Chicago's Black Traffic in White Girls Part 2

After more than four years of experience, and after having visited in various capacities, disguised, etc., many of the worst haunts of vice and houses of prost.i.tution in Chicago, =I= have personally come to this conclusion:

There is but a small chance for a girl, once having been sold into or entered upon a life of prost.i.tution, to ever escape therefrom. Invariably she is kept in debt to her masters; excessive bills for parlor clothes, board, dentistry, laundry and all conceivable expenses are kept charged up against her. She is under constant threat of personal violence and blackmail in every form (her owners securing whenever possible, some knowledge of her home and friends, and continually holding this knowledge as a dagger over her), and there is the ever-present wh.o.r.e-masters and madams with drugs, drinks and bolts and bars, guarding every avenue of escape with blows and curses and brutality beyond conception. Very few young girls enter a life of prost.i.tution voluntarily, and few, having once entered, ever escape therefrom.

A WORD OF PROTEST

The writer just here wishes to enter vigorous protest against houses of prost.i.tution in Chicago and in =America= furnishing the American girl or her alien sister for the use of that cla.s.s of alien men who are either excluded from citizenship in our Country by law, or who without wife or family, are here temporarily and simply to make all the money possible, in as short a time and in any way possible.

At 2130 Armour Avenue, Chicago, stands an old tenement house filled with girls--girls from all over the United States--a beautiful ruined girl from Georgia, girls from Europe. Good girls they were a year or two ago, but are now the chained, wrecked slaves of festering vice and habit. This place is said to be operated by a dope-fiend by the name of W---- and is exclusively for the use of a cla.s.s of men debarred from the United States by law, except for educational purposes and mercantile interests among their own kind, a cla.s.s of men with whom no white laborer will live or work--the cla.s.s of men who a year or two ago murdered Elsie Siegel in New York--the lop-shouldered, smuggled-in, pig-tailed opium parched Chinese.

It is a crying shame to-day against our Churches, our Union Labor and our Law that there is allowed to exist on a public street, in the second city in the United States, a public stock-market for wrecked girlhood where the filthy Chinese, in rows, wait their turn to rent for thirty minutes of unparalleled Asiatic debauchery, the bruised, bleeding wreckage of our American home or the girl who came to us a few months ago--to the greatest Christian Republic the World has ever builded, from some European home and a mother, asking only a chance to go to work with her bare hands and earn a decent living.

The American citizen refuses to admit the Chinaman, refuses to work with him, refuses him all rights accorded other aliens coming to us, and yet, for the blood profits of vice and politics, allows to be placed to his exclusive privilege that which a short time ago was our Nation's best and cleanest womanhood.

For an American girl entering a life of public prost.i.tution there is some chance of salvation, for the immigrant girl there is indeed little. Two years ago I had occasion to visit 21-- Armour Avenue, a "50-cent house" in the infamous "bedbug row district." It was about three o'clock in the afternoon, just before the beginning of regular business hours. In the reception room of the place, around a rusty old stove, sat eight or ten hopeless, lost girls; sick, smoking, cursing girls. Soon they would dress up, dope up with whiskey, cocaine or opium, dash some bella donna in their eyes and go on duty to meet all comers. Shivering by the stove sat a little foreign girl. I asked her name, the girls told me it was Josie and that she was an Italian. Speaking to her in that language, I soon learned that she was a young Russian Jewess. The house seemed to possess sufficient proof, as the law then required, that the girl had been in this Country three years; so there was little I could do except give her my card and tell her if she ever needed a friend to come to me. Less than a year ago there came a ring at my door, and opening it, I found a lost woman begging me to come at once into the West Side "levee" to see a girl who was dying. I went with her, and there, in a mouldy, wretched cellar I found "Josie" of the Armour Avenue resort, dying with syphilis. In that awful underground place I listened to her story and give it to you as she related it to me:

"I am nineteen years old and my name is Gezie Bruvatsky. I saw my father bayonetted to the earth by Russian soldiers. I saw my mother work over the washtub until her hands were b.l.o.o.d.y that I and my little brother might have bread and my virtue be protected. One day a man came to our house, who was either a Jew or a German, saying he was agent for a steamship company and that he had good work in America for many girls where they could earn as much in one month as they could earn in two years in Russia. My heart leaped with joy. How could we know he was lying. I packed my clothes. I left all--my mother, my brother. I came to America. Soon I could send for them, for I was strong and could work--work day and night. At New York a man and woman met me and sent me on to Chicago. Here I was taken from the Polk Street Station to Armour Avenue where by force I was ruined.

