Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls Part 4

MENACE OF THE WHITE SLAVE TRADE.

By Edwin W. Sims, United States District Attorney, Chicago.

Right at the outset let me say in all frankness that I would never, from personal choice, write upon a subject of this character. Its sensationalism is personally repellent to me. On the other hand, no matter how carefully the public prosecutor may preserve the legal viewpoint and the legal temperament, his work may lead him into situations where he feels that he cannot, in common humanity, withhold from the public a knowledge of the things which he knows cannot fail to be of actual protective benefit to many homes; that to withhold the facts and disclosures which have come to him as an officer of the law would be to deprive the innocent and the worthy of a protection which might save many a home from sorrow, disgrace and ruin.

Again: The results of this legal work and of the explanations of the conditions uncovered in my former article have brought to me a gratifying knowledge of the practical and most effective rescue work being done by Rev. Ernest A. Bell of the Illinois Vigilance a.s.sociation, of which Rev. M. P. Boynton is the president. These men and many of the settlement and slum workers of Chicago with whom I have come in contact are not only specialists in this field, but they are as devoted as they are practical. More perhaps because of the urgent a.s.surances of the Rev. M. P. Boynton, Mr. Bell and others that giving to the public a statement of actual conditions has been of a great service to them in their hand to hand fight than to any other reason, I am moved to make another statement.

When the editor of the Woman's World urged me to write of "The White Slave Traffic of Today," I felt that I had an official knowledge of facts which the fathers and mothers of the country had a right to know in order to prevent the possibility of their daughters falling victims to the most hideous form of human slavery known in the world today. This consideration moved me to put aside my strong personal feelings against appearing in print in connection with a subject so abhorrent. Many results of that article have made me glad that I did so--and those results have also contributed to overcome my antipathy to a further pursuit of that subject. But in following this topic as I now do, I shall again emphasize the fact that I wish to say what seems to be needful in as unsensational a way as possible, and that I also wish to do that from the viewpoint of a public prosecutor who has, in the ordinary discharge of his duties, encountered this appalling situation, and not at all from the standpoint of the sentimentalist.

So far as the matter of sensationalism is concerned, that may be disposed of in the simple statement that the naked recital, in the most formal and colorless phraseology, of the facts already brought to light by the "white slave" prosecutions are in themselves so sensational that the art of the most brilliant orator, or the cunning of the cleverest writer, could not add an iota to their sensationalism. And it may as well be said here that it is quite impossible to even hint in public print of the revolting depths of shame disclosed by this investigation.

Behind every word that can be said in print on this topic is a word of degradation of which the slightest hint cannot be given.

If there are any who are inclined to feel that the term "white slave" is a little overdrawn, a little exaggerated, let them decide on that point after considering this statement: "Among the 'white slaves' captured in raids since the appearance of my first article is a girl who is now about eighteen years of age. Her home was in France, and when she was only fourteen years old she was approached by a 'white slaver' who promised her employment in America as a lady's maid or companion. The wage offered was far beyond what she could expect to get in her own country--but far more alluring to her than the money she could earn was the picture of the life which would be hers in free America. Her surroundings would be luxurious; she would be the constant recipient of gifts of dainty clothing from her mistress, and even the hardest work she would be called upon to do would be in itself a pleasure and an excitement.

"Naturally she was eager to leave her home and trust herself to one who would provide her with so enriching a future. Her friends of her own age seasoned their farewells to her with envy of her rare good fortune.

"On arriving in Chicago she was taken to the house of ill-fame to which she had been sold by the procurer. There this child of fourteen was quickly and unceremoniously 'broken in' to the hideous life of depravity for which she had been entrapped. The white slaver who sold her was able to drive a most profitable bargain, for she was rated as uncommonly attractive. In fact, he made her life of shame a perpetual source of income, and when--not long ago--he was captured and indicted for the transportation of other girls, this girl was used as the agency of providing him with $2,000 for his defense.

"But let us look for a moment at the mentionable facts of this child's daily routine of life and see if such an existence justifies the use of the term 'slavery.' After she had furnished a night of servitude to the brutal pa.s.sions of vile frequenters of the place, she was then compelled each night to put off her tawdry costume, array herself in the garb of a scrub-woman and, on her hands and knees, scrub the house from top to bottom. No weariness, no exhaustion, ever excused her from this drudgery, which was a full day's work for a strong woman.

