Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls Part 11

The girl is at once interested. She is naturally ambitious. She wants to better her condition in life. She doesn't suspect that a fiend with the heart of a devil is masquerading before her as the agent of some theatrical manager. He explains to her that if she will accompany him she can make from $15 to $20 a week at the very start and in a year she will be playing a part, and a year or so later she will possibly be leading lady. The picture is an alluring one to this young girl, for she is now making only perhaps $4, $5 or $6 a week, and the thought of securing such a large salary at the very start almost sweeps her off her feet. She is entranced by the beautiful picture that has been painted and she goes, perhaps to a stage from which she will never return.

The trader often has the impudence and nerve to interview the parents of the girl and obtain their consent, knowing that he is hiding behind some fict.i.tious name, with little possibility of ever being apprehended. This was true in the case of a certain cadet who brought a little girl from Duluth, Minn. The girl was 17 years old. The parents gave their consent, thinking that through the girl's life upon the stage their position in life would be raised, and they sent the little girl on to Chicago with this man, bidding her "G.o.d-speed." The testimony in this case showed that under compulsion she wrote several letters to her parents, telling of her initial stage success, while the truth was that this man was a procurer and collecting toll upon the loathsome earnings of this girl, who was compelled by him to lead a disreputable life. He was convicted under the law for bringing a girl into the State under the age of 18 for immoral purposes and was sentenced to three years, and the girl was returned to the home of her parents.

This only serves as an ill.u.s.tration of how easy it is to appeal to the girl's ambition; yes, even to that of a parent, in this nefarious business of securing girls to be auctioned as white slaves.

Cases have been brought to light and facts uncovered, where even disreputable theatrical agents themselves have loaned their services to the white slave system. A case recent enough to be vividly recalled by the people of Illinois is that of two young girls who were working in one of the larger department stores of the City of Chicago. One day a woman was at the counter where one of these girls was selling goods. The woman complimented the beauty of the girl, at once appealing to her vanity, and asked her how she would like to go upon the stage. The girl, who was Evelyn K----, was overjoyed at the very thought, for only a few nights before she had been talking with her chum, Ida P----, about becoming an actress. The bait that the woman had cast was readily grabbed at. The woman gave Evelyn a card with the address of a certain theatrical agent on it and instructed the girl to call there at a certain time. This she did, accompanied by her friend, Ida. Arrangements were made and tickets procured, and the girls were soon on their way to Springfield, Ill., headed for a disreputable resort, as the evidence in the case afterwards showed. Had it not been for the interference of a good Scotch lady, into whose house these girls had gone for lodging before making themselves known to their new employers, they would have been cast into a life far different from that which they had antic.i.p.ated. The Scotch lady, learning their destination and knowing the reputation of the resort to which these girls had been sent, warned them of the danger they were in, and aided in sending them back to Chicago.

While the case against this theatrical agent was pending, these girls, who were waiting to testify, were taken out of the city and secreted in Milwaukee, Wis., where after several weeks' hunt they were finally found and brought back to Chicago, and afterwards testified in the court to the foregoing facts.

There are many other instances of girls being brought to the city or taken from the city upon the pretext of becoming embryo actresses. In the case of a certain ex-prize fighter, who was arrested during a raid upon one of the strongholds of white slavery, the evidence was brought to light that he and another young man procured a consignment of girls in the City of Chicago, presumably to take them out with a southern musical comedy road company. These girls were sent South in company with a certain Myrtle B----, and they ended up in a resort at Beaumont, Texas. Many other cases might be cited to ill.u.s.trate how easy it is to secure girls to come to the city or leave the city under the guise of putting them upon the stage. Let it be understood, however, that in all of the cases tried nothing has ever been hinted at that would involve any reputable theatrical manager or agency, and the procurers have never been really a.s.sociated with theatrical managers in any way, but have always falsely paraded under the theatrical mask.

Almost all positions alluring to young girls have been used to catch them in the great net these procurers have set for them. We can't blame the girls for being ambitious. We can't blame them for wanting to better their condition in life, and we can't blame them for falling prey to the white slave monster, with its tentacles spread throughout the country ready at every possible chance to clutch them within its grasp. We can only warn them to be more cautious, to investigate carefully before going away from home with people they do not know. Fathers and mothers are too negligent in this regard, and through their laxity and carelessness they have allowed their daughters to be entrapped. They should see to it that the girls, in going to the cities, are surrounded by honest and reputable acquaintances. In one case they contributed directly to the procuring of their daughters by not writing a letter to them as they had promised. The girls who had gone to the post-office, turning away from the window downcast and disheartened, were approached by a young man who had noted their sad faces. He said to them: "You appear to be in trouble." One answered, "Yes, we expected a letter from home with some money, but we did not receive it. We have been here only two days and are without funds until we receive this letter. We did not get the positions we expected to get and until we find work we have no place to stay."