I was there many months, sick and starving, and finally got out and crawled over to the West Side where there are many Jews; but now I am dying and I want my mother."

WHAT THE U. S. PROSECUTING ATTORNEY SAYS:

Hon. Edwin Sims, ex-U. S. Prosecuting Attorney, in a recent conservative statement, says he believes that =fifteen thousand= immigrant girls are brought into this Country every year for commercialized prost.i.tution.

We believe the actual figures are nearer Twenty-five Thousand, and we appeal to the mothers and fathers of America, in the name of G.o.d and the heart-broken mothers and fathers of other lands, to use their personal influence and the money with which G.o.d has entrusted them, to wipe from our flag the leprous blotch of shame which permits the importing into our Republic every year of thousands of helpless girls to be ground up in the murder mills of the segregated harlotry of such districts as the 22nd Street district of Chicago, for it was the blood-covered hand of that district that reached across the lands and seas and into that Russian home and tore from it little Gezie Bruvatsky and led her across the waters and under the very shadow of the Statue of Liberty itself and pinning to her the little blue ticket of immigration, led her past the gates or Ellis Island, on past the statues of Washington and Jefferson, of Lincoln and Grant, and into the burning fire of American public prost.i.tution to live a few months, and dying in an underground cellar, be cast, scarce cold, into our nation's great potter's field of lost women.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Wretched, Pitiful Ending of Gezie Bruvatsky, left by Her Heartless Masters to Die Unattended in Filthy, Squalid Surroundings]

The Price of a Living Body

Fifty years ago, down in the Southland of our America, we stood a well formed, sound limbed, healthy, intact young woman on the auction block and sold her to the biggest bidder for her beauty, her virtue, her heart, her honor, her soul and her body, and the established average price paid for such a young woman was eighteen hundred dollars ($1800.00). I take for granted as I write, that if the heart and soul and body of a young black woman of Kentucky, Georgia or Mississippi was in the slave market of fifty years ago worth intrinsically $1800.00, the soul and body of a clean, decent, young Northland white woman is to-day worth about the same.

a.s.sistant State Prosecuting Attorney Roe in his speech before the Illinois Vigilance Society, Chicago, February 7th, 1909, placed the number of women in disorderly resorts in Chicago alone at 30,000.

Stop! Listen: If there are 30,000 young women on this City's Soul-Market, and we place the average value of one of these young women at $1,800, AND WE CERTAINLY DO PLACE IT THERE, by established, recognized precedent, then there is $54,000,000 worth of young womanhood in the Slave-Market of our City at the present time. In the same statistical speech Mr. Roe places the number of young girls necessary yearly to recruit the rapidly decimating ranks of this vast Death Army at six thousand; hence, $10,800,000 worth of innocent girlhood must be sacrificed from our stores and factories, our homes or firesides all over the Land every twelve mouths to feed and satisfy the horrible flesh-market of Human Slavery in the "levee" districts of Chicago alone.

Harry A. Parkin, a.s.sistant U. S. District Attorney, in WOMEN'S WORLD, March, 1909, says:

"The Federal investigations in Chicago and other localities have clearly established the fact that, generally speaking, houses of ill-fame in large cities do not draw their recruits to any great extent from the territory immediately surrounding them; for various reasons the White Slavers who are the recruiting agents of this vile traffic prefer to work in States more or less distant from the centers to which victims are destined."

In view of all this, it must be clearly apparent that the need of the hour is legislation which will make it as difficult and dangerous for a White Slaver to take his victim from one State into another as it is to bring them from France, Italy, Canada or any other foreign country, to a house of ill-fame in Chicago or any American city. Therefore, it is suggested that if each State in the Union would enact and enforce laws against this importation, this terrible traffic would be dealt a blow in its most vulnerable part.

