CHICAGO'S WHITE SLAVE MARKET--THE "LEVEE."
It is no pleasure to me to impeach my city, but it is false patriotism
to allow the crimes of one's own country to go without rebuke. We are
responsible for the evil that we have power to abolish. It is the duty
of a patriotic preacher to lash the sins of his people till they are
lashed out of existence.
One afternoon last summer Captain Wood of the Twenty-second street
police station, who has always taken splendid care of our missionaries,
told me that Jesus did not try to destroy the "levee" in Jerusalem, but
forgave the repentant woman who washed his feet with her tears. That
evening a Jew who was born and brought up in Jerusalem came to help us
in our street meeting. I asked him publicly if there is any "levee,"
that is, a vice district, in Jerusalem. He said that the Arabs would not
tolerate one such house of shame but would burn it down before morning.
Mr. Archibald Forder, for seventeen years a pioneer missionary in the
interior of Arabia, says that among the Arabs this vice is unknown--"and
a great big UNKNOWN it is."
Rev. Dr. Spencer Lewis, for many years a missionary in China, said when
he preached with us in midnight Chicago, that even heathen China, which
is very impure, does not obtrude vice as does Chicago.
In New York City Mayor Low broke up the "tenderloin" some years ago, and
though vice is shamefully abundant and flagrant in that metropolis, the
city government no longer gives the white slave traders a practical
license to commit their crimes, by setting apart a portion of the city
where they may operate with impunity.
In Philadelphia, when three of us conferred with Mr. Gibboney, secretary
of the Law and Order Society, concerning a proposed exploration of a
questionable district, one of the questions immediately raised was how
we might gain our liberty if arrested in a raid on an immoral resort
which we might be investigating. This was a vital and serious question,
in Philadelphia. There vice is a thousand times too abundant, but it is
contemptible, suspicious, secluded and afraid.
In Chicago our politicians have set apart several districts for the
traffickers in slaves. The traders in girls are public, bold, defiant.
They feel clean, almost virtuous, after the city hall and a deluded
preacher or two have given them an immunity bath--provided only the
fiction of segregation is preserved.
MAYOR A COWARD.
Mr. Gibboney called the former mayor of Philadelphia a coward, because
the mayor expressed his desire to segregate vicious resorts, but not in
his own neighborhood--but among the poor and helpless. Let the advocates
of segregation in Chicago propose to put these resorts on Michigan
avenue and Prairie avenue, where certain advocates of this shameful
policy live, or in the vicinity of Mayor Busse's residence. Then we can
at least believe in their sincerity and manliness. But as it is, they
curse the children of the poor by protecting these resorts in districts
where the poor must live.
Former State's Attorney Healy asked former Mayor Dunne why the Italian,
Jewish and negro children near Twenty-second street have not the same
right to a decent environment as Mayor Dunne's own children in
Edgewater. Why have not the little children on Archer avenue the same
right to grow up in a decent neighborhood, that the little girl has who
puts her arms around Mayor Busse's neck and calls him "Uncle Fred"?
A FRIGHTENED GIRL.
I have seen with my own eyes a young girl under seventeen years of age,
a member of Immanuel Baptist Church, running like a frightened gazelle,
to her home near Twenty-second street, to avoid insult on the public
streets, from the thousands of young men who are encouraged to throng
that district for immoral purposes. She ran to her home for this reason
for three or four years. I lifted my hat in reverence to such a girl.
But, Oh, how I felt the shame of the city and of the churches near her
home, that permitted conditions that put a good girl to tests like this.
I afterward talked face to face with her mother.
GRAFT INEVITABLE.
Segregation as practised, colonizes and fosters vice, maintains a white
slave market under executive protection, and provides an overwhelming
temptation and facility for graft. Bribeless government cannot exist for
any considerable time where these facilities for corruption are so
assiduously maintained. It is not in politicians, or anybody else, to
resist temptation when the temptation itself is protected and cherished.
