(4) MADAMES
The women who run houses have as a rule risen from the ranks. They were once street walkers or parlor house inmates who possess unusual business talents. They have learned the secrets of the trade; they know the kind of inmates to get, and where to get them. They know how to deal with customers and how to make them spend money.
It takes a woman of tact and force to operate a house with from fifteen to twenty-five inmates competing with one another on a commission basis. She must keep them contented, prevent quarrels, and stifle petty jealousies. She must attach as many of them to the house as she can and keep them loyal. To do this the madame seeks to become the adviser and friend of the girls, while at the same time she drives them to the utmost to earn larger profits for the house. It is not uncommon for the girls as well as the customers to call her “mother.” Strange as it may seem, some men marry these women and find them devoted wives.
All of the thirty cheap resorts referred to in a previous chapter as belonging to men are managed by madames and housekeepers who are either their wives or their women. These women attend to all the details connected with the business. They receive customers, “show off the girls,” urge visitors to spend money, collect money, punch checks, sell liquor, keep the books, and settle up with the boss: when the houses are raided or an arrest has to be made they are the ones to go to jail. The large majority of them were born in foreign countries. They have had years of experience in operating houses in many cities of North and South America, as well as in foreign lands, especially South Africa. The loyalty displayed by them toward the men who employ them has become a tradition. Year after year, through adversity and prosperity they have followed their masters and obeyed their will. Beaten, exploited, infected, jailed, they still remain steadfast. Very rarely can one of them be persuaded to testify in a court of law against her master. A striking example is furnished by a woman[148] who came under the influence of her master[149] when she was a child of fifteen and was living with her parents in a distant country, where he had seduced her. At 9 P. M., on June 27, 1912, she came into a restaurant where her man was playing cards and upbraided him because he had purchased an automobile and placed it at the disposal of another one of his madames, neglecting her. She called him vile names and declared that she would go to the police and “squeal” on him. She told how for fifteen years she had earned money for him, and all she had to show for it was a furnished room to sleep in and a diamond ring, while he put his other woman in a “swell” apartment. “I’ve been cut to pieces for you,” she wailed, “I’ve been your slave for fifteen years and now you turn me down for that wench.” She had hardly concluded her tirade when her man rose from his chair and struck her brutally in the face with his fist. She reeled as though about to fall, then cowering before him left the place weeping. She did not “squeal” to the police.
When a man owner employs either his wife, woman or a housekeeper to operate his house, it is understood that she shall be the one to suffer punishment in case of arrest. In order to avoid punishment, men who rent houses for these purposes sub-let them to the women, who are then held as the responsible parties. When arrest or eviction comes, and the madame is sent to jail or dispossessed, the real proprietor again sub-lets his house to another woman. This fact explains why the arrests for conducting houses of prostitution do not result in diminishing to any extent the number of such resorts. On June 24, 1912, a keeper had a sub-lease drawn up for a house and inserted the name of Anna,[150] the prospective madame who was to “stand for” the arrest or eviction notice, should there be one. On March 31, 1912, “Joe”[151] said that he was paying $85 per month to his landlord and $25 per month as a bonus to the agent for his house of prostitution in West 28th Street.[152] The landlord[153] is reputed to be a wealthy business man,—“a fine fellow,” said Joe, “he is now fighting a dispossession notice for me. It is understood between us that if I can’t beat it, I can sub-let the house to another woman and charge her a bigger rent. Later, when we get another notice, I can say, ‘All right, I will dispossess this woman.’ Then I can get another. It’s no joke to run a house, believe me. The women are sent to jail. My wife got sixty days for running this house the other day. That arrest will cost me $300 for her alone. Now the women have started a new game. In case one gets three months, we have to give her $500 to keep her mouth shut.” On March 11, 1912, a partner[154] in a house of prostitution in West 24th Street[155] was describing his fortunes as a keeper of houses in New York City during the past fifteen years. Among other things he said, “My housekeeper got three months last week, and I am paying her $5 a day for every day she is in jail.”
Not a few of these madames have been arrested in different countries and cities as “gun mols” (pickpockets). That is part of their training, and the robberies they commit add many dollars to the incomes of the men who have put them in the business. A customer who enters their houses in an intoxicated condition is often robbed of everything of value. If he remonstrates he is told by the police to swear out a warrant for the woman he suspects and appear as a witness against her. It is not often a man will do this under the circumstances.
The women who operate houses on their own account belong to a rather different type: their establishments are almost always pretentious. Born, as a rule, in this country or in France, they make a show of elegance and refinement. Their houses are elaborately furnished and they and their “boarders” appear in stylish gowns, and endeavor to interest their guests by affecting a knowledge of art or music or literature. Many of them openly boast of influential and prominent friends, on whose good offices they can rely in emergencies.
In either case the housekeeper earns money not only from the customers of the house, but from the inmates. Theoretically the inmates receive one-half of all the money they take in. This is not actually the case. They are indeed fortunate if they receive any money at all after weeks of service. At most, they obtain from fifteen to twenty per cent instead of fifty per cent. Sometimes, as the first step in the process of exploitation, the madame tries to induce the girl to give up her pimp, in order that she may have her more directly under control. Having attached the girl to herself, she sells her all sorts of things: coats, suits, dresses, kimonos, chemises, underwear, hosiery, shoes, hats, gloves, feathers, plumes, combs, hairpins, toilet articles, silver meshbags, watches and rings. Hundreds of girls are thus preyed upon. Not infrequently, however, it happens that madames prefer that their girls keep their pimps, because such girls are made to work harder by the aid of the latter. As the madames and pimps divide the gains of the unfortunate creatures, their interests usually agree and they unite to exploit their common property.
The articles mentioned in the preceding paragraph are not infrequently described as stolen goods, brought to the houses by peddlers who are hired to dispose of them by crooks and shoplifters. A pimp and procurer[156] was in a resort[157] on the third floor of a house on West 58th Street[158] on June 15, 1912, trying to sell the madame several pairs of silk hose, to be sold in turn to the inmates. The stockings were frankly admitted to be stolen goods which had been turned over to him by a shoplifter[159] who is a member of a 14th Street gang and is known as a “strong arm guy.” On March 28, 1912, about 8 P. M., a young crook[160] came into a restaurant in Seventh Avenue[161] and exhibited a dress which he declared he had stolen from a prominent store.[162] The dress was marked $18.29. It did not fit any of the madames who were in the restaurant at the time. Finally he sold the dress to the madame[163] of a house in West 25th Street[164] for $10. She in turn disposed of it to one of her inmates for $35. The notorious madame[165] of a house in West 25th Street[166] had fifty chemises on March 25, 1912, which she had purchased from a peddler,[167] giving him $31 for the lot. “I am selling these to the girls for $6, $7, and $8 apiece,” she said. “If I bought them in a store they would cost $2.75 apiece; but what is the difference whether I get it or the pimp gets it?”
“I never allow a girl to get down to owing me less than $5,” said another madame. “When she is as nearly out of debt as that, I send for Sam the peddler and suggest that she buy some clothes and toilet articles. There’s Ruth,—just watch her when she comes in. I dressed her up the way you will see her; the dress cost me $20. She paid me $70 for it.”