One of the strangest results brought about by the recent White Slave prosecutions in Chicago and the wide publicity which they have received has been the astonishment of thousands of persons, as evidenced by letters, at the fact that such a wholesale traffic is actually in existence, but what is still more astounding, not to say discouraging, is the reluctance of other thousands to believe that many hundreds of men and women are actually engaged in the business of luring young girls and women to their destruction and that this infamous traffic is being carried on in every state of the Union every day of the year.

It is estimated by those who should know, that at least five thousand men in Chicago live off of the earnings of prost.i.tution. For instance as to the plan: A young girl, alien or American, is sold into a life of ill-fame for say Two Hundred Dollars, as the actual price of her procuring. Before she suspects any real harm, she is lured into a restaurant or a wine-room, becomes intoxicated, is sufficiently doped to become pa.s.sive, is taken to the "house" to which she has been consigned and is immediately "broken in"

in the most violent and nauseating manner, perhaps becoming the prey of twenty or thirty men. Beaten, threatened with exposure, and, if necessary, purposely infected with gonorrhea, the girl is within twenty-four hours absolutely ruined for all time--"spoiled," the police say. Oh! what a whole world of agony and pain and bruises and disease and h.e.l.l is embodied in that one word "spoiled." She is immediately pressed into service and from that time on until death relieves her, or she is rescued by some one enough interested to help her, she must receive all comers THIRTY DAYS every month.

This answers the question I have been asked a hundred times from all over the Country since CHICAGO'S SOUL MARKET was first published, as to whether a woman in a house of prost.i.tution is allowed any respite from service during the Menstrual Period. SHE IS NOT ALLOWED A SINGLE DAY. The average number of men who must be served by each woman in a medium or lower cla.s.s house of ill-fame is thirty-six per day. On entrance to the place, if the house be a "Dollar house," a metal room-check is purchased from the madam or attendant at the door for one dollar. This check is taken up by the girl in the room and is worth on presentation to the house fifty cents, half of its face value being received by the house for board, laundry, hair dressing, etc., all of which must be paid for at the highest possible rates. Of the remaining fifty cents, twenty-five cents goes to the man who sold the girl into the house, the remaining twenty-five cents going to the girl herself and from this amount must be paid all bills for clothes, dentistry, and all other expenses. In almost every known case, however, with which the writer is at all familiar, the entire fifty per cent goes intact to the owner of the girl, her necessary expenses being paid by him and the balance pocketed for his own use.

Just as the liquor trade is thoroughly and carefully financed and organized even in its weakest points, making successful prosecution against it a thing impossible, just so is the traffic in young women protected in all its details. The writer has in mind the case of Josie E----, fifteen years old, who came from her suburban home in Illinois, hoping to secure employment in the City. Arriving at the Dearborn Street Railway Station about nine o'clock, she started out to find a hotel in which to spend the night. Walking a few steps from the Station, she was accosted at State and Polk streets by a young man who asked her what she was looking for. Replying that she was looking for a hotel, the man Thompson told her he was employed at a hotel on Polk Street opposite the railway station and offered to take the girl there. Unacquainted with the City and relying on his word, she accompanied him to the hotel, where she was outraged and detained for weeks. She was finally rescued by the writer and a Y. W. C. A. worker. Taking her to my rooms, I found her physical condition such that I sent for a detective from the Harrison Street Police Station who investigated her story and finding it true in every particular, arrested Thompson at his place of employment, 41 Polk Street.

The case coming up in the Harrison Street Munic.i.p.al Court, was so manipulated by the defense that in the transferring of it to the Criminal Court a technical error threw it out altogether. I simply give this as an example of how almost utterly impossible it is to secure a conviction in these cases. Is it any wonder when back of this great evil stands at least a hundred million dollars?

