Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls Part 14

Ought we not to give active support to our government in its fulfillment of its treaty agreement with the nations of Europe? And should not our example in the Orient and our conduct in our own country be more worthy of our national moral standards? If so, then such an a.s.sociation as this has a more than local service to render. Placed in this important center, it must reach out both to the East and to the West, awaken interest, give warning, and help to provide a chain of national protective agencies to combat and destroy the closely linked chain of purveyors of vice.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE YELLOW SLAVE TRADE.

During the administration of President Hayes the United States consul general at Shanghai, Mr. D. H. Bailey, made a report to the president, relating to slavery in China and the menace to our country from that cause. He enclosed with his report a translation of the laws governing slaves, some of which are as follows:

"If a female slave deserts her master's house she shall be punished with eighty blows. Whoever harbors a fugitive wife or slave, knowing them to be fugitives, shall partic.i.p.ate equally in their punishment.

"A slave guilty of addressing abusive language to his master shall suffer death by being strangled.

"The master or the relatives of a master of a guilty slave may chastise such slave in any degree short of death, without being liable to any punishment.

"All slaves who are guilty of designedly striking their masters shall, without making any distinction between princ.i.p.als and accessories, be beheaded.

"If accidentally they kill their master, they shall suffer death by being strangled."

In China, and wherever Chinese live, slave girls and women are subject to two forms of slavery, domestic slavery and brothel slavery. Every respectable Chinese family has one or two house slaves. The brothel slave is a literal slave, bought and sold like a sheep or cow. Traffic in Chinese girls for wicked uses extended to Hong Kong as soon as the island became prosperous and populous after being ceded to Great Britain in 1841. From Hong Kong the horrid trade reached to California, and to Singapore and other places.

Commissioners appointed by the governor of Hong Kong made a report in 1880, from which the following accounts are taken:

"Young girls, virgins of thirteen or fourteen years of age, are brought from Canton or elsewhere and deflowered according to bargain, and as a regular business for large sums of money, which go to their owners. The regular earnings of the girls go to the same quarters, and the unfortunate creatures obviously form subjects of speculation to regular traders in this kind of business, who reside beyond our jurisdiction.

Mr. Lister speaks of the brothel-keepers as a horrible race of cruel women, cruel to the last degree, who use an ingenious form of torture, which they call prevention of sleep, which he describes in detail."

"Two girls were brought before the registrar general, both of whom pleaded for protection against their owner, stating that she intended to sell them to go to California. One of these had been bought by this woman for eighty dollars; the girl saw the price paid for her. The other said her mother was very poor and sold her for twenty dollars. The inspector said: 'There has been at times a number of women residing in the house, and I do not know what has become of them. I believe that they have been sent to California by the defendant.'"

The poor slave girls, as shown by court proceedings at Hong Kong, had the same terror of being "sold into California" that the negro slaves in this country had of being "sold down the river." One of the girls testified that she had seen several women sent away to California. She had been present when bargains were made, the price varying. In Hong Kong the price was from fifty to one hundred and fifty dollars; they would bring in California from two hundred and fifty to three hundred and fifty dollars.

Owing to the restriction of Chinese immigration, and the penal laws against importing women for evil uses, the value of a slave girl on the Pacific Coast has greatly increased; it is now $3,000.

The system of Chinese brothel slavery differs from the white slave trade, in that the Chinese brothel slaves are not weak or wicked women who have fallen into the clutches of traffickers, as so many of our European and American white slaves unquestionably are, but are good girls who have been sold by their actual owners into a life of shame for money, sometimes sold by their own parents. Some are not sold outright, but are mortgaged to pay off a loan. So much is credited each month until the debt is canceled--unless fresh debts, real or fict.i.tious, keep the victim indefinitely, as with the white slaves. On the marked differences between the white slave and the yellow slave, the commissioners previously quoted say: "Prost.i.tutes in Europe are, as a general rule, fallen women, the victims of seduction, or possibly of innate vice. Being the outcasts of society, and having little, if any, prospect of being admitted again into decent and respectable circles of life, deprived also of their own self-respect as well as the regards of their relatives, occasionally even troubled with qualms of conscience, they mostly dread thinking of their future, and seek oblivion in excesses of boisterous dissipation. The Chinese prost.i.tutes of Hong Kong are an entirely different set of people. Very few of them can be called fallen women, scarcely any of them are the victims of seduction in the English sense of the term, refined or unrefined. The great majority of them are owned by professional brothel-keepers or traders in women in Canton or Macao, have been brought up for that life and trained in various accomplishments suited to it. They frequently know neither father nor mother, except what they call a pocket-mother, that is, the woman who bought them from others." There are 18,000 such slaves in Hong Kong, if the estimates accepted by the commissioners are correct.

In China the yellow slave has hope of escape from her bondage. If she is pretty and accomplished, some rich man may buy her for his first, second, third or fourth wife. If she is homely some honest working man may take her. Or she may sing or play an instrument and thereby add to her earnings until she can buy her own freedom, if dissipation and disease have not killed her first.