"After her cleaning was done she was allowed to go to her chamber and sleep--locked in her room to prevent her possible escape--until the orgies of the next day, or rather night, began. She was allowed no liberties, no freedom, and in the two and a half years of her slavery in this house she was not even given one dollar to spend for her own comfort or pleasure. The legal evidence shows that during this period of slavery she earned for those who owned her not less than eight thousand dollars--and probably ten thousand dollars!"

If this is not slavery, I have no definition for it.

Let me make it entirely clear that the white slave is an actual prisoner. She is under the most constant surveillance, both by the keeper to whom she is "let" and by the procurer who owns her. Not until she has lost all possible desire to escape is she given any liberty.

Many--very many--letters have been received from parents who read the first article on this subject. A considerable number of them are from ministers of the gospel, from officers and members of law and order leagues, woman's clubs and kindred organizations. But there is a pathetic reminder which does not come from the public-spirited servants of the common good. These letters are from the fathers and mothers whose fears and suspicions were aroused by the warning that the girl who has left her home in the country, gone up to the city and does not come home to visit, needs to be looked up.

Before me, as I write, is a letter from a father which is a tragedy in a page. He begins the note by saying that the warning has aroused him to inquire after his "little girl." There is a pathetic pride in his admission that she was considered an uncommonly "pretty girl" when she left her home to take a position in Chicago. Her letters, he states, have been more and more infrequent, but that she does occasionally write home, and sometimes encloses a small amount of money. From the tone of the father's note it is evident that, while he is a trifle anxious, he asks that his daughter be "looked up" rather to confirm his feelings of confidence that she is all right than otherwise.

A glance at the address where she was to be found left no possible question as to the fate which had overtaken this daughter of a country home. So far as a knowledge of the girl's mode of life is concerned, no investigation was necessary--the location named being in the center of Chicago's "red light" district.

While the case was a sad one there appeared to be no violation of the Federal laws, the girl having come from a neighboring state. A Federal prosecution against those detaining her was, therefore, impossible.

However, the case was placed in the hands of Mr. Bell of the Illinois Vigilance a.s.sociation. Through his efforts she was rescued and shortly thereafter returned to her mother and brothers and sisters who had supposed that she was holding a respectable, but poorly paid position.

They, however, welcomed a very different person from the pretty girl who went out from that home to make her way in the big city. She was pitifully wasted by the life which she had led, and her const.i.tution is so broken down that she cannot reasonably expect many years of life, even under the tenderest care. What is still worse, the fact cannot be denied that her moral fibre is shattered and the work of reclamation must be more than physical.

The "white slaves" who have been taken in the course of the present prosecution have, generally, been very grateful for the liberation and glad to return to their homes. It has been necessary--for their own protection as well as for other reasons--to commit some of these unfortunates to various prisons pending the trial of the cases in which they are to appear as witnesses, and practically every one of them gives unmistakable evidence that imprisonment is a welcome liberation by comparison with the life of "white slavery."

Now as to the practical means which parents should use to prevent this unspeakable fate from overtaking their daughters. They cannot do it by a.s.suming that their daughter is all right and that she will take care of herself in the big city. In a large measure it seems impossible to arouse parents--especially those in the country--to a realization that there is in every big city a cla.s.s of men and women who live by trapping girls into a life of degradation and who are as inhumanely cunning in their awful craft as they are in other instincts; that these beasts of the human jungle are as unbelievably desperate as they are unbelievably cruel, and that their warfare upon virtue is as persistent, as calculating, and as unceasing as was the warfare of the wolf upon the unprotected lamb of the pioneer folk in the early days of the Western frontier.

I cannot escape the conclusion that the country girl is in greater danger from the "white slavers" than the city girl. The perusal of the testimony of many "white slaves" enforces this conclusion. That is because they are less sophisticated, more trusting and more open to the allurements of those who are waiting to prey upon them.

It is a fact which parents of girls in the country should remember that the "white slavers" are busy on the trains coming into the city and make it a point to "cut out" an attractive girl whenever they can. This "cutting out" process (I use the technical term) consists of making the girl's acquaintance, gaining her confidence and, on one pretext or another, inducing her to leave the train before the main depot is reached. This is done because the various protective and law and order organizations have watchers at the main railroad stations who are trained to the work of "spotting," and quickly detect a girl in the hands of one of these human beasts of prey. Generally these watchers are women and wear the badges of their organizations.

