THE TRAFFIC IN GIRLS.
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 the poor 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 to free 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.
[Illustration: DAISY UNDER TWENTY, DYING IN THE POOR-HOUSE
Less 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]
[Illustration: DAISY'S LONELY FUNERAL PAID FOR BY CHARITY
The 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 rink and 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 she may
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 be helped--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 evil is 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 interested the 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 being under 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.