Nothing is said by our officials, or by the high priests of segregation,
about corraling immoral men into segregation districts. It is therefore
not segregation of vice, but only an attempted or pretended, and never a
complete or successful cornering of depraved women. There are wide open
resorts on more than twenty streets outside of the big "levee."
Segregation as practised is not a restriction of vice so much as it is a
practical license to lawbreakers to wreck human lives and blight the
homes of the people, by corrupting husbands and sons and taking captive
wives and daughters. You would be astounded to learn how many ruined
women are wives who have been allured to sin.
A MAELSTROM FOR YOUNG MEN.
Into the red light districts, so long as they remain, men and youths
from the whole city and the whole world are irresistibly drawn, if only
by curiosity. The "levee," blazing with electric lights and floating in
liquor, is regarded by thousands of visitors as one of the chief sights
of Chicago.
When the Shriners, a Masonic order, held a convention here, their red
fezzes and Arabian symbols were seen by hundreds in the "levee" towards
midnight. Not all, perhaps not very many of them, were there for a vile
purpose. They were simply inspecting one of Chicago's pet
institutions--not the cattle market at the stockyards, but the white
slave market in the "levee."
Cattle men from Texas and Montana come with their carloads of cattle to
Chicago, and having disposed of their stock and received their money,
many of these men hurry to the "levee," of whose attractions they have
heard a thousands miles away. Thus the immorality and diseases of the
"levee" are spread over the land.
So far from being an efficient restriction of vice, a red light district
is the greatest advertisement the horrible trade can have--and is just
what it desires. Every divekeeper and madam in Chicago and every other
city, delights in segregation as practised by our rulers, who have sworn
to the Almighty and contracted with the people to enforce the laws--and
draw their salaries upon this contract and this oath.
"Give us a district to ourselves," say all the dives with one mind, and
our obliging executives forthwith bow down to them and do as they say,
giving these detestable criminals permission to trample the laws in the
sewers. "To hell with the laws" some of the divekeepers have said to our
missionaries. Why not give murderers, thugs, thieves, gamblers, forgers,
a district where they may break the laws, after an immunity bath at City
Hall, as well as to the filthy offenders who promote even the crimes of
Sodom and Gomorrah, and invite upon Chicago the doom of those cities of
the plain?
A divekeeper recently paid his first fine in twenty years. For twenty
years this man had carried on his murderous trade without ever being
made to feel even once that he is a criminal. What astounding privilege,
in a city where many men have been arrested and fined for spitting on
the sidewalk.
The French and Japanese importers of women have been amazingly exempt
from punishment at the hands of our local authorities. The federal
government has done its duty, as all the world knows. The work of Mr.
Sims and his assistants at Chicago is affecting the whole nation and
Canada for good. But why are the wild beasts who trade in girls immune
from punishment at the hands of our city and state authorities?
We ought to say, and do say very heartily, that our authorities in
Chicago are beginning to listen to the cry of the white slaves, native
and foreign. Something has been done to punish procurers and such like
reptilia who do not count in politics. But the divekeepers, the buyers
and holders of women, have not been seriously disturbed, except by the
national government.
SEGREGATION MAKES A SLAVE MARKET.
It is impossible to abolish brothel slavery and to license, either
formally or practically, the slave market, the red light district. While
the divekeeper enjoys the indulgence of the mayor and the police and of
their masters, the citizens, he will keep his dive--and his dive must be
restocked with new victims, to make money for him, all the time. These
victims will be obtained, as heretofore, by procurers who travel city
and country to trap them, and they will be imported from Europe and Asia
as heretofore. To maintain a segregation district is to maintain a slave
market, as things are.
Unless we make energetic and successful war upon the red light districts
and all that pertains to them, we shall have Oriental brothel slavery
thrust upon us from China and Japan, and Parisian white slavery, with
all its unnatural and abominable practices, established among us by the
French traders. Jew traders, too, will people our "levees" with Polish
Jewesses and any others who will make money for them.