But suppose that the girl from the country does not chance to fall in with the "white slaver" on the train, that she reaches the city in safety, becomes located in a position--or perhaps in the stenographic school or business college which she has come to attend--and secures a room in a boarding house. No human being, it seems to me, is quite so lonely as the young girl from the country when she first comes to the city and starts in the struggle of life there without acquaintances. All her instincts are social, and she is, for the time being, almost desolately alone in a wilderness of strange human beings. She must have some one to talk to--it is the law of youth as well as the law of her s.e.x to crave constant companionship. And the consequences? She is sentimentally in a condition to prepare her for the slaughter, to make her an easy prey to the wiles of the "white slave" wolf.

The girl reared in the city does not have this peculiar and insidious handicap to contend with; she has been--from the time she could first toddle along the sidewalk--educated in wholesome suspicion, taught that she must not talk with strangers or take candy from them, that she must withdraw herself from all advances and, in large measure, regard all save her own people with distrust. As she grows older she comes to know that certain parts of the city are more dangerous and more "wicked" than others; that her comings and goings must always be in safe and familiar company; that her acquaintanceships and her friendships must be scrutinized by her natural protectors and that, altogether, there is a definite but undefined danger in the very atmosphere of the city for the girl or the young woman which demands a constant and protective alertness.

The training is almost wholly absent in the case of the country girl; she is not educated in suspicion until the protective instinct acts almost unconsciously; her intercourse with her world is almost comparatively free and unrestrained; she is so unlearned in the moral and social geography of the city that she is quite as likely, if left to her own devices, to select her boarding house in an undesirable as in a safe and desirable part of the city; and, in a word, when she comes into the city her innocence, her trusting faith in humanity in general, her ignorance of the underworld and her loneliness and perhaps homesickness, conspire to make her a ready and an easy victim of the "white slaver."

In view of what I have learned in the course of the recent investigation and prosecution of the "white slave" traffic, I can say, in all sincerity, that if I lived in the country and had a young daughter I would go any length of hardship and privation myself rather than allow her to go into the city to work or to study--unless that studying were to be done in the very best type of an educational inst.i.tution where the girl students were always under the closest protection. The best and the surest way for parents of girls in the country to protect them from the clutches of the "white slaver" is to keep them in the country. But if circ.u.mstances should seem to compel a change from the country to the city, then the only safe way is to go with them into the city; but even this last has its disadvantages from the fact that, in that case the parents would themselves be unfamiliar with the usages and pitfalls of metropolitan life, and would not be able to protect their daughters as carefully as if they had spent their own lives in the city.

One thing should be made very clear to the girl who comes up to the city, and that is that the ordinary ice cream parlor is very likely to be a spider's web for her entanglement. This is perhaps especially true of those ice cream saloons and fruit stores kept by foreigners. Scores of cases are on record where young girls have taken their first step towards "white slavery" in places of this character. And it is hardly too much to say that a week does not pa.s.s in Chicago without the publication in some daily paper of the details of a police court case in which the ice cream parlor of this type is the scene of a regrettable tragedy. The only safe rule is to keep away from places of this kind, whether in a big city like Chicago or in a large country town. I believe that there are good grounds for the suspicion that the ice cream parlor, kept by the foreigner in the large country town, is often a recruiting station, and a feeder for the "white slave" traffic. It is certain that this is the case in the big city, and many evidences point to the conclusion that there is a kind of free-masonry among these foreign proprietors of refreshment parlors which would make it entirely natural and convenient for the proprietor of a city establishment of this kind, who is entangled in the "white slave" trade, to establish relations with a man in the same business and of the same nationality in the country town. I do not mean to intimate by this that all the ice cream and fruit "saloons" having foreign-born proprietors are connected with the "white slave" traffic--but some of them are, and this fact is sufficient to cause all careful and thoughtful parents of young girls to see that they do not frequent these places.

In this article it is of course impossible to more than hint at the protective measures which conscientious parents of girls should employ in order to make the way safe for their daughters. There can be no doubt that Judge Lindsay of Denver, Judge Mack of Chicago, and Mr. Edward W.

Bok of the Ladies' Home Journal, are right in insisting upon greater frankness between parents and children and that every child should have a s.e.x education at home instead of being compelled to pick it up from contaminating sources on the street and at school. And I may add that the world owes a debt to these men who have handled this delicate and difficult problem in a practical as well as a powerful manner; and I feel impelled to add that, in face of the horrifying disclosures brought to me in the form of legal evidence, every boy and girl of high school age should be taught something of the awful physical as well as the moral consequences which lurk behind allurements of the life in which the "white slave" is the central figure. These things cannot be presented in the public prints, but the father who keeps close to his boy and the mother who is a companion to her daughter may reveal these things, in the home, in a way which may save almost untold suffering.