The young man volunteered to find them work. They had fallen into the hands of a procurer, ever on the watch, and were sold into a disorderly house before they knew it, thinking it was at this place they were to obtain work. When the facts in this case were brought to light, the procurer had fled to New York City. Through funds advanced by one of the leading clubs of Chicago and some big hearted police officers the procurer was apprehended, extradited, brought back, tried and convicted.

Through the other well known method the procurer, by pretending to be in love with his victim, appeals to her vanity and is often successful.

Pretending that it is love at first sight and showering flattery upon the girls they succeed in winning confidence and hearts by the easiest method in the world.

In the early summer of 1907, Mona M----, while working at the ribbon counter of one of the Chicago stores, fell in love with handsome Harry B---- on sight. After an acquaintance of three days she was willing to go away with him to be married. It was the sale of this girl into a disreputable house and her final escape that led to the unearthing of one of the headquarters of the white slave traders and seven of them were arrested in one night, her procurer receiving the longest sentence of them all.

The little Elgin girl mentioned in Chapter X, on page 142 of this book, was caught by the love method in one day; and the very recent case, in which two procurers and the man behind the scenes who had hired them, the white slave dealer, were all convicted, was an example of securing girls through pretended love. This, the first case under the amendment to the Pandering Act in Illinois was severely fought in court by two of the men. One of the procurers by the name of Lewis B---- made a confession, telling how the dealer in human souls, had hired Jacob J.

and himself to go about on the streets and catch girls to be turned over to immoral resorts. The testimony in the case in which they were found guilty will show how successful they were.

Two sixteen-year-old girls, one picked up by a flirtation in one of Chicago's large summer amus.e.m.e.nt parks, were sold into captivity. This is one of the most appalling cases that has yet come to our notice.

These girls were procured upon promises of marriage and a trip to New York, all of which was fine and grand to them.

So many and varied are the ways of procuring girls that it is quite impossible to tell all of them. Employment agents have been convicted for sending girls out as house servants to immoral places for the ultimate reason of making them inmates in the house. The procurers have masqueraded as graphophone agents, as the sons of bankers, as detective agents looking for women detectives to work for them, and in a very recent letter received from a lady in Ma.s.sachusetts the story is told how she, as a country girl, went to certain photograph studios in Boston and found that this photographer was a procurer. In a letter setting forth very vividly her experiences she says: "There were girls whom he had found nice fellows for and he would help me to find one and a possible fine marriage. I did not know then that I should have exposed him." She tells of how she eluded this man and when she saw him on the streets afterwards in Boston she would hurry into a store or a hallway and hide from him. She says: "I found afterwards that was really his business, introducing girls that he met in a business way in different studies and other places."

Through information received from letters and many other ways, we are constantly on the lookout for the procurer. One said in a confession: "We use any method to get them. Our business is to land them and we don't care how we do it. If they look easy we tell them of the fine clothes, the diamonds and all the money that they can have. If they are hard to get we use knock-out drops." His words express the whole idea of the girl auctioneer, "any way to get them for sale."

Schools for manicuring, houses for vapor and electric baths, large steamboats running between the city and summer resorts, amus.e.m.e.nt parks, the nickel theaters, the waiting rooms in the depots and stores are all haunts and procuring places for the white slave trader. A Chicago girl only a short time ago wrote to one of the daily papers of her experiences on a steamboat going out of Chicago and at one of the nearby summer resorts.

Girls, look out for the pitfalls. Mothers and fathers, you can't afford to let your young daughters leave home with strangers unless you want to send them to ruin. You are unwittingly thereby aiding the white slave traders and aiding in your daughters' downfall. Train the daughters right at home, watch over them, and protect them and know where they are going and with whom they are going away. They are worthy of your greatest and kindest consideration. Do not be too anxious to make money, or for higher position in the social life at the expense of your daughter. Do not be over ready to cast off the burden of supporting your family by sending your daughter out to learn a livelihood at an early age, lest the price you get be the price of a soul.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE WHITE SLAVE TRADE IN NEW YORK CITY.

There is no longer any doubt in the minds of the well informed that there exists a great white slave trade in the City of New York. In a recent report by General Bingham, police commissioner, he said: "This traffic is found to be of very large dimensions. There seems to be very slight difficulty in getting women into the country. The requirements of the immigration authorities are easily met by various simple subterfuges. The men who own these women are of the lowest cla.s.s and seem to have an organization or at least an understanding, which is national or even international in scope. We cannot get these men. If we could the whole white slave trade would drop and the whole social evil be intensely ameliorated, because these men work a regular trust." In commenting on this statement of the police commissioner, Mr. George Kibbe Turner has the following to say in the June number of McClure's Magazine:

"If the interests of the prost.i.tute are excellently safeguarded under the administration of the law by the magistrates' courts, the business of her political protector the cadet is doubly secure. At most he is only subject to a six months penalty as a common vagrant, but practically speaking he can never be arrested at all because the only valid evidence against him must come from the woman who supports him, who neither desires nor dares to protest against him. There are thousands of these men in New York City and their convictions do not reach a score a year. To this might be added that no local authority ever got these men and that the only successful prosecution of them and the only one they feared, has been that started by the federal authorities in Chicago and New York during the past two years. The local politician has as yet no influence with federal courts in favor of prost.i.tution. He delivers no important part of the votes that choose the federal authorities."