The mortgaged girls are often such as have sacrificed their own to their family's honor, according to the Chinese and j.a.panese notion of filial piety. The money thus advanced by the keeper is thought necessary to rescue the girl's family or some member of it from calamity or ruin. One j.a.panese man is quoted as saying that such sacrifice on a girl's part is "Christ-like." He should hear the voice of Christ, saying of all these sins, "which things I also hate." Revelation, 2:6.

YELLOW SLAVES IN AMERICA.

The terrible system of Chinese and j.a.panese brothel slavery has been imported into San Francisco, Oakland, and other cities of California.

Americans and Europeans have invested money and devoted business ability to this enormous iniquity, because it pays well. Apart from the horrors of Chinatown, one thousand j.a.panese women are held in this form of slavery in California. The San Francisco Chronicle said of this statement: "There is not the slightest doubt of the truth of the a.s.sertion, disreputable as it may seem."

The police will generally say after investigating, that these women are willing to remain in their present condition. Doubtless this is true of most of them, but they are slaves, none the less, literal and actual slaves, bought and paid for and acknowledging the ownership. In a letter of Abraham Lincoln, written before the war, he tells of a company of negro slaves that he saw on a boat on the Ohio and he never saw such a happy company of people in his life. When John Brown made his raid into Virginia and captured 200,000 stands of arms at Harper's Ferry, he hoped that the thousands of negro slaves in that region would join him and fight for their freedom. He could only get six or eight negroes to join him, and those at the point of the bayonet. One was shot rather than seek his liberty. At the beginning of the Abolition movement a pet.i.tion from slaves was sent to Congress in favor of slavery! Women terrorized by such laws as are quoted at the beginning of this chapter, and further terrorized by all the brutal treatment and threats of the slave traders, are not likely to say to the police that they desire liberty. But it is our duty to give them liberty and to punish their owners, who cannot legally own them, but do practically own them under the Stars and Stripes.

The following cases ill.u.s.trate the traffic and the work of missionaries. These three girls were in the Methodist Home for Chinese Girls, located since the earthquake at Berkeley. One says:

"I am twelve years old; born in Canton; father a laborer; mother a nurse; parents very poor. Mother fell sick and in her need of money sold me to a woman three years ago in Hong Kong. The woman promised my mother to make me her own daughter. My mother cried when she left me; I have heard that she is now dead. The big ship City of Pekin took me soon out of sight. There was trouble in landing me. The woman had no trouble in landing, because she had been in California before. She told me what I was to say. She told me I must swear I was her own daughter. The judge asked me, 'Is this your own mother?' and I said, 'Yes.' This was a lie, but I did not know it was wrong to do as I was told, and I was afraid of my mistress. The Judge said, 'Did this woman give you birth?' and I said, 'Yes.' The judge said, 'did anybody tell you to say all this?' and I said 'No,' because my mistress had instructed me. She taught me on shipboard what to say if I was taken to court. She beat me with thick sticks of firewood. She beat me with the fire tongs. One day she took a hot flatiron, removed my clothes and held it on my naked back until I howled with pain. (The scab was on her back when she came to the Mission.) My forehead is all scars caused by her throwing heavy pieces of wood at my head. One cut a large gash and the blood ran out. She stopped the bleeding and hid me away. I thought I better get away before she killed me. When she was having her hair washed and dressed I ran away. I had heard of the Mission, and inquired the way and came to it. A white man brought me here. I am very happy now."

Another little slave, eleven years old, who was about to be sold from domestic slavery into a brothel, was saved by a Chinaman. She says: "A Chinaman living next door, knowing how I was treated and that I was going to be put in a brothel, when I saw him in the pa.s.sageway, asked me if I wished to come to the Mission, and I said 'Yes.' My mistress had gone out into the next room, leaving her daughter and another slave girl in the room. I said I would go at once and he brought me. I am very glad to live here and lead a good life."

In the following case the rescuer was a negress. A young girl came from China to San Francisco as a merchant's wife. Missionaries visited her in Chinatown, but she disappeared and explanations were not satisfactory. A year later the door bell rang one night at the Mission and when it was opened a Chinese girl fell in a faint across the threshold, a colored girl holding her by the queue. The colored girl saw her running and, to prevent her from being dragged back by her tormentors, seized her by the queue and helped her run to the Mission. It was the merchant's young wife. The wretch had left her on false pretense in a den of shame. She was tied to a window by day and to a bed by night, a thoroughly unwilling slave. Three days before her escape, the chief of police and an interpreter had gone through the house, questioning every inmate as to whether they wished to lead a life of shame or not. She was asked the question in the presence of the divekeeper, the madam and all the girls.

She had been told beforehand, "If you dare say you want to escape, we will kill you." The chief of police announced in the papers that there were no slaves in Chinatown. Though watched night and day, she rushed out at an opportune moment and, with the help of the colored girl, ran to safety.

Since the earthquake immense slave pens have been built at Oakland and in San Francisco. A photograph of one large wooden structure, to hold more than a hundred girls, is before me as I write. The girls are kept in small rooms, nine or ten feet square. Americans and Chinamen are partners in the horrible business.