Listen, seventy-five per cent of the women and girls entering lives of ill-fame in Chicago are from adjoining States and country districts--they are utter strangers in our City. Every hour, day or night, year in and year out, four great central railway pa.s.senger stations discharge their precious human freight within the first ward of Chicago, the richest and wickedest political ward in the world--the ward of Michael Kenna (Hinky d.i.n.k) and "Bathhouse" John Coughlin--the ward feeding every district of prost.i.tution and gambling and unnatural horror in the City--the ward with two miles of indecent resorts, whole armies of reeking lost women, hundreds of pandering men procurers and White Slavers--the ward of thousands of Turkish, Italian and Arabian immigrants, and opium-parched pagan Chinese--the ward in which every day thousands of women, many of whom without money or friends, are looking for work, are unloaded in this seething cauldron of vice, their only refuge being, when without funds, the Police Station or the house of ill-repute.

The horror of conditions surrounding a woman without money or friends in Chicago makes the living of a moral life almost impossible for her. I have in mind the case of a deserted little Italian woman, G. P----[2], living in Plymouth Court, south of Polk Street. G. had three little baby girls, the eldest only four years, and was expecting another child soon. She was deserted by her husband and left without a dollar or a friend to face life and care for herself and babies. The case came into the hands of the Mission and she was cared for by them until the time of her confinement, when, with her children, she was taken to Dunning Poorhouse where she was kindly cared for. A baby boy was born to G. Great pressure was brought to bear upon this little Italian mother who spoke no word of English, to induce her to give up her children. Frightened and weeping, she refused to do this, declaring she would make a living for them, and leaving the Poorhouse, she started out taking the baby and another child with her, hoping soon to earn the money to care for the other two.

This she was fortunate enough to accomplish, and, taking the four little ones dear to her heart, went back to the little room on the top floor of the tenement in Plymouth Court. G. got work in a sweatshop and made b.u.t.ton-holes at $2.50 a week. She worked hard to keep up, but the baby sickened and died. The other children began to get thin and wan. They grew hungry before her eyes and the mother's heart frightened and sank within her. A fiend in human form, J. F----, came by and offered the half-starved mother bread for herself and babies, offered her marriage as soon as it could be arranged for. G. took the bread and fed her children and to-day up on the top floor of the tenement in Plymouth Court, again deserted and hungry and helpless, she cries and prays and makes b.u.t.ton-holes, and waits and waits with fear and wretchedness the coming of another little child.

[Ill.u.s.tration: From a flashlight photograph showing 2-ton weight steel door connecting sound-proof dungeon cell with blind pa.s.sage-way, between 114 and 116 Custom House Place]

The proprietor of the great resort on the corner of 21st and Dearborn streets said not long ago to a co-worker of mine who forced her way into his infamous dive:

"Don't come here to bother my girls; it is of no use; they are rotten and ripe for H----. Soon I will throw them out myself. Go to the department stores and the sweatshops and help the underpaid, friendless girl _there_ if you must work. I could write a book as large as that (pointing to the City Directory) filled with shrieks and groans of women _after they are lost_, but what good would it do?

They are gone then _forever_."

In a great measure, the man told the truth. It is hard to reach a woman after she has once entered a life of prost.i.tution; for, like the Inferno of old, there should be emblazoned in letters of blood above the barred door of every White Slave mart in America, the ancient warning:

"Leave hope behind, all ye who enter here."

There's many a girl homeless and tempted, underpaid and dest.i.tute, who might be saved from a life of ill-fame if a helping hand and a shelter were offered her in her hour of indecision and hunger and despair.

In the south wall of the bas.e.m.e.nt of 114 Federal Street, formerly known as Custom House Place, that congested, central Redlight District of three years ago, there was a blind pa.s.sage-way between 114 and 116 Custom House Place, 116 being the notorious dive "The California" now located at ---- Armour Avenue. On the inside, this door opened into a large dungeon, windowless, sound-proof (about 7x10 feet) and it is alleged that it was through the alley and into this blind pa.s.sage-way that the unwilling victims of White Slavers (the same syndicate now operating with Chicago as headquarters) were carried into this little solitary cell to be "broken in" by fiendish, brute force to a life of shame.

