Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls Part 12

There are many angles to the white slave business in New York. Many women are enticed into houses of ill-fame by promises of marriage and by fake marriages. The cadet took a woman before a crooked notary public and went through a form of marriage but failed to file the agreement thereof, thereby suppressing the evidence of marriage, the purpose being to aid procurers who sometimes marry several girls in their vile purposes of compelling these unfortunates to live lives of shame, to enable them to profit by their villainy. The Commission of Immigration found that this practice had been largely suppressed by the new law requiring a marriage license. These notaries now advise as to the best way the law may be circ.u.mvented. As an ill.u.s.tration, one notary agreed to perform a real marriage between an investigator of the commission and a supposed Swedish girl, and to draw a contract transferring her property to the husband. The notary then advised the latter as to the best manner in which to make the new wife appear to have committed adultery so that the husband might be able to secure a divorce after having secured the girl's money.

That many of these houses in New York City are run under the guise of ma.s.sage parlors is well known. Many of the women in these houses are French. A paper is published in New York in which the names and addresses of these houses are advertised. Innocent women are lured by advertis.e.m.e.nts for operators. The publisher of this paper is a notary public and is always willing to advise his advertisers how to carry on their immoral business. One of the difficulties that the Federal authorities have in putting a stop to the importation of these women into the country is the fact that very many of the women who have been actually intended for the disorderly houses are manifested to seemingly respectable people. These people, however, have some indirect connection with the business of prost.i.tution. For instance, one man has what seems to be a perfectly legitimate and solid business as a manufacturer of women's clothes. However, his sole business is the supplying of that clothing to the disorderly houses throughout the country. It is said that women have come to work in his factory and have been turned over, after many glittering promises have been made to them, to some keeper of a disorderly house who made them inmates of his establishment. Some of the women go to work in restaurants where members of the a.s.sociation have some interest, and thus the way is made easy for an introduction to the woman with the subsequent result of finding her way into a disorderly resort. Some of the procurers in New York work through the employment agencies. Since May, 1904, the Commissioner of Licenses has revoked 14 licenses of employment agents for sending girls to immoral places of whom 9 furnished immigrants chiefly. Nine other licenses were revoked for immoral conduct, eight furnished immigrants chiefly. The revocation of a license, however, is not an effective remedy, since in no case have fines or imprisonment been imposed for this violation of the law. Nine agents whose licenses were revoked for this reason are still acting as employment agents, or as runners for other employment agents. Investigators for the federal authorities and also of the State Commission of Immigration found agents in several sections of the city who are willing on payment of an extra fee to send girls to work in disorderly houses.

The same thing may be said regarding some of the immigrant homes, which are ostensibly for the purpose of protecting foreign girls on arrival in the city of New York. The federal authorities and the State Commission found homes that sent women to disorderly places. The State Commission found one home that was willing upon a donation of $5.00 to send a girl to work in a disorderly house. This donation seems not to have been recorded in the books of the home. Several other homes are at present under investigation by the Commissioner of Immigration at Ellis Island.

Since 1901 the Sicilian or Southern Italian has played quite a prominent part in the great traffic in women in New York City. At that time, after his triumphant entry into the corrupt politics of the city, it was estimated that Italians controlled from 750 to 1,000 women. Gangs of Italian criminals have grown up in New York City as a great a.s.set of the corrupt political machines. Men like Paul Kelly, Jimmie Kelly and other Italians masquerading under Irish names play a prominent part in Tammany politics, supplying "strong arm" men as repeaters in the elections, whom they recruit from the boxing and other athletic clubs with which they are affiliated. Jimmie Kelly manages one or two high cla.s.s pugilists, but around his saloon are to be found many preliminary boxers. These men cannot make a living as preliminary boxers and must depend on something else to eke out a livelihood. Through their connection with men like Kelly they are given the protection necessary to enable them to conduct immoral resorts or to keep women soliciting on the streets, without interference from the police. In return for this immunity they help Kelly deliver the illegal vote necessary to keep the corrupt Tammany machine in power. The Italian because he is more p.r.o.ne to crimes of violence pays for his political protection in votes, while the Jew largely pays cash. The Italian, unlike the Jew, very rarely puts women of his own race into the awful life; there are relatively very few Italian prost.i.tutes. The Italian traders seem likely to displace the French, as they are kinder to the women and they adapt themselves to the political environment in a way that the French do not understand.

We quote again from Mr. George Kibbe Turner in McClure's Magazine for June, 1909:

"The Jew makes the most alert and intelligent citizen of all the great immigrant races that have populated New York. He was a city dweller before the hairy Anglo-Saxon came out of the woods; and every fall the East Side resolves itself into one great clamorous political debating society.

"Out of the Bowery and Red Light districts have come the new development in New York politics--the great voting power of the organized criminals.

It was a notable development not only for New York, but for the country at large. And no part of it was more noteworthy than the appearance of the Jewish dealer in women, a product of New York politics, who has vitiated, more than any other single agency, the moral life of the great cities of America in the past ten years."

