BRUTALITY OF THE “CADETS.”
These men exercise the most brutal mastership over the prostitute. Instances have been shown where women were whipped within a few inches of death by the inhuman dogs.
One night in the South side levee, a “cadet” caught one of his women on the street in front of a resort, cursed her for her small earnings and proceeded to beat her into insensibility. Bleeding from his inhuman blows, she reeled and fell to the sidewalk.
Standing in the glare of the arc light, the man’s face and hands were smeared with blood. Two policemen approached and stopped. The “cadet” held up his blood-stained hands and laughed. The policemen pushed him ahead, and one of them said:
“Fred, you better move on. Go and wash your face and hands.”
A woman came from the resort, kicked the prostrate form of the unconscious girl with her foot, then grasping her by the hands, dragged her into the hell chamber from which she had emerged to breathe a little of God’s own air.
That is not the story of a heated imagination. It was actually witnessed. Incidents of similar character which beggar description, occur every night, when these outcasts are confronted by drunken, blood-exacting degenerates.
Some of these men are the slave masters of several women.
In a recent White Slave case in the federal court, one of these wretches confessed that he was the “cadet” of four prostitutes. He drove them on in their vicious labors, forced them to work day and night to bring him money from which he made his own living and paid protection to the police and tribute to the Vice Trust.
This man swore that he made from fifty to sixty dollars a week from each girl.
Many of these “cadets” do not live in the “redlight” districts. They scatter and come back when it is time to gather in the gold.