A WHITE SLAVE CLEARING HOUSE.
A WHITE SLAVE'S OWN STORY.
The most conspicuous work of United States Attorney Sims against the
white slave traders in Chicago was the arrest and indictment of a
notorious French trader and his wife, Alphonse and Eva Dufour. The
federal grand jury voted five indictments against each of them. They
spent six weeks or so in Cook county jail, when they gained their
liberty on bonds of $26,500, which they immediately forfeited and fled
to Paris, in August, 1908.
My missionary duties took me occasionally to the clearing house of the
Dufours, and we have often held gospel meetings in front of their
resort. In this place were about twenty girls, whom the agents of this
wicked couple had snared in different parts of Europe and America. One
girl was from Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, who had been deceived into
entering the house and then held there without her street clothes. She
managed to send word out and secured her release. The Dufour woman was
arraigned in court but was not punished seriously for this very common
crime.
A very young black-eyed, black-haired Spanish girl was among the
inmates, and my thoughts inevitably went to some broken-hearted mother
in sunny Spain, whose daughter had been hunted for Chicago's white slave
market. These murderous traffickers drink the heart's blood of weeping
mothers while they eat the flesh of their daughters, by living and
fattening themselves on the destruction of the girls. Disease and
debauch quickly blast the beauty of these lovely victims. Many of them
are dead in two or three years. Cannibals seem almost merciful in
comparison with the white slavers, who murder the girls by inches. It is
a dark mystery that twentieth century civilization allows these
atrocities, even under the flag of the free.
In this glittering den, with its walls and ceiling of mirrors, was a
sweet Russian girl, perhaps sixteen years old, whose fate made my heart
bleed. She was of the best Russian type, blonde, of medium height,
peach-blossom complexion, roundish mouth, and of exceedingly gentle and
loving disposition. Some father, perhaps a nobleman, perhaps dead and
unable longer to protect the delight of his eyes, comes inevitably to my
thoughts as I write. Oh, the pity of it all, and the shame. How can any
father of girls escape the nightmare of what might befall his own
daughters if his own power to protect them should fail?
I went to Baron Schlippenbach, who was then the consul of the mighty
Czar in Chicago, but I never learned that he was able to accomplish
anything for this dear Russian girl. The Czar is only "the little
father," as the Russian people call him. May the Great Father in heaven
help his deeply wronged daughters, in a way that shall break in pieces
their oppressors.
The den of the Dufours had an income of $102,720 in the year 1907, and
$41,000 in the first five months of 1908. One white slave was made to
earn for them in May, 1908, the sum of $723. These figures were taken
from their own account books, which were seized by the United States
government after the Dufours fled to Paris.
This terrible place was both a receiving and a distributing station, and
also a wide open immoral resort, patronized by thousands of young
men--who are the ultimate white slavers, as they pay the expenses of the
white slave trade. From this central clearing house girls were shipped
to Denver, San Francisco and every place where the Dufours had
correspondents. All this was revealed by their own documents after the
United States had driven this tiger and tigress back to Paris.
Soon after we had initiated the public agitation against the white slave
horror in Chicago I received three letters from a victim of the French
traders. Such parts of the letters as can be made public are here given.
These letters have supplied both information and inspiration to the
workers who first brought this infamous traffic to public notice in
Chicago.
A WHITE SLAVE'S OWN STORY.
"I want you to know everything I have witnessed in my three years of
slavery. I was first sold in Custom House Place, by a young man working
for Mr. ----, traveling the city and little towns, or wherever he could
find girls.
"Here we were, always from fifteen to eighteen girls, most of us very
young. The man who bought me made us work like real slaves and then
never gave us our money even if it was shamefully earned. His place was
always full of so-called detectives, and if some one came to claim some
one of us, quick she was slipped to some other town.
"Pictures of foreign girls would arrive by mail, and if one was pretty
enough they would wire to Paris and say, 'Send parcel at once.' They
arrive by different ports--New York, Boston, Quebec, San Francisco--and
those poor unfortunates are all claimed by some one pretending to be an
aunt, or father, or husband.
"Letters are received by the resort keepers from all the states, and I
believe from all the prisons of the world. If any one could read all of
those men's mail, I think one would learn horrible things.
"Also we never can receive our mail direct, for the keeper opens the
letters, and if they are indifferent they are closed and given to us,
but if they are any way wrong in his eyes we never see them.
"If we escape and insist on not returning, they will send some one
after us to propose that we leave for Denver, San Francisco, China or
Panama. Most of those men who make their living off those girls are old
thieves and gamblers, and most of them have served terms in prison.
There are very few girls who would tell, for those bad men surely would
kill them if they found out who gave them away.
"If one girl is a good money-maker, they make her take one of those men
to support. They say if she does not do this, she is not respected by
their class of people. They take all those poor girls' money every
night, and they send them back to work the next day penniless. If they
should not make enough for them they are beaten, and sometimes killed.
"When those runners bring us to those houses, they keep us sometimes
weeks to teach us what to say in case the police or some one would try
to rescue us, and with the threat to kill us if ever we would tell.
"Some one ought to do his duty and make war on those horrid men. They
simply take girls for their slaves in all the country. For even if we
are weak, some one with courage ought to help us not to be persuaded by
those men.
"I am certainly glad that all the men are not bad, that some one takes
our part. You can be sure that most of the girls are happy that some one
came to make us strong.
"Have courage! God is with you, and many of the slaves."
It is well known that some of these brutal traffickers were legally
hanged in California for murdering the women on whose earnings they were
living.
E. A. B.