It is absolute fact that corrupt Jews are now the backbone of the loathsome traffic in New York and Chicago. The good Jews know this and feel keenly the unspeakable shame of it. The American Hebrew says in an editorial:

"If Jews are the chief sinners, it is appropriate that Jews should be the chief avengers of the dishonor done to their own people, and in many cases to their own women. We feel confident that unless something is done, and done quickly, a scandal of the most intense character will break forth, and only by prompt action can its worst effects be warded off from the fair name of American Jewry."

Hon. Oscar S. Straus wrote in his report as Secretary of Commerce and Labor, for 1908:

"It is highly necessary that this diabolical traffic, which has attained international proportions, should be dealt with in a manner adequate to compa.s.s its suppression. No punishment is too severe to inflict upon the procurers in this vile traffic."

B. C.

CHAPTER XIV.

BARRED WINDOWS: HOW WE TOOK UP THE CAUSE OF THE WHITE SLAVES.

This afternoon, August 26, 1909, between half past two and half past three o'clock, Mr. Ralph Radnor Earle took photographs of various places in Chicago's princ.i.p.al vice district. Among these were several photographs of barred windows of resorts, positively known to myself and Miss Dedrick, who both accompanied the photographer, as disorderly, flagrant, infamous houses. Some of these barred windows on the dens of crime are here reproduced from the photographs. The bars are on the windows of both floors of these buildings; these are the back windows of these dives, and look towards Clark street, a great Chicago thoroughfare, from which the upper windows are plainly seen.

Five years ago barred windows on a house of sin, which had been turned into a mission, alarmed some of us and gave us almost our first ideas of the fate of the white slaves. The house was a notorious place, the most notorious in Chicago a dozen years ago. The name of the woman who kept it was known and is still spoken in the circles of the immoral throughout Chicago and far beyond it. Stories are told of princes of European houses, pouring out wine and money like water in this glittering palace of mirrored walls and brilliant lights.

The woman died and the probate court would not allow her estate to use the property for immoral purposes. It was leased for a mission and rescue home by Mr. O. H. Richards, founder and superintendent of Beulah Home. Many of the windows were barred, and whatever explanations might be offered, we were never satisfied that they were not barred to keep in girls who at least at times would gladly escape. When we learned that many other houses in the vice district had windows similarly barred we were obliged to conclude that girls were constantly detained against their will.

To this refuge which had been a dive, Edith E---- fled one morning, having escaped from a resort on Custom House Place. She ran first to a drug store, telephoned to the police to get her street clothes from the dive, and then came to the rescue home. She explained that she had heard the midnight missionaries two nights before singing, in a gospel meeting which they were holding in front of the den where she was:

"Throw out the life-line to danger-fraught men, Sinking in anguish where you've never been."

So deep an impression was made upon her that she was wretched all the next day, quite unfitted for her old life. Next morning she escaped.

She told me that she had been a very wicked girl, that her young husband had committed suicide because of her sin. She never went back to her evil life. Her physical heart was seriously weakened from her addiction to drugs, liquor and vice.

In October, 1906, the National Purity Federation, of which Mr. B. S.

Steadwell of La-Crosse, Wisconsin, is president, held a conference in Chicago, at Abraham Lincoln Center. Among the speakers was the late Rev.

Sidney C. Kendall, whose whole soul was torn and bleeding over the shame of making commerce of women. He told us of the crimes of the French traders, of their systematized traffic in girls and of their organization for defense when any of them is under prosecution in the courts. Mr. Kendall was sick when he was here and died the next summer.

With his latest strength and his dying breath he antagonized the loathsome white slave trade. He was a member of the National Vigilance Committee for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic. Mr. Kendall's most conspicuous work was done in Los Angeles. Some of his spirit remained with a few of us in Chicago and we could not rest until some effort was made here to rid us of the shame of slavery in the twentieth century under the flag of the free.

On January 30, 1907, Mr. O. H. Richards told me how he had rescued a girl, with the help of the police, from a resort after the woman who kept the place had refused to surrender the girl to her mother and stepfather, on the claim that the girl owed twenty dollars for clothes.

As there were three good witnesses to the illegal detention--the mother, the stepfather and Mr. Richards--I saw that this was a good case to bring into court. I asked the mother if, for the sake of other mothers'

girls, she would take the witness stand. She heartily consented, as did her husband, and with strong crying and tears, she gave her testimony when the offending woman was arraigned, January 31, before Judge Newcomer at Harrison street. She was convicted, fined, and sent up to the bureau of identification--"rogue's gallery"--to leave her picture and measurements. This broke her pride and she came down wilted. She immediately abandoned her wicked business and is a good woman today.

Last September when the midnight workers had some annoyance from dive-keepers, she visited the district at midnight to express her sympathy with the missionaries. She told me, "I remember what you said to me in court. You said, 'I love your soul, but I hate your devilish business.'"