Shall we defend our American civilization, or lower our flag to the most
despicable foreigners--French, Irish, Italians, Jews and Mongolians? We
do not speak against them for their nationality, but for their crimes.
American traders of equal infamy, to the shame of the American name,
have stocked Asiatic cities with American girls.
On the Pacific Coast eternal vigilance alone can save us from a flood of
Asiaticism, with its weak womanhood, its men of scant chivalry, its
polluting vices and its brothel slavery. Bubonic plague in San Francisco
and Seattle was alarming. Mongolian brothel slavery, the Black Death in
morals, is more alarming.
On both coasts and throughout all our cities, only an awakening of the
whole Christian conscience and intelligence can save us from the
importation of Parisian and Polish pollution, which is already
corrupting the manhood and youth of every large city in this nation.
MONEY IN VICE
There is money in vice, so long as the public conscience sleeps and
officials are chloroformed with bribes, or otherwise persuaded to make
it easy for lawbreakers. Frenchmen, Japanese, and Jews know what a good
rich market America is, and they are exploiting it with enterprise. They
will continue to do so more and more, if pulpit and press are ignorant
or cowardly, and sworn officers of the law make void the law. Both
native and foreign exploiters of vice immediately improve the facilities
afforded by every wicked or deluded executive who proclaims a
segregation district. These shrewd, diabolical men quickly stock the red
light districts with their victims. The traders are organized,
capitalized, ready to pay for their privileges to trample on our statute
books, our flag, our Bibles, our homes.
WORSE THAN PARIS!
All Europe except Turkey is organized against the traffic in womanhood.
Many criminals of this sort have been driven out of Paris--only to find
a cordial welcome in the open arms of our deluded if not debauched
officials, who provide for them segregation districts in this and other
American cities. Thus our American cities become dumps for the outcast
filth of Paris.
In our "levee" at Twenty-second street, fourteen resorts had "Paris" or
"Parisian" as part of their signs until Chief Shippy ordered the signs
removed six months ago. Numerous other resorts have French managers and
French inmates. Patriotic Americans would do well to reflect upon Sedan
and the French lilies that withered there, after trainloads of women had
rolled out of Paris to the French camp, while the Germans sang "A Mighty
Fortress is Our God" and "The Watch on the Rhine."
We remember La Fayette and French service for American liberty, but from
organized, capitalized, cunning, brazen, Parisian licentiousness in
addition to that of native Americans,
Good Lord deliver us!
About a score of resorts in the same "levee," all of them extremely
flagrant, are managed by Jews. Two or three places are managed by
Italian men, though there are few Italian prostitutes in Chicago. One
resort is controlled and occupied by Japanese--for American men; and
several places contain American girls for Chinese men. I know of no
resorts controlled by English, Scotch, German or Scandinavian men.
In one respect our American red light districts are worse than Paris. In
Paris, if Dr. Sanger is right in his standard work, "A History of
Prostitution," men are not permitted to manage the resorts. The
unspeakable divekeeper--why do the American people tolerate such a viper
as this?
COURTS ARE UNSTAINED.
The laws and the courts are uniformly against vice and against the men
who exploit vice, for a lazy living or despicable gain.
The Supreme Court of California is representative of all courts when it
said, in the case of Pon against Wittman in July, 1905:
"Under the Penal Code of this state, keeping or knowingly letting any
tenement for the purposes of prostitution, keeping a house of ill-fame
resorted to for the purposes of prostitution or lewdness, or residing
therein, are criminal offenses, and every person who lives in or about
such houses, and any common prostitute, is a vagrant. (Penal Code,
sections 315, 316, 647.)
"Ordinance No. 1587 of the board of supervisors of the city and county
of San Francisco also makes it a public offense to maintain such houses,
or become an inmate thereof or visitor thereto, or in any manner
contribute to their support.
