The "painful execution" which is the penalty of killing a master, means execution by slicing the criminal into 10,000 cuts. Foreigners who have witnessed it say it is too horrible to recite.
It is under such slave laws as these that the young girl is trained as a brothel slave before she is brought to California. After such tuition, it seems hardly credible that girls do, in San Francisco, dare to escape from their masters, and flee to the missions for protection. Governor C.C. Smith, who was for years the Registrar General of Hong Kong, previous to being knighted and sent to Singapore as Governor of the Straits Settlements, replied to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, in reference to the freedom of prostitutes, "out of an experience of over a quarter of a century":
"There are no restrictive regulations on the part of the Government which go to prevent or interfere with the entire freedom of the inmates of brothels, and they can go abroad alone. This statement will not, I hope, deceive you into believing that as a consequence they are really free agents … such is actually not the case. A child who strikes its parent is liable to a death sentence. The girls in brothels are in the position of daughters to the keepers, and … call them mother. There is no sense of freedom, as we understand the term, possible in such a state of affairs. The women are fearful of the unknown; of what should happen to them if they should disobey their pocket-mothers, and are terribly ignorant of everything connected with the Government under which they nominally live. It is out of the question to educate them up to the English standard of liberty of the subject. They stay but a few short years in an English Colony, seeing nothing but the worst phases of a life of vice and immorality, and only know of the officers of Government as 'foreign devils' or 'barbarians'."
This is all only too true as regards California also, excepting that the experiment of educating them by just treatment in the "English standard of the liberty of the subject," has certainly never been tried either in Singapore or America. The brothel keepers, however, have learned to understand that matter of "liberty of the subject" only too well, and take advantage of the habeas corpus act at every turn to capture a slave who is trying to escape their clutches.
These words of Governor Smith should be borne in mind and brought to attention every time our law officers in California put brothel girls through the farce of asking them if they are desirous of liberty, and when they say no, proclaim triumphantly to the world that "there isn't a slave girl in Chinatown." These officers deceive others by these falsehoods, but they know too well the conditions to be themselves deceived.
When certain Chinese girls appeared before a committee appointed to investigate conditions at San Francisco, the members of the committee were put under promise not to divulge their names or stories, as "their lives would not be safe for five years to come," if the brothel-keepers and their former owners knew that they had informed against them. It is a little difficult to describe the various secret societies of Chinatown in full, but for practical purposes and as relates to the welfare of Chinese women, it may be said that the secret society, or tong, is a sort of mutual benefit society and has generally a very commendable sort of name; but it exists to divide the profits of the trade in women, among other villainies. When anyone gives any evidence against such a society, or informs a rescue worker where a girl will be found who desires her liberty, then some one from the tong that has a special interest in the profits of that girl's slavery, deposits a sum of money in a place mutually arranged for, and the highbinder society undertakes for the sum paid to see that the informer is assassinated within twenty-four hours. That is the length of time usually claimed for the act. But sometimes years may pass before the marked victim can be traced and killed.
We will next give a few cases from the records of the Presbyterian and
Methodist Mission Rescue Homes of San Francisco, which will clearly
show the similarity between the state of affairs in Hong Kong and
California.
CHAPTER 17.
STRUGGLES FOR FREEDOM.
A Chinese girl of 14 was brought to this country, and served six months as a domestic slave, and was then put into a brothel. She was rescued. Her Chinese master got out a writ of habeas corpus, went to the Mission with an officer and took the girl away at once to court before a corrupt judge. It was just at noon-time, and the missionary pleaded for a little time in which to summon a lawyer. The judge said: "I have no time to fool with this case." The lawyer arrived in haste and pleaded for a little time in which to prepare the defense. The judge said to the lawyer: "You shut up, or I'll have you imprisoned for contempt of Court." He awarded the slave to the care of her master.