Pastor People’s Church, Minneapolis, Minn.
Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, have the dual
reputation of being the Sodom and Gomorrah of South America.
The theatres of Buenos Aires begin at 9 p.m., and the Devil’s Mission
opens at the same time. I followed some of his congregation to the
“Royal Theatre” and paid $1.50 gold to stand up in the back part of
the house behind a rail and look at some silly French films. They were
followed by the real entertainment which was opened by an American chorus
whose flat voices would have been high-priced at 25 cents admission. I
endured it in shameful silence, but the audience was “cynical,” and
by barks and obscene onomatopoeic sounds, instead of hisses, showed
its dissatisfaction. So far, this was but a prelude to the interlude
intermission when everybody adjourned to an upper and lower foyer where
the band played, the men and women marched and countermarched, flirted,
paired off and sat at the tables eating and drinking.
The “ladies” were especially friendly to me, alone and idly looking on.
They spotted me as a gringo, and in French, German and Spanish, Italian
and English said “Good evening,” asking me if I would not have a drink or
go out for a little walk. One coveted my scarab pin, thinking it would
make a nice breast-pin. I compromised with her on an American flag which
she proudly bore aloft. Another as unmindful of my calling as I was of
not standing “in the way of the ungodly,” chucked me under the chin and
said, “Hello, kiddo, how’s New York?”
This was the life or death I didn’t care to cultivate. I told them I
had no time or money to waste and that my wife was waiting for me to
help pack the trunk, since we were to sail in the morning. I returned
to my standing place to get my money’s worth of torture. It was over at
twelve, when I left. Hurrying to the hotel, I met the hotel runner. He
asked where I had been. “Everywhere,” I said, and told him. He laughingly
replied I was in the “wickedest city” in the world and hadn’t seen
anything. Then he proceeded to introduce me to the Red Lamp district
across the river, where the sailors are searched and relieved of their
arms; where the arms of the frail denizens relieve them of their money
by charging dollars for dime drinks; where blistering curses and kisses
echo through the darkened rooms; and where colored movies of human and
animal life are shown that would make the pornographic pictures of Paris
and Havana look like a Pilgrim’s Progress film.
Here are the painted women whose keen eyes stab, whose vampire lips
suck life blood, whose tresses are winding-sheets, and bodies graves in
which honor and purity are buried. Happier for them had they dressed in
a shroud, clasped hands with a leper and kissed a red-hot stove than to
have dressed, drunk and debauched as they did.
These midnight marauders seemed to think the stars were lit to lead them
on from shame to shame, while the truth is they sadly look down on souls
whose beating pulses live for a pleasure that murders time, health,
wealth, character and reputation.
They follow Satan as a guide, hypocrisy as a lawyer, impudence as an art,
pleasure as an object and damnation as their end. If their minds were
like matter and could show decay, they would smell like carrion. They
wear fine clothes and live in beautiful houses, but their minds are empty
and their souls in rags.
Religion has pleasure, but their pleasure was religion, and Cupid and
Bacchus their saints.
The fabled Greek Temple of Pleasure had a large doorway for entrance,
lights, music and lovely women within, but back of it all a wicket-gate
which opened into a pig-pen.
Thus, the end of vice is not satisfaction, but satiety, and the bacchanal
worshiper of what appeals only to his physical senses is thrust out
naked, ashamed and alone. Satan smiles, and hell is happy.
A dying king dreamed he would be met on the other shore by a beautiful
woman and led to a throne. Instead, he was welcomed by a horrible hag who
leered and laughed at him. When he recoiled and asked who she was, she
replied, “I am your sins and have come to live with you forever.”
Leaving this bare-breasted, forbidden fruit untasted, I bought some navel
oranges, and went to my hotel thankful that, if I had been led into
temptation, I had been delivered from evil.
The Devil’s calling cards he gives to visitors here, have B. A. after his
name, and it does not stand for “Bachelor of Arts,” although he has that
degree from several European and American universities. Last impressions
are first in mind. I had hoped that B. A. (Buenos Aires) would stand for
“Better Afterwards,” but just before the boat pulled out I found it meant
“Bad Always.”