"These laws have for their object the prohibition and suppression of
prostitution, and that duty devolves, within the city and county of San
Francisco, upon its police department.
"These houses are common or public nuisances. Their maintenance directly
tends to corrupt and debase public morals, to promote vice, and to
encourage dissolute and idle habits, and the suppression of nuisances of
this character and having this tendency, is one of the important duties
of government.
"The suppression of such houses, as evidenced by the stringent laws
concerning them, is a public policy of the state."--California Reports,
volume 147, page 292.
California and New York have splendid modern laws against white slavery
and the traffic in women in its various forms. Nine states have enacted
new laws against these evils this year. We rejoice in these laws, but
they will never fully accomplish their purpose while the executive
officers of our cities illegally make void the law by proclaiming or
recognizing red light districts, where traders are illegally exempted
from the laws and their penalties.
Since the laws are good and the courts everywhere faithful, for the most
part, to the laws, why are the executive officers of our cities so far
from fulfilling the purpose of the laws as interpreted by the courts?
Many of our officials clearly, from their conduct, consider it "one of
the important duties of government" not to suppress but to protect,
favor and encourage these hideous haunts of vice and crime. Why?
TONS OF GRAFT.
Doubtless tons of graft have been taken from the red light districts,
and doubtless more tons will be taken by perjurers and traitors in
public office. No one knows this better than honest officials--for there
are many such, men who keep their oath of office and conscientiously
guard the great public interests of which they are trustees and not
traitors.
But the evil lies deeper than corrupt officials, and cannot be
eradicated by the most faithful officials only--even if all were such.
Under our form of government officials are the people's agents and must
do what their masters, the sovereign people, require them to do.
The responsibility is therefore the people's. Why do the sovereign
people of our American cities love to have it so? Why do they approve
the red light districts, the white slave market, the traffic in women
and girls? Or disapprove too mildly to abolish them?
THE LIE IN THE PEOPLE'S MINDS.
Lecky, the historian of European morals, lent his great name to a great
delusion, when he attempted in a passage too well known, to garland the
prostitute as the protectress of pure women. Edwin Arnold, the
paganizing English poet, put Lecky's folly into verse, writing a sonnet
in praise of the harlot as the purest of all women--a sort of devil's
compliment to our wives and mothers.
This immoral and repulsive idea has a considerable place among educated
men and among the plain people. I was grieved to hear a physician quote
Lecky's false and immoral statement before the Physicians' Club of
Chicago. The managing editor of one of our decent and moral morning
papers quoted Lecky in a short talk I had with him.
When the educated and moral are so deceived, what can we expect of the
ignorant and immoral? The devil's dogma, that prostitution is a
protection to virtue, is thrust upon us continually by the vilest men
and women, and by those who create, promote and exploit vice. This creed
is assiduously preached by divekeepers and madams throughout the world.
Thereby they have their wealth, for thereby honest people are deceived
into tolerating these enemies of the human race--destroyers of youths
and maidens, of innocent wives and guilty husbands, of cities,
civilizations and nations.
SIN IS NOT A BLESSING.
The prostitute will be a blessing to good women when Satan is actually
transformed into a holy angel--but not till then. While the hideous
caricature of womanhood is responsible by her diseases for one-fourth or
more of the surgical operations upon innocent wives--operations made
necessary by disease which their husbands bought of the prostitute,
perhaps years before marriage--we cannot regard her and her criminal
male partners as anything less than the red-handed slayers of good
women. While the eye doctors attribute one-fourth of blindness,
particularly of helpless babies, to the same source, we cannot quote
except to condemn, this sophistry that makes the worse appear the
better cause and garlands the woman whose pursuit is death itself,
suicide and murder in one.
While this perverted or enslaved creature that Lecky and Arnold would
glorify drives herself and her criminal patrons to suffer locomotor
ataxia, necrosis of bone and brain, or incurable insanity at public
expense in our asylums, we will give her no garland, except apple
blossoms--of the apples of Sodom.
