MORE ABOUT THE TRAFFIC IN SHAME.
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
of the 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 statute books
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 obedient as 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 wrote the 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 and my
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."
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 saw the 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 the most 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!