A well dressed man sold my wife some pretty post cards, of the city, and
while she was looking at them he took me to one side, whispered “dirty
book” in my ear, and offered me something “nice” to read on the trip. I
read the title, “The Lustful Experiences of a Physician,” and refused
him, saying I was no doctor, didn’t intend to study for the profession,
or do anything that would make it necessary to contract for medical
services in advance. As the ship sailed out of the harbor I gazed
ruefully at this roué paradise of a city, repeating the lines of the poet,
“Farewell, dear, damned, distracted town;
Ye harlots live at ease.”
Oh, that last night in Rio de Janeiro. The city was brilliantly lighted
but we saw some shady places to make the picture complete. Passing by the
brightly lighted movie foyers, where the waiting crowd is furnished with
seats and music, instead of being log-jammed as they are in the United
States, I went down the Avenida through a public park. Its main gate
opened into a street, not filled with churches, libraries and museums,
but aristocratic “maisons de joie.”
There was a corner café with a score of well-dressed women sitting at the
tables, but no men. They seemed social as I passed by and beckoned me
in. When I went on they followed me with a loose collection of Spanish,
French, German and English oaths. That was the only way they could
follow, for there was a man on horseback at the street corner prepared
to run them in if they ventured out. It was eight o’clock, we were the
only ones on the street, and must have looked lorn and lonely, for in
every doorway stood a besilked, bediamoned, benighted beauty who looked
compassionately on and invited us to come in and make ourselves at home.
A long walk brought us to a kind of Leicester Square of many theatres.
Believing they were all equally good or bad, we entered one and saw and
heard a Portuguese comic opera. It was comical to see some of the red
light scenes we had just escaped, enacted on the stage. Again we went
out of the light into the night, passing through narrow streets of dives
brighter and blacker than any we had yet seen. This was the busiest place
in Rio. Although it was midnight, an unending stream of humanity poured
up and down the walks, the patrolling police charging the crowds time and
again.
I was sorry I had not seen Brazil’s “men of war” because it was foggy
when we entered the harbor, but I was more sorry to see most of them
gambling, drinking, going in and out of the dives along these streets.
Here vice was wholly evil and lost none of its grossness. It was dirty,
dowdy and depraved. Jack Falstaff would have hurried away as fast as his
fat legs could carry him, and not paused to pity, endure or embrace the
poor, half-dressed, painted, powdered prostitutes. There is a sharpness
of teeth hiding in their cruel kisses, poison in the honey of their
lips, and many a deluded lover starts up terrified as if he heard snakes
hissing in their hair. Rio de Janeiro is damned with a debauchery which
the natural beauty of its harbor can not redeem.
On leaving Rio I met two young ladies on shipboard who told me a “white
slave” story. A Buenos Aires agent for vaudeville had come to New York
and booked them through his agency. He said conditions were better in
South than North America; that they could each earn $50 a week, and have
all expenses paid, if they would “just sing American songs.” But before
landing they learned from some one who knew this agent, that gambling
and wine rooms were run in connection with the theatre, and that it
would be necessary for them to carry revolvers for protection. When they
realized their danger and decided not to land, but board our ship for
New York, they were nabbed by the police, who work hand in hand with the
white slavers, and had it not been for the American consul and others
interested who raised enough money for their return passage, and insisted
that the contract of the agent’s false promises be broken, these two
girls would have been placed in durance vile for two years, according to
law.
South America is the white slave market of the world. She has black
slaves in gold mines and rubber camps of the interior, and white slaves
on the coast who have been brought from every country of the world with
promises of marriage or respectable employment.
The white slaver is the Devil’s missionary who lays nets which Lucretia
cannot avoid, and gives baits and bribes which move Penelope.
Babylon had a marriage market for her women; Rio has a girl’s slave pen,
over whose portals is written Dante’s Hell motto.
“She has been in South America,” is the living epitaph of many a poor
girl dead in trespasses and sins.
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