that the women who are the victims of the
traffic are forced unwillingly to live an immoral life. The term "white
slave" includes only those women and girls who are actually
slaves--those women who are owned and held as property and
chattels--whose lives are lives of involuntary servitude. The white
slave trade may be said to be the business of securing white women and
of selling them or exploiting them for immoral purposes. It includes
those women and girls who, if given a fair chance, would, in all
probability, have been good wives and mothers and useful citizens.
Only a little time ago there were many thousands of our best citizens
who were unable to bring themselves to believe that an international
traffic in white women really existed. The statement seemed too
sensational for their acceptance. If any readers remain who are still
unconvinced that such an international traffic is a fact, let them
consider the following, quoted from the annual report for 1908, of Hon.
Oscar S. Straus, the Secretary of Commerce and Labor:
"An international project of arrangement for the suppression of the
white-slave traffic was, on July 25, 1902, adopted for submission to
their respective governments by the delegates of the various powers
represented at the Paris conference, which arrangement was confirmed by
formal agreement signed at Paris on May 18, 1904, by the Governments of
Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, France, Great Britain, Italy, the
Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Sweden, Norway, and the Swiss Federal
Council. This arrangement, after submission to the Senate, was
proclaimed by President Roosevelt June 15, 1908, and is printed in full
in the report of the Commissioner General of Immigration. The purpose of
the arrangement is set forth in the preamble, which states that the
several governments, 'being desirous to assure to women who have
attained their majority and are subjected to deception or constraint, as
well as minor women and girls, an efficacious protection against the
criminal traffic known under the name of trade in white women ("Traite
des Blanches"), have resolved to conclude an arrangement with a view to
concert proper measures to attain this purpose'."
It is, of course, inconceivable that the distinguished representatives
of these great governments would have entertained for consideration any
subject not of vital and international importance.
There is still another point upon which I feel moved to place all
possible emphasis--the hideous depravity and the fiendish cunning of
the criminals who engage in this most abhorrent and revolting of all
criminal pursuits.
Kipling said in one of his poems, describing the doings of lawless
people in the camps of one of the Northern countries, that, "There is
never a law of God or man runs north of Forty-nine." That and more too
might be said of the districts where the white slaver grows rich from
his traffic in girls. The men and the women who engage in this traffic
are more unspeakably low and vile than any other class of criminals. The
burglar and holdup man are high-minded gentlemen by comparison. There is
no more depraved class of people in the world than those human vultures
who fatten on the shame of innocent young girls. Many of these white
slave traders are recruited from the scum of the criminal classes of
Europe.
And in this lies the revolting side of the situation. On the one hand
the victims, pure, innocent, unsuspecting, trusting young girls--not a
few of them mere children. On the other hand, the white slave trader,
low, vile, depraved and cunning,--organically a criminal.
In the prosecutions which I have officially conducted against this class
of criminals the fact has developed that when caught they generally are
willing to arrange to pay heavy fines. These offers have, of course,
been refused and we have taken the position that we will in no case
accept merely a fine. In all these cases already tried we have asked the
court to impose jail sentences and we expect to continue that policy.
Men and women who make a living and fatten off the shame, the disgrace
and the ruin of innocent young girls are a menace to the community, to
whom no quarter should be given.
The rule in my office with reference to this class of cases is to show
no quarter--to extend no consideration of any kind. We are requiring
heavy bail and asking for imprisonment in the penitentiary in case of
conviction. And I may add that no criminal convictions secured as a
result of my efforts have yielded me a personal satisfaction to be
compared with that afforded by the conviction of those engaged in the
white slave trade.
One word more: I hope soon to see the time when the laws of the land
will as carefully protect the daughters of the United States from the
destroying hand of the white slave trader as the international treaty
agreements now protect the girl who is brought in from foreign shores.
Respectfully,
EDWIN W. SIMS.
[Illustration: AT WORK IN THE VICE DISTRICT--AT THE VERY DOOR OF A DEN
In some cities the charitable organizations have missionaries whose work
is among the denizens of the vice districts. This picture shows one of
them pleading with a lost one to give up her sinful life.]
[Illustration: BARS WERE REMOVED BY ORDER OF THE CHIEF OF POLICE
Until quite recently the back and side windows of vice resorts were
barred like a prison, and one of the first steps in this crusade was to
get the chief of police to remove them.]
War on the White Slave Trade.
CHAPTER I.
HISTORY OF THE WHITE SLAVE TRADE.
By the white slave trade is meant commerce in white women and girls for
wicked purposes. Most of its history cannot be written, for two reasons:
That these crimes are kept secret as far as possible, and that they are
so revolting that their details cannot be published and ought not to be
read anywhere outside of the bottomless pit.