And to such parents I would say that the investigations of the United States District Attorney's office in Chicago have brought together, as legal evidence, a ma.s.s of facts as to sanitary conditions in the districts where the "white slaves" are kept, which are horrifying and scarcely capable of exaggeration.

CHAPTER V.

A WHITE SLAVE CLEARING HOUSE.

A WHITE SLAVE'S OWN STORY.

The most conspicuous work of United States Attorney Sims against the white slave traders in Chicago was the arrest and indictment of a notorious French trader and his wife, Alphonse and Eva Dufour. The federal grand jury voted five indictments against each of them. They spent six weeks or so in Cook county jail, when they gained their liberty on bonds of $26,500, which they immediately forfeited and fled to Paris, in August, 1908.

My missionary duties took me occasionally to the clearing house of the Dufours, and we have often held gospel meetings in front of their resort. In this place were about twenty girls, whom the agents of this wicked couple had snared in different parts of Europe and America. One girl was from Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, who had been deceived into entering the house and then held there without her street clothes. She managed to send word out and secured her release. The Dufour woman was arraigned in court but was not punished seriously for this very common crime.

A very young black-eyed, black-haired Spanish girl was among the inmates, and my thoughts inevitably went to some broken-hearted mother in sunny Spain, whose daughter had been hunted for Chicago's white slave market. These murderous traffickers drink the heart's blood of weeping mothers while they eat the flesh of their daughters, by living and fattening themselves on the destruction of the girls. Disease and debauch quickly blast the beauty of these lovely victims. Many of them are dead in two or three years. Cannibals seem almost merciful in comparison with the white slavers, who murder the girls by inches. It is a dark mystery that twentieth century civilization allows these atrocities, even under the flag of the free.

In this glittering den, with its walls and ceiling of mirrors, was a sweet Russian girl, perhaps sixteen years old, whose fate made my heart bleed. She was of the best Russian type, blonde, of medium height, peach-blossom complexion, roundish mouth, and of exceedingly gentle and loving disposition. Some father, perhaps a n.o.bleman, perhaps dead and unable longer to protect the delight of his eyes, comes inevitably to my thoughts as I write. Oh, the pity of it all, and the shame. How can any father of girls escape the nightmare of what might befall his own daughters if his own power to protect them should fail?

I went to Baron Schlippenbach, who was then the consul of the mighty Czar in Chicago, but I never learned that he was able to accomplish anything for this dear Russian girl. The Czar is only "the little father," as the Russian people call him. May the Great Father in heaven help his deeply wronged daughters, in a way that shall break in pieces their oppressors.

The den of the Dufours had an income of $102,720 in the year 1907, and $41,000 in the first five months of 1908. One white slave was made to earn for them in May, 1908, the sum of $723. These figures were taken from their own account books, which were seized by the United States government after the Dufours fled to Paris.

This terrible place was both a receiving and a distributing station, and also a wide open immoral resort, patronized by thousands of young men--who are the ultimate white slavers, as they pay the expenses of the white slave trade. From this central clearing house girls were shipped to Denver, San Francisco and every place where the Dufours had correspondents. All this was revealed by their own doc.u.ments after the United States had driven this tiger and tigress back to Paris.

Soon after we had initiated the public agitation against the white slave horror in Chicago I received three letters from a victim of the French traders. Such parts of the letters as can be made public are here given.

These letters have supplied both information and inspiration to the workers who first brought this infamous traffic to public notice in Chicago.

A WHITE SLAVE'S OWN STORY.

"I want you to know everything I have witnessed in my three years of slavery. I was first sold in Custom House Place, by a young man working for Mr. ----, traveling the city and little towns, or wherever he could find girls.

"Here we were, always from fifteen to eighteen girls, most of us very young. The man who bought me made us work like real slaves and then never gave us our money even if it was shamefully earned. His place was always full of so-called detectives, and if some one came to claim some one of us, quick she was slipped to some other town.

"Pictures of foreign girls would arrive by mail, and if one was pretty enough they would wire to Paris and say, 'Send parcel at once.' They arrive by different ports--New York, Boston, Quebec, San Francisco--and those poor unfortunates are all claimed by some one pretending to be an aunt, or father, or husband.

"Letters are received by the resort keepers from all the states, and I believe from all the prisons of the world. If any one could read all of those men's mail, I think one would learn horrible things.

"Also we never can receive our mail direct, for the keeper opens the letters, and if they are indifferent they are closed and given to us, but if they are any way wrong in his eyes we never see them.