The black and white wretches who are the immediate agents of vice are hardly worth considering. They are mere incidents. Practically it is a waste of time to even prosecute them.
The trail of the real criminal leads into the police headquarters, leads up the steps of the city hall, goes across the threshold of the mayor’s private office, enters the homes of Christian citizens and lies broad through the doors of the church.
For this infamy of the sale of innocent girls for vice and the whole wider, deeper, fouler vice system is a part of governmental policy, not in New York and Chicago alone, but all over the Country, under Republican and Democratic administration.
The very district attorney’s office that exposes these particular instances of crime is one of the strong pillars of the system of which the crime is only an outcropping.
Even now there is not a voice lifted in official Chicago and New York in favor of doing the one thing that alone can stop the sale of girls, the one thing that the law clearly prescribes in the matter—wiping out the vice preserves, stopping the whole system of trade in vice. This fact needs to be burned deeply into the hearts of American voters: If you want this thing to go on, if you want little girls still to be bought and sold like pigs, if you want pure young lives to be overwhelmed in fathomless shame, all you need to do to help keep up the system is to keep on voting for men who protect these criminals.
Quoting from McClure’s (July) Magazine concerning the recent investigation of the White Slave trade in New York City by a specially appointed jury:
In order to establish the existence of the White Slave traffic Assistant District Attorney James B. Reynolds arranged to make actual purchases of girls in the Tenderloin and other sections of the underworld from those reputed to be large dealers. Skilled investigators who were not known in New York were engaged and put to work in the heart of the Tenderloin.
They were represented as purchasers of girls. Friendly and confidential relations were established with some of the most influential White Slave dealers. By these means valuable first-hand information was obtained regarding the White Slave trade. The agents were told the price of girls, the methods employed in the business, and, in some cases, the corrupt relations existing between the traders and certain officials.
Past and present conditions of the traffic were contrasted frequently, the trading during the present winter being described as exceptionally light because of the general alarm caused by the sitting of the “White Slave” Grand Jury. One large dealer told the agents that though two years ago he could have sold them all the girls they wanted at $5 or $10 apiece, he would not risk selling one in New York now for $1,000.
In spite of this general caution, purchases for cash were made of four girls, two through an East Side dealer, who boasted of formerly having made large sales in other cities, and two from a so-called black and tan dealer. Two of the girls are under 18.