Crimes against womanhood are as old as sin. From the day that the
serpent beguiled Eve by his craftiness until now, there have been few
days or nights when some daughter of Eve has not been deceived or forced
into an evil life by some serpent or other.
BABYLON.
In ancient Babylon the dishonoring of girlhood was a part of the temple
service, as it is to this day in many temples of India. In the opinion
of the German historical scholar, Dr. Grau, the temples of India
probably derived the hideous custom from Babylon, which the Book of
Revelation calls "the mother of the harlots and of the abominations of
the earth." No wonder that Babylon was denounced by prophets and
apostles, or that her crimes of slavery, cruelty, dishonesty and
debauchery brought perpetual ruin upon the wicked city and nation.
"Fallen, fallen is Babylon!" Up the valley of the Euphrates from
Babylon, and westward among the Canaanites and Phenicians, the horrible
alliance of religion and lust extended, until it reached Asia Minor and
Greece.
GREECE.
At Corinth, a great commercial city and seaport, business shrewdness was
linked with sensuality and profanation, and a great temple of Venus was
built, where one thousand priestesses were required to lead a life of
religious infamy to make money for their despicable masters. There were
constant importations of new girls from Lesbos and the other Grecian
isles. Then as now the devices of the white slave trader were
assiduously employed to keep up and increase the number of profitable
European and Asiatic girls.
It is pastime as well as business to these traffickers to drug, to make
drunken, to deceive, to ensnare or to debauch by force the innocent, the
confiding, the thoughtless, the weak. Whether for the ancient temple of
Venus at Corinth or for the dens of shame in the white slave market of
Chicago or Paris, beautiful victims who will earn much money for their
masters and captors must be hunted and trapped.
At Athens the lawgiver Solon established houses of shame by statute, and
filled them with slave girls for whom there was no possible escape. But
whoever, man or woman, caused a freeborn Athenian girl to enter one of
the houses incurred the penalty of death. It might be well if freeborn
American girls were as thoroughly protected. An Athenian forfeited his
citizenship on opening a house of shame. American citizenship in our
large cities allows the white slave traders an astounding amount of
political influence.
ROME.
In Rome immoral women were enrolled by the police in a public register,
and this public record of their evil life always remained to bar their
way to repentance and respectability. Modern European cities, on the
Continent, follow this hurtful custom, and it has been introduced
without authority of law in some American cities.
Many bakers, barbers and keepers of taverns, baths and drug stores were
also traders in women. These depraved traffickers were regarded with the
greatest loathing by the Roman people. The white slave traders of
ancient Rome probably differed little from the Italian traders to be
found in so many parts of the world today, notably New York and
Chicago. The poet Milton tells how his love of purity kept him in his
youth from the evils practised at Bordello's, presumably an Italian
resort in London. Persons desiring to know the trader's boasting over a
young and beautiful girl who had come into his devilish power, will find
it described in the old English play commonly attributed to Shakespeare,
called "Pericles, Prince of Tyre."
An exceedingly bad example was set by some of the Roman emperors.
Augustus even in his old age sent out men to bring him women and girls.
The beautiful Mallonia stabbed herself rather than yield to the emperor
Tiberius.
The emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, who was very virtuous and
religious and wise according to Roman ideals, persecuted Christians to
the extent of legally condemning Christian girls to the houses of
infamy. Young women were seized and required to sacrifice to idols. Upon
refusing they were dragged through the streets and given to a white
slaver.
Some beautiful legends have been preserved which tell of miraculous
deliverance of Christian girls from this most Satanic cruelty. St.
Agnes, the story runs, was seized and stripped, but immediately her hair
grew quickly and covered her like a garment. Dragged to a den of shame,
she appeared transfigured, a wonderful light shining from her body, and
no one dared to harm her. At length one bold ruffian came near her, but
was struck dead at her feet by a thunderbolt.
The emperor Diocletian renewed these terrible persecutions. The church's
only retaliation was the rescue of depraved women. Mary, an Egyptian,
was a conspicuous penitent, who sailed for Jerusalem and spent her
remaining years virtuously in the Holy Land.
The Christian emperor Theodosius II., who died in the year 450, laid
heavy penalties on traffickers in women. Justinian, who came to the
throne in 527, punished procurers with death. He was merciful toward
erring women, but was unsparing toward every one who exploited them for
gain.
FRANCE.
The Latin writers, conspicuously Tacitus, represent the Germans, Franks
and Gauls as very virtuous, and very severe in their punishment of
offenders. The earliest known legislation in the northern kingdoms is in
the Capitularies of Charlemagne, who was crowned emperor of the Holy
Roman Empire by the Pope in St. Peter's at Rome on Christmas day in the
year 800. Early in his reign in his northern dominions Charlemagne
enacted that all who kept houses of shame or lent their aid to vice were
to be scourged. He would spare neither bad women nor vile men.