[Ill.u.s.tration: From a flashlight photograph showing heavy steel screen used inside the iron-barred windows of the houses of prost.i.tution in the old Custom House district]

The accompanying photograph secured by the writer gives at least a faint idea of this frightful trap against the pitiless walls of which have, no doubt, beat the agonized shrieks of many an innocent girl--your sister and mine--as, baptising this h.e.l.l-hole with blood and tears, her quivering body was crucified upon a wh.o.r.e-monger's cross of gold and then torn down to be cast, bruised, bleeding, but yet alive, into five years of the awful, seething moral Golgotha of prost.i.tution and then into =lingering death=.

The Chicago Rescue Mission and Woman's Shelter of which the writer is President, has for two years occupied the premises at 114 Custom House Place. Upon moving into the place we found every window incased in heavy iron bars while between the bars and the gla.s.s of each window was mortised a one-half inch steel screen (see cut). Entrance or exit from the building was as utterly impossible as from a penitentiary, excepting by the =front door=, and to bring the place within the requirements of the City law it was necessary to bring a suit through the Munic.i.p.al Court against the owner of the building, Mrs. Spiegel, against whom through the aid of a.s.sistant Prosecuting Attorney Oleson, we obtained a verdict and forced her thereon to put in a rear stairway (see Court records).

114 Custom House Place is only one of the fifty similarly notorious dens in the old Redlight district, and yet it is impossible to make some people believe that there is such a thing as forcible detention of a woman in a Chicago house of prost.i.tution.

FROM THE "WOMAN'S WORLD"

I quote the following incident cited by a.s.sistant Prosecuting Attorney Roe in an article of recent date in WOMAN'S WORLD, ill.u.s.trating some of the schemes and plans for leading a girl into a life of ill-fame. Mr. Roe says:

"A year ago last summer, 15-year old Margaret Smith was working about her simple home near Benton Harbor, Michigan. The father, employed by the Pere Marquette Railroad, was away from home a good share of the time. One day a graphophone agent came to the house and the family became interested in one of his musical machines. Shortly afterward this agent brought with him to the Smith home Frank Kelly, and introduced him to Maggie, as she was called by her folks. In a day or two Margaret was on her way to Chicago with Kelly who promised her an excellent position in the City. Upon her arrival Margaret was sold to one of the worst dives in Chicago, located on South Clark Street and owned by an Italian named Baptista Pizza. Here she learned that her captor's name was not Frank Kelly, but an Italian whose real name is Alphonso Citro. For a year she was kept as a Slave in this resort, which was over a saloon, and the entrance was through a back alley.

The only visitors were Italians, who came for immoral purposes.

Learning last summer that Margaret's father, who had been hunting relentlessly for his daughter, was on the track of her, the girl was taken by Alphonso Citro, alias Kelly, to Gary, Indiana. When the father came to the resort with a policeman, he found that his daughter had gone. She was kept in Gary about two months and then returned to this disreputable place from which she escaped finally, the Monday before last Christmas. A young barber took pity on her after hearing her story, and enlisted the sympathies of his parents who took her to their home. Alphonso Citro (Kelly) looked for her almost a week, and at last saw her going from a store to this home, where she was staying. He went to the house and demanded at the point of a revolver that she be given up, as he said:

"I am losing money every day she is gone."

"There was a quarrel over the girl during which some people from the outside were attracted to the house by the commotion. Citro, becoming frightened, fled down the street, and as he ran, threw away the revolver with which he had tried to shoot the father of the barber during the quarrel, over the fence into a coal yard. After running two blocks, he was caught and arrested. Upon these facts this procurer, Citro, alias Kelly, was prosecuted and found guilty under the new pandering law of Illinois, and received a sentence of one year of imprisonment and a fine of five hundred dollars. The poor father and mother, distressed and heart-broken, were in Court during the trial with their arms around each other, sobbing with joy because their little girl had been found. Pizza[3], the owner of the place, was indicted by the State grand jury, but escaped to Italy. This case is told to show how girls leave home upon the promise of securing employment and are in this way procured for places of ill-repute."