General Bingham in an article in Hampton's Magazine for September, 1909, says that he might have accepted bribes during his first year in office, from gamblers, dive keepers and other criminals, amounting to $600,000 or even a million dollars. He thinks that the graft and blackmail of New York City amount perhaps to a hundred million dollars a year. He asks the question, Who receives the graft? and answers: "Patrolmen, police captains and inspectors, employees in city offices, city officials, politicians, high and low share in it. But while the uniformed policeman is getting tens or hundreds of dollars for 'protecting' a brothel, drinking or gambling resort, the city officials and politicians are getting their thousands and hundreds of thousands through graft-yielding contracts and franchises, in cash carefully conveyed, or in other emoluments rendered them in every case for betraying the public."

In the report of the Commission of Immigration of the State of New York, a commission created by the legislature of New York in 1908, the following statement is to be found regarding the white slave business in this State:

"In the State of New York, as in other states and countries of the world, there are organized, ramified and well-equipped a.s.sociations to secure girls for the purpose of prost.i.tution. The recruiting of such girls in this country is largely among those who are poor, ignorant or friendless. The attention of the Commission has been called to one organization incorporated under the laws of New York State as a mutual benefit society, with alleged purpose, 'To promote the sentiment of regard and friendship among the members and to render a.s.sistance in case of necessity.' This society is, in reality, an a.s.sociation of gamblers, procurers and keepers of disorderly houses, organized for the purpose of mutual protection in their business. Some of the cafes, restaurants and other places conducted by the members are meeting places for those engaged in the business of importation. The organization includes a membership of about one hundred residents of New York City, and has representatives and correspondents in various cities of the country, notably in Pittsburg, Chicago and San Francisco."

The commission has not in the report given very much of the detail of the working of this a.s.sociation, but Collier's Weekly in speaking of the dismissal of General Bingham as police commissioner of New York, says: "He has been police commissioner for three and a half years. Under his strong, rough hand the disorderly houses which flourished so prosperously three years ago, imprisoning helpless immigrant women, have gone out of business. There were one hundred of them running at full speed between 23rd and 69th Street and 6th and 9th Avenue. There are scarcely twenty now and they are only operating for old time patrons.

The stranger inside the city walls will not find the easy welcome for his licentiousness which 1906 and 1907 could have given him. The profession of ruining, selling, and renting out girls has been reduced.

That organization known as the New York Independent Benevolent a.s.sociation has had its wings clipped. The gentlemen who run this a.s.sociation have been checked from their vile trade by the strict regime of Bingham. For two years they have had to turn to honest or semi-honest professions instead of squeezing blood money out of little foreign girls, raped by their agents and locked up in their chain of disorderly houses in the old and new Tenderloin. They have almost forgotten the dark tragedies hidden just a fathom underground in their burial lot in Washington Cemetery--the poor murdered women, the infants one span long."

While the immigration report and Collier's Weekly enter into little detail concerning the ramifications of this a.s.sociation, it is not because they have no further information regarding it, but because many of the details are so vile they could not be written.

It can be said, however, that the 126 members of this a.s.sociation have operated in Newark, N. J., Philadelphia, in Pittsburg, in Chicago, St.

Louis, New Orleans, San Francisco and other cities, that they have plied their trade in South Africa, in Panama, and that different members of the a.s.sociation have made repeated trips to Europe. This society has been in existence since 1896. In every large city in which an expose of the disorderly house element of the white slave traffic has been made, some of the members of that a.s.sociation have been involved. At the present moment the graft investigation is going on in Chicago; one of the princ.i.p.al men indicted is Mike the Pike, who is well known in Philadelphia and New York. Some years ago Mike was a prominent member of the organization but quarreled with the officers and was expelled.

Keller and Ullman, sent to prison by the federal authorities in Chicago for trafficking in white slaves, were members of this a.s.sociation at the time of their conviction by the government. Several others indicted but never brought to trial were also members.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DISEASED CHILDREN IN THE POOR-HOUSE

Scores of children suffering from disease are to be found in the charity hospitals. The white slave trade is to blame for this state of affairs]

[Ill.u.s.tration: n.o.bODY'S CHILDREN

No father--no mother--no name. Can you imagine anything more pitiful?