But succeeding kings of France, very many of them, were themselves
models not of virtue and kingliness, but of dishonor and debauch. Many
of the clergy also were very immoral, and the whole nation became
corrupt.
Louis IX. made the first earnest effort to check the evil. He issued an
extreme edict, in 1254, that all immoral woman and all keepers and
procurers should be at once exiled from France. After a reaction Louis
renewed his efforts to extirpate the iniquity, and his son Philip
continued to inflict severe penalties. During the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries several notorious procurers were burned alive at
Paris. In the sixteenth century in cities of the south of France
sometimes a woman of this detestable class was thrust into an iron cage
and thrown into the river. When almost dead from drowning she was drawn
out, and after a little the punishment was repeated. Many of the women
who were burnt as witches were really condemned because they were
procuresses or otherwise odiously immoral.
The rise of Chivalry greatly increased the safety of good women and
diminished immorality among men. A higher moral tone was imparted to
society everywhere. Faithful preachers cried out against the traffic in
shame, the snaring of young girls and the immodesty and immorality which
were found in convents, and even in churches. In the reign of Louis XI.,
about 1475, Father Maillard, a bold preacher of the time, excoriated the
whole company of traffickers in girls, especially procuresses and
citizens who let their property for houses of shame. The procuresses, he
said, ought to be burned at the stake, and for women who corrupted the
clergy he had no mercy, but invoked the wrath of God upon them. Louis
XI. was himself extremely immoral, like so many of the kings of France.
Catharine de Medicis, who became queen of France when her husband Henry
II. ascended the throne in 1547, exercised a baneful influence during
three reigns. Her court of two hundred ladies introduced from Italy
worse vices than had before been known in France. She did, however, try
to diminish prostitution in Paris.
An ordinance of 1635 condemned all men engaged in what we now call the
white slave trade to the galleys for life.
Louis XV. at fifteen years of age married Maria, daughter of Stanislas,
the dethroned king of Poland. The whole life of Louis was one of idle
sensuality. When he was old he established a seraglio of
fifteen-year-old girls, the most beautiful that could be bought or
kidnapped. On this harem he spent a hundred million francs, or twenty
million dollars. It was he who, when warned of the impending ruin of his
nation, said "After me the deluge." He died, detested by all, in 1774.
PARIS THE MODERN BABYLON.
Paris, the capital of such kings and the scene of such debauchery,
became the source and headquarters of the world-wide white slave trade
of the present time. With the spread of legitimate commerce to every
part of the world, the long experienced traders in women sought a
world-wide market for girls. There is not a civilized country which has
not been exploited by the traders, alike as a hunting ground for victims
and as a market in which to sell them.
All Europe, North America, Panama, South America, Egypt and other parts
of Africa, India, China and Japan are the fields of operation of these
atrocious men and serpentine women.
By no means all the traffickers are French. Many are Jews, many are
Italians and Sicilians, some are Austrians, Germans, English, Americans,
Greeks. But it is Paris that has made vice a fine art, and has made the
white slave trade a wide-spread systematized commercial enterprise.
It is as true as it is lamentable that the beautiful city on the banks
of the Seine, the center of fashion and of art, gained the shameful
reputation of being the capital of the white slave trade, and deserved
it, "by merit raised to that bad eminence."
In recent years the French government and people have felt keenly the
reproach of this condition, and have been foremost in efforts to
suppress the abominable commerce.
WHITE SLAVERS IN INDIA.
In 1893, during my missionary service in India, a clique of white slave
traders was discovered in Calcutta. They were found to be trafficking
not only in European girls whom they could lure to India, but also in
little native girls, as young as nine years. There was great indignation
in the capital and throughout India when these criminals were exposed
and arrested.
The laws of India were at that time inadequate to punish them, but an
old statute was found under which the Viceroy could deport undesirable
aliens. So these wretches, too abominable to be endured in heathendom,
were shipped back to Europe.
Those were the first white slave traders of whom I, a young missionary,
had ever heard. Last year in Chicago a French trader told me that he had
been in India, and I could not but wonder whether he had been deported
from Calcutta or Bombay and made welcome in Chicago. The United States
government soon afterward put him out of his wicked business.
Rev. Dr. Homer C. Stuntz, formerly of Calcutta, now of New York, told me
of a frightened European girl who nervously rang his doorbell in
Calcutta late at night. She had been deceived into going to India by
false promises made to her by the hunters of girls. Learning their real
purpose just in time, she fled from them, and inquiring the way to a
missionary, she was directed to Dr. and Mrs. Stuntz, with whom she was
safe, and thankful a million times.
How many hundreds of innocent American and European girls have been led
away to heathen and Mohammedan lands, on false promises of good
positions as teachers, governesses, or even as missionaries, only the
open books of the day of judgment will disclose.
E. A. B.