As it was now publicly shown that girls were held in houses against their will, we printed the statute of Illinois against such detention, as a leaflet, and placed a copy in the hand of every keeper and inmate of disorderly resorts in the vice district at Twenty-second street.

Captain Harding posted a copy of the leaflet in the police station.

Beneath the statute we printed a note saying, "No white slave need remain in slavery in this state of Abraham Lincoln, who made the black slaves free. For freedom did Christ set us free; be not entangled again in the yoke of bondage, which is the yoke of sin and evil habit." Pastor Boynton tells in another chapter how Deaconess Hall, himself and I, with Policeman Cullet, went from house to house in the great vice district with this leaflet, which proved so powerful.

Thereafter the cause of the white slaves lay heavy on the hearts of a number of men and women, particularly Deaconess Lucy A. Hall, whose insistence that something be done led, ultimately, to the organization of the vigilance work in Chicago.

In the autumn of 1907, Mrs. Ida Evans Haines obtained a copy of a report of the Episcopal Diocese, of Ma.s.sachusetts, on Social Purity and the ravages of the diseases that are the wages of sin. At Mrs. Haines'

request, Rev. Morton Culver Hartzell organized a committee of ministers of various denominations, of which Rev. Dr. Swift, of Austin, was chairman, and Rev. Dr. Cain, of Edgewater, secretary. Under authority of this committee, a meeting was held at the Y. M. C. A. lecture room in November, 1907, which was addressed by Miss Rose Johnson, of Panama. Out of this meeting came the "Committee for Suppression of Traffic in Vice,"

of which Dr. Cain was chairman. This committee employed an investigator and was appalled by the revelation of conditions in Chicago, existing not only in so-called red light districts, but also in residence districts. The activity of this committee for the suppression of traffic in vice attracted a much larger number of persons, who promoted numerous meetings, which culminated in the union meeting of ministers to consider the suppression of the white slave traffic in Chicago and Illinois, on February 10th, 1908.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BLIND BABY IN THE POOR-HOUSE

This baby's condition is the direct result of disease in the parents.

Probably 25 per cent of the blindness of children is caused by illicit s.e.xual relation. (Dr. Wm. T. Belfield, page 299.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: IN THE REFUGE

Alone in the world with no one but her baby she comes to the refuge to save herself from starvation. She has no husband. She was tempted and fell]

The purpose of that meeting was to enlist the ministers, as the moral leaders of the community, in the effort to rid our city of this shame, and by holding a public convention to give the newspapers opportunity to tell the facts to the public.

Bishop Wm. F. McDowell presided; the devotional service was led by Rev.

A. H. Harnly; prayer was offered by Rev. A. C. Dixon. Addresses were made as follows: "Chicago's White Slave Market; the Illegal Red Light District," by Rev. Ernest A. Bell. "The White Slaves and the Law," by Mr. Clifford G. Roe. "The International White Slave Traffic," by Dr. O.

Edward Janney, of Baltimore, chairman of the National Vigilance Committee. "The Lost," by Mrs. Raymond Robins.

Judge Fake spoke briefly, and a letter was read from Judge Sadler.

At that meeting, it was determined to proceed with the organization of a State a.s.sociation for the suppression of the white slave traffic in Illinois. That same afternoon, February 10th, 1908, a largely attended meeting representing ministers' meetings, settlements, clubs, temperance and other reform organizations, set themselves to establish the "Illinois Vigilance a.s.sociation."

The publicity given by the conference just mentioned to the testimony of ministers, judges and prosecutors, led the Chicago Tribune to inquire very carefully into the truth of these statements, and finding them true, that newspaper committed itself in numerous editorials to antagonize the White Slave Traffic.

The same conference helped to enlist Hon. Edwin W. Sims, the United States district attorney at Chicago, in the prosecution of the traffickers in foreign girls under the Immigration Act of February 20, 1907. Mr. Sims has repeatedly stated in public meetings that we brought to his notice the appalling traffic in alien girls, which he has since done so much to suppress.

Much has been done, we rejoice to say. Still, today we photographed the barred windows in Chicago's princ.i.p.al market for girls.

LATER--On September 3, in an interview with Hon. LeRoy T. Steward, chief of police, Mr. Arthur Burrage Farwell and the writer submitted photographs of barred windows to the chief. He examined them carefully and said he saw no need of such bars on houses of infamy. The explanation of divekeepers that the bars were "to keep out burglars,"

was not satisfactory. a.s.sistant Chief Schuettler, who was present, said, "Give it to me, I'll tend to it." He took one of the photographs and in a few days the bars were all removed.

Similar barred windows were found and photographed in Los Angeles during the crusade of the decent people of that city against its white slave market. It's wonderful how carefully these slavers everywhere protect themselves against "burglars."

We reproduce in this book two flashlight pictures of a dungeon door and a steel screen found in Custom House Place, the former white slave market of Chicago. These are taken by permission from "Chicago's Soul Market," by Dr. Jean Turner Zimmermann. She writes concerning these views as follows: