Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls Part 18

GRAFT INEVITABLE.

Segregation as practised, colonizes and fosters vice, maintains a white slave market under executive protection, and provides an overwhelming temptation and facility for graft. Bribeless government cannot exist for any considerable time where these facilities for corruption are so a.s.siduously maintained. It is not in politicians, or anybody else, to resist temptation when the temptation itself is protected and cherished.

Nothing is said by our officials, or by the high priests of segregation, about corraling immoral men into segregation districts. It is therefore not segregation of vice, but only an attempted or pretended, and never a complete or successful cornering of depraved women. There are wide open resorts on more than twenty streets outside of the big "levee."

Segregation as practised is not a restriction of vice so much as it is a practical license to lawbreakers to wreck human lives and blight the homes of the people, by corrupting husbands and sons and taking captive wives and daughters. You would be astounded to learn how many ruined women are wives who have been allured to sin.

A MAELSTROM FOR YOUNG MEN.

Into the red light districts, so long as they remain, men and youths from the whole city and the whole world are irresistibly drawn, if only by curiosity. The "levee," blazing with electric lights and floating in liquor, is regarded by thousands of visitors as one of the chief sights of Chicago.

When the Shriners, a Masonic order, held a convention here, their red fezzes and Arabian symbols were seen by hundreds in the "levee" towards midnight. Not all, perhaps not very many of them, were there for a vile purpose. They were simply inspecting one of Chicago's pet inst.i.tutions--not the cattle market at the stockyards, but the white slave market in the "levee."

Cattle men from Texas and Montana come with their carloads of cattle to Chicago, and having disposed of their stock and received their money, many of these men hurry to the "levee," of whose attractions they have heard a thousands miles away. Thus the immorality and diseases of the "levee" are spread over the land.

So far from being an efficient restriction of vice, a red light district is the greatest advertis.e.m.e.nt the horrible trade can have--and is just what it desires. Every divekeeper and madam in Chicago and every other city, delights in segregation as practised by our rulers, who have sworn to the Almighty and contracted with the people to enforce the laws--and draw their salaries upon this contract and this oath.

"Give us a district to ourselves," say all the dives with one mind, and our obliging executives forthwith bow down to them and do as they say, giving these detestable criminals permission to trample the laws in the sewers. "To h.e.l.l with the laws" some of the divekeepers have said to our missionaries. Why not give murderers, thugs, thieves, gamblers, forgers, a district where they may break the laws, after an immunity bath at City Hall, as well as to the filthy offenders who promote even the crimes of Sodom and Gomorrah, and invite upon Chicago the doom of those cities of the plain?

A divekeeper recently paid his first fine in twenty years. For twenty years this man had carried on his murderous trade without ever being made to feel even once that he is a criminal. What astounding privilege, in a city where many men have been arrested and fined for spitting on the sidewalk.

The French and j.a.panese importers of women have been amazingly exempt from punishment at the hands of our local authorities. The federal government has done its duty, as all the world knows. The work of Mr.

Sims and his a.s.sistants at Chicago is affecting the whole nation and Canada for good. But why are the wild beasts who trade in girls immune from punishment at the hands of our city and state authorities?

We ought to say, and do say very heartily, that our authorities in Chicago are beginning to listen to the cry of the white slaves, native and foreign. Something has been done to punish procurers and such like reptilia who do not count in politics. But the divekeepers, the buyers and holders of women, have not been seriously disturbed, except by the national government.

SEGREGATION MAKES A SLAVE MARKET.

It is impossible to abolish brothel slavery and to license, either formally or practically, the slave market, the red light district. While the divekeeper enjoys the indulgence of the mayor and the police and of their masters, the citizens, he will keep his dive--and his dive must be restocked with new victims, to make money for him, all the time. These victims will be obtained, as heretofore, by procurers who travel city and country to trap them, and they will be imported from Europe and Asia as heretofore. To maintain a segregation district is to maintain a slave market, as things are.

Unless we make energetic and successful war upon the red light districts and all that pertains to them, we shall have Oriental brothel slavery thrust upon us from China and j.a.pan, and Parisian white slavery, with all its unnatural and abominable practices, established among us by the French traders. Jew traders, too, will people our "levees" with Polish Jewesses and any others who will make money for them.

Shall we defend our American civilization, or lower our flag to the most despicable foreigners--French, Irish, Italians, Jews and Mongolians? We do not speak against them for their nationality, but for their crimes.

American traders of equal infamy, to the shame of the American name, have stocked Asiatic cities with American girls.

On the Pacific Coast eternal vigilance alone can save us from a flood of Asiaticism, with its weak womanhood, its men of scant chivalry, its polluting vices and its brothel slavery. Bubonic plague in San Francisco and Seattle was alarming. Mongolian brothel slavery, the Black Death in morals, is more alarming.

On both coasts and throughout all our cities, only an awakening of the whole Christian conscience and intelligence can save us from the importation of Parisian and Polish pollution, which is already corrupting the manhood and youth of every large city in this nation.

MONEY IN VICE

There is money in vice, so long as the public conscience sleeps and officials are chloroformed with bribes, or otherwise persuaded to make it easy for lawbreakers. Frenchmen, j.a.panese, and Jews know what a good rich market America is, and they are exploiting it with enterprise. They will continue to do so more and more, if pulpit and press are ignorant or cowardly, and sworn officers of the law make void the law. Both native and foreign exploiters of vice immediately improve the facilities afforded by every wicked or deluded executive who proclaims a segregation district. These shrewd, diabolical men quickly stock the red light districts with their victims. The traders are organized, capitalized, ready to pay for their privileges to trample on our statute books, our flag, our Bibles, our homes.

WORSE THAN PARIS!

All Europe except Turkey is organized against the traffic in womanhood.

Many criminals of this sort have been driven out of Paris--only to find a cordial welcome in the open arms of our deluded if not debauched officials, who provide for them segregation districts in this and other American cities. Thus our American cities become dumps for the outcast filth of Paris.

In our "levee" at Twenty-second street, fourteen resorts had "Paris" or "Parisian" as part of their signs until Chief Shippy ordered the signs removed six months ago. Numerous other resorts have French managers and French inmates. Patriotic Americans would do well to reflect upon Sedan and the French lilies that withered there, after trainloads of women had rolled out of Paris to the French camp, while the Germans sang "A Mighty Fortress is Our G.o.d" and "The Watch on the Rhine."

We remember La Fayette and French service for American liberty, but from organized, capitalized, cunning, brazen, Parisian licentiousness in addition to that of native Americans,

Good Lord deliver us!

About a score of resorts in the same "levee," all of them extremely flagrant, are managed by Jews. Two or three places are managed by Italian men, though there are few Italian prost.i.tutes in Chicago. One resort is controlled and occupied by j.a.panese--for American men; and several places contain American girls for Chinese men. I know of no resorts controlled by English, Scotch, German or Scandinavian men.

In one respect our American red light districts are worse than Paris. In Paris, if Dr. Sanger is right in his standard work, "A History of Prost.i.tution," men are not permitted to manage the resorts. The unspeakable divekeeper--why do the American people tolerate such a viper as this?

COURTS ARE UNSTAINED.

The laws and the courts are uniformly against vice and against the men who exploit vice, for a lazy living or despicable gain.

The Supreme Court of California is representative of all courts when it said, in the case of Pon against Wittman in July, 1905:

"Under the Penal Code of this state, keeping or knowingly letting any tenement for the purposes of prost.i.tution, keeping a house of ill-fame resorted to for the purposes of prost.i.tution or lewdness, or residing therein, are criminal offenses, and every person who lives in or about such houses, and any common prost.i.tute, is a vagrant. (Penal Code, sections 315, 316, 647.)

"Ordinance No. 1587 of the board of supervisors of the city and county of San Francisco also makes it a public offense to maintain such houses, or become an inmate thereof or visitor thereto, or in any manner contribute to their support.

"These laws have for their object the prohibition and suppression of prost.i.tution, and that duty devolves, within the city and county of San Francisco, upon its police department.

"These houses are common or public nuisances. Their maintenance directly tends to corrupt and debase public morals, to promote vice, and to encourage dissolute and idle habits, and the suppression of nuisances of this character and having this tendency, is one of the important duties of government.

"The suppression of such houses, as evidenced by the stringent laws concerning them, is a public policy of the state."--California Reports, volume 147, page 292.

California and New York have splendid modern laws against white slavery and the traffic in women in its various forms. Nine states have enacted new laws against these evils this year. We rejoice in these laws, but they will never fully accomplish their purpose while the executive officers of our cities illegally make void the law by proclaiming or recognizing red light districts, where traders are illegally exempted from the laws and their penalties.

Since the laws are good and the courts everywhere faithful, for the most part, to the laws, why are the executive officers of our cities so far from fulfilling the purpose of the laws as interpreted by the courts?

Many of our officials clearly, from their conduct, consider it "one of the important duties of government" not to suppress but to protect, favor and encourage these hideous haunts of vice and crime. Why?

TONS OF GRAFT.

Doubtless tons of graft have been taken from the red light districts, and doubtless more tons will be taken by perjurers and traitors in public office. No one knows this better than honest officials--for there are many such, men who keep their oath of office and conscientiously guard the great public interests of which they are trustees and not traitors.

But the evil lies deeper than corrupt officials, and cannot be eradicated by the most faithful officials only--even if all were such.

Under our form of government officials are the people's agents and must do what their masters, the sovereign people, require them to do.

The responsibility is therefore the people's. Why do the sovereign people of our American cities love to have it so? Why do they approve the red light districts, the white slave market, the traffic in women and girls? Or disapprove too mildly to abolish them?

THE LIE IN THE PEOPLE'S MINDS.

Lecky, the historian of European morals, lent his great name to a great delusion, when he attempted in a pa.s.sage too well known, to garland the prost.i.tute as the protectress of pure women. Edwin Arnold, the paganizing English poet, put Lecky's folly into verse, writing a sonnet in praise of the harlot as the purest of all women--a sort of devil's compliment to our wives and mothers.

This immoral and repulsive idea has a considerable place among educated men and among the plain people. I was grieved to hear a physician quote Lecky's false and immoral statement before the Physicians' Club of Chicago. The managing editor of one of our decent and moral morning papers quoted Lecky in a short talk I had with him.