GOOD WOMEN ARE NOT PROTECTED BY BAD.
Nor do hundreds of brothels illegally legalized in a city protect
virtuous women, maidens and little girls from bestial assault. On the
contrary, good women are a thousand times safer where no such hells
exist to manufacture degenerates. The men who consort with vile women
lose their respect for all women, and by their base fellowship inflame
infernal fires which are the utmost menace to all good women.
We have had in Chicago numerous recent illustrations of the way in which
police-protected houses of infamy save good women and girls.
A few weeks before the murder of Mrs. Gentry, Constantine applied at the
rooming agency of the Young Men's Christian Association for a room. The
secretary marked on his application "sporty" and did not send him to any
good woman's home to room, but to a lodging house of men only. By some
means he came to room at the Gentry home and repaid hospitality by
murdering his hostess. The "sporty" man associating with harlots, loses
his respect for good women, and may murder them if they resist his
wicked will.
In September one block from our outrageous "levee," where one thousand
and fifty ruined women are constantly at the service of ten thousands of
vile men--one block from these protectresses of good women and young
girls, more than a thousand protectresses!--a thirteen-year-old girl was
lured to a room and brutally assaulted. The police officer, Lieut.
White, who arrested the criminal, and was himself roughly handled in the
discharge of his duty, confirmed this report when I inquired of him face
to face. Captain McCann told me he arrested a divekeeper for assaulting
his own stepdaughter.
Do the dives protect women and girls from crimes like these? Do they not
rather manufacture the degenerates who commit these crimes?
WORST ENEMIES OF THE HUMAN RACE.
Harlots and their patrons are the worst enemies in every way that good
women can have. If there were any virtue in vice, if black were white or
even speckled, doubtless the supreme book of morals, the guide of the
race, would have some word in praise of moral rottenness--some few lines
in prose or verse in laudation of lewd women. But the whole Bible keeps
the distinction sharp and clear between black and white, between virtue
and sin.
Until the public intelligence and conscience are trained to abhor vice
as a destroyer of families and nations--more insidious and more ruinous
than even the liquor traffic--a soft, foolish, wicked indulgence will be
granted to the red light districts, and the white slave markets which
they constitute and are. We must call most urgently upon all guides and
rulers of the people to make incessant war upon the loathsome criminals
who prey upon young women and young men. They are the worst enemies of
the human race. They drink the heart's blood of mothers and eat the
flesh of their daughters. They people hospitals, alms-houses, lunatic
asylums and dissecting rooms. They blast innocent wives and blind
helpless babies. They enslave by force, threats or craft thousands of
weak women and innocent young girls.
Their horrible flesh market and slave pen is the red light district,
where they are illegally exempted from the criminal prosecutions that
their crimes deserve. This favor to criminals is itself criminal. The
men who have lifted up their hands to God, upon taking the oath of
office, have an appalling responsibility when they exempt the most
odious criminals from the laws which they are sworn and paid to enforce.
The sovereign people, who indulge these officials in their palpable
neglect of duty and malfeasance in office, have a fearful
accountability.
Property owners and their agents, who rent buildings for immoral use,
are perhaps guiltiest of all, having no motive but greed. In Los
Angeles, the aroused citizens put the Italian millionaire, who owned the
"crib" district and was exploiting girls therein, on the chain gang and
abolished the "crib" district. On the other hand, in Chicago we have
seen property of Yale University become the vilest of dives, to the
grief of President Hadley and the shame of his agents in this city.
The old Roman Senator, who believed that Rome and Carthage could not
both be great, kept crying "Delenda est Carthago" until Carthage was
blotted out. So let us keep crying, "The Levee must go!" until the
police-protected white slave market is destroyed. Above all, in our
struggle against this most infamous slavery, let us never forget the
very early flag of the Revolution, the Pine Tree Flag, now preserved in
Independence Hall, with its deathless motto, WE APPEAL TO GOD.
E. A. B.