This chapter is a review, in part, of the book, "Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers," written by Dr. Katharine Bushnell and Mrs. Elizabeth Andrew.

It was my good fortune and delight to meet Dr. Bushnell and Mrs. Andrew in Bombay, at the time when Lord Roberts had contradicted their statements about procuring women for British soldiers in India--"Queen's women" as they were called. Upon being convinced that Dr. Bushnell and Mrs Andrew had told the truth, Lord Roberts, then commander-in-chief of the forces in India, said, "I apologize to the ladies without reserve."

E. A. B.

CHAPTER XVII.

HOW SNAKES CHARM CANARIES: METHODS OF PROCURERS.

At the end of May, 1907, Rev. Melbourne P. Boynton, pastor of the Lexington Avenue Baptist Church, was requested by the Chicago Examiner to make a tour of the vice district at Twenty-second street and write against its iniquities for the columns of that newspaper. Pastor Boynton stipulated that I should accompany him, as a recognized worker in the slums and superintendent of the Midnight Mission. Rev. E. L. Williams, a Methodist pastor, also accompanied us, with Detectives Considine and Thomas of the Chicago police.

As we went out I prayed G.o.d to give us a thunderbolt to alarm the people of Chicago. We did not foresee the answer to this prayer, but I have always felt that it was answered very quickly and in the following manner:

Shortly after one o'clock on the morning of May 31, we entered a resort on Dearborn street, whose former owner had come to me at midnight to tell me that he had not had one happy minute since he took up that terrible business and that he would quit it, which he did. In this place among the half-dressed inmates we noticed a modestly gowned young woman, sitting at a small drinking table opposite something that ought to have been a man. The thing's name was Neil Jaeger; the girl's name was Macdonald. I asked the girl if she were an inmate or leading a life of that sort and she said no. She told me her true name and address and lied only about her age, as Jaeger had taught her to say she was twenty, when she was only sixteen, that he might sell her in the white slave market. The keeper of the resort, convinced that she was under age, had refused to deal with him. When I began to question the snake, it hissed, "Mind your own business." I replied that this was my business, and asked the detectives to investigate. Discerning quickly what it was that we had discovered, they promptly locked the thing in an iron cage, like any other wild beast. The girl was cared for. Her anxiety was expressed in her words, "What will my mother say?"

At the trial of Jaeger before Judge Fake, he himself told brazenly how he had brought this young girl from her own home in an Illinois town, her mother supposing that she was going to work in Rockford. While the girl was giving her testimony I heard the click of a camera, to my sorrow--for we were doing our utmost to keep the girl's secret and to send her quietly to her mother. More than half a million copies of her photograph went out in the great daily papers of Chicago. When the truth was known, other young girls told what they had escaped by the capture and exposure of this reptile, for he was luring several of them to Chicago, one of them only fifteen years old. About half a million pages were published in the Chicago newspapers at this time against the traffic in girls. Such, it seemed to me, was the thunderbolt, for which I had prayed.

LETTERS OF A DESTROYER OF GIRLS.

In a letter written from Rockton, Illinois, on May 27, the hypocrite Jaeger had said to one of his intended victims: "I have learned to love you as I never loved a girl before and probably never will again. Now, sweetheart, I want you to get away from this town and the life you are leading there as soon as you possibly can. When you are ready let me know, and I will send you plenty of money to start out on, and will meet you wherever you say and then we can be together as much as we please and can live happy ever afterward--that is, of course, if you like me that well and I certainly hope you do. Be a good girl and G.o.d bless you and keep you from harm. Lovingly, Neil M. Jaeger."

In another letter he wrote: "From our last conversation I feel determined not to give you up, but to do all in my power to aid you to free yourself from the bondage that undermines your health and temper and open to you a life free from care and strife, where you can go where, when and with whom you please without being kept like a girl in a convent. Your natural vivacious and care-free nature rebels against the shackles, which fate has placed upon you, and I am willing to give you physical, mental, moral and financial support, to give you a life where none of the troubles which now hara.s.s you will be manifest, but instead will be a life where love will rule supreme. I will further try to prove myself worthy of your esteem if you will allow me to do something in a financial way. I am a man of character, honesty and uprightness, possess an estate valued at $50,000, own an automobile and a private yacht, have an income of some $2,500 a year and am thoroughly independent. I come from one of the best families in the west. I am willing to take you to Chicago, support you, and if you desire, secure employment for you at Marshall Field & Co.'s, besides taking you to dances, theatres, automobiling and yachting. Surely anything would be better than the life you are leading there."

[Ill.u.s.tration: BISHOP OF LONDON PREACHING IN WALL STREET NEW YORK

The best loved man in England. He preaches in the slums at midnight, and in his cathedral he pleads with the leaders of his church and nation against the false modesty which keeps young people in ignorance of the wages of sin.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BARRED WINDOW AND DUNGEON DOOR

No state prison is more securely barred than was this house where many white slaves were kept. This dive was a rendezvous for thieves and other disreputable characters.]