Tragedies of the White Slave

by H. M. Lytle

Her Italian blood took fire at this and she made a dash for liberty. But she was not quite quick enough and the hand of the oppressor was upon her. In the wild scene that followed she was slashed with a razor, one gash straight through her right eye, one across her cheek and another slitting her ear. Then she was given medical attention and the wounds gradually healed, but her face is horribly mutilated, her right eye is always open and to look upon her is to shudder.

When the raids began she was secreted and arrangements made to ship her to a dive in the mining regions of the west. Fortunately, however, a few hours before she was to start upon her journey the United States marshals raided the place and captured herself as well as her keepers. To add to the horror of her situation she became a mother. The awful thought in her mind, however, is to escape from assassination at the hands of the murderous gang which oppressed her.

This is only one of a score of similar cases discovered by the authorities.

It is only necessary to say that the legal evidence thus far collected establishes with complete moral certainty these awful facts: That the white slave traffic is a system—a syndicate which has its ramifications from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific ocean, with "clearing houses" or "distributing centers" in nearly all of the larger cities; that in this ghastly traffic the buying price of a young girl is $15 and that the selling price is generally about $200—if the girl is especially attractive the white slave dealer may be able to sell her for $400 or $600; that this syndicate did not make less than $200,000 last year in this almost unthinkable commerce; that it is a definite organization sending its hunters regularly to scour France, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Canada for victims; that the man at the head of this unthinkable enterprise is known among his hunters as "The Big Chief."

Also the evidence shows that the hirelings of this traffic are stationed at certain ports of entry in Canada where large numbers of immigrants are landed to do what is known in their parlance as "cutting out work." In other words, these watchers for human prey scan the immigrants as they come down the gangplank of a vessel which has just arrived and "spot" the girls who are unaccompanied by fathers, mothers, brothers or relatives to protect them. The girl who has been spotted as a desirable and unprotected victim is promptly approached by a man who speaks her language and is immediately offered employment at good wages, with all expenses to the destination to be paid by the man. Most frequently laundry work is the bait held out, sometimes housework or employment in a candy shop or factory.

The object of the negotiations is to "cut out" the girl from any of her associates and to get her to go with him. Then the only thing is to accomplish their ruin by the shortest route. If they cannot be cajoled or enticed by promises of an easy time, plenty of money, fine clothes and the usual stock of allurements—or a fake marriage—then harsher methods are resorted to. In some instances the hunters really marry the victims. As to the sterner measures, it is, of course, impossible to speak explicitly beyond the statement that intoxication and drugging are often used as a means to reduce the victims to a state of helplessness and sheer physical violence is a common thing.

When the United States authorities some time ago raided the French resorts on the south side in search of foreign born victims of the slave trade, some of the most palpable of slavery tactics were discovered.

"Not one woman in one of these prominent resorts was found who could speak English," said Assistant United States Attorney Parkin. "But in their own tongue everything said by them showed long drilling as to answers that should be made to inquiries. Ask any one of these women a sudden question in English and her reply to anything asked would be 'five years,' the term of residence in the United States that would prevent deportation.

"The typical story of the women was of having come to New York about four years ago as companions or servants in the family of well to do French immigrants. After several years the family had returned, leaving the girl, who about three or four months before had come to Chicago from a New York resort.

"But the slavery feature was bulwarked by every fact that we could elicit from these drilled women. Not one of them knew by what steamer she had come to the country; she could not even name the line by which she sailed. She didn't know what the steamer fares were. She could not name a single street in New York, which would have been a certainty had she even stopped there for a week at liberty.