The result of the white slave traffic]

At the time of the great cleaning out of the disorderly elements in Philadelphia many members of this a.s.sociation were driven out. Some of them went to New York, some to Newark. They plied their business in Newark for two or three years and when conditions became so bad that the public rose in protest and started a movement to clean out the dens of vice, it was the members of this a.s.sociation who stood together and fought the authorities. However, some of their members were convicted and sent to prison. The chief of police and other officials were accused of having some partnership with these men and of levying graft upon them, much in the same way as the evidence in the present Chicago graft proceedings alleges. The then chief of police in Newark, who was alleged to have been one of the men who received money from these men, went out into one of the lonely byroads outside of the city and committed suicide by shooting himself.

It has been said that some of these men were in South Africa, and it is an established fact that many of them went there and opened up houses of prost.i.tution but were finally expelled from the country by the British Government. Some of them went to Panama (not in the Ca.n.a.l Zone) and opened houses there, and some of them at the present time are still doing business there.

Collier's Weekly has mentioned the cemetery owned by these men. It is quite a large section of what is known as the Washington Cemetery. Some of the women buried there, all of them foreigners, were murdered. One of them was found, the body covered with bruises and blood, and an iron bar about 18 inches long covered with blood was found near her body. Two others were strangled to death; another was found in an unconscious condition. A criminal operation had been performed which had not been successful. Several had died as the result of venereal disease. Some of the men died violent deaths; one was stabbed and died of blood poisoning. Another had his neck broken. The ages of the women varied, some were 22, 23, 24 and 25 years of age. Few of them were more than that. Fifteen babies are buried here, most of them only a few months old. In two cases coroner's inquests were held.

In the cafes frequented by these men and owned by them, one hears the vice question in its relation to the whole country discussed. The Chicago graft investigation is being discussed now and many guesses are made as to whether Mike really got the money or whether somebody put up a job on him, anyhow they all feel that Mike has distinguished himself by being so prominently connected with the men higher up.

The a.s.sociation, unlike the French syndicate, imports very few women.

They prey mostly on the ignorant immigrants who are already in this country in such large numbers. They are successful in securing nearly all the women they need in the large foreign centers here and are thus not under the necessity of paying the pa.s.sage money of their victims to this country, but they do import some. Many of the members of this a.s.sociation are wealthy men. They own fine houses, automobiles, and some of them are credited with a great deal of political influence. When trouble comes to one of the members the record of the society is kept straight by pa.s.sing a resolution expelling the man from the society. At the same time, the a.s.sociation goes ahead and uses its money and influence to help the expelled member.

Most of the members of the a.s.sociation come from Russian Poland and Galitzia, Austria. Very many of the women in their houses come from the same countries. It is interesting at this point to note that a prominent paper in Warsaw claims that they have discovered a white slave society which is practically a counterpart of the one in New York, with the difference that the Warsaw society exports the women, whereas the New York syndicate imports them. Some of the members of the New York a.s.sociation are ex-criminals, having been convicted in their own country. Because of the strictness of the police in their native land, they have found it advisable to come to America. They still, however, have connections with men of their own cla.s.s in those countries.

When word comes to New York that a certain city or state is wide open, some members of this syndicate go to these places and open up business.

They either take their women along or after settling in a place send to some trustworthy member and have their women brought on. Practically the only charge that the local authorities of New York can bring against these men is that of vagrancy and no magistrate will convict on a charge of vagrancy when the alleged vagrant can show the deeds to property worth $20,000 or $30,000. An incident of this kind actually happened in New York three years ago.

The French syndicate as far as is known, is not an incorporated body like the Jewish organization, but that they have an organization is not questioned for a moment by those who have investigated conditions in New York City. The federal authorities have broken up a house which was alleged to be the headquarters of the French "macquereaux." Most of the women deported by the federal authorities in New York have been French women and most of the men arrested in this connection were also found to be of French extraction.

The report of the police department for 1908 shows that out of fifty-five applications for warrants for alien prost.i.tutes, 41 were arrested, 30 were ordered deported, and 26 were actually deported.

Seven cases are still pending; four were discharged and the others left the country or disappeared. Out of 19 warrants for the arrest of the alien men, 11 were arrested of whom four were sent to prison and ordered deported at the expiration of their sentence. Four were discharged; 2 cases are pending and one escaped. In most cases the men and women were French.

Owing to the vigilance of the Federal authorities, and co-operation of the police department, the French end of the business received a severe blow in the city of New York. Out of 400 French "macquereaux" known to have women in houses, at least 300 left the city when the Federal authorities began to secure convictions against some of their members.

However, the decision given in the Keller-Ullman case by the Supreme Court, declaring the law which gave the Federal authorities power to imprison these men for harboring and maintaining women unconst.i.tutional, the Frenchmen have taken heart and are coming back in increasing numbers to the city.