Chicago's Black Traffic in White Girls

by Jean Turner-Zimmermann

... With rare exceptions, not only the innocent women imported into this Country, but the prostitutes as well, are associated with men whose business it is to protect them, direct them, and control them, and who frequently, if not usually, make it their business to plunder them unmercifully. Now this system of subjection to a man has become common. The procurer or the pimp may put his woman into a disorderly house, sharing profits with the “madam”. He may sell her outright; he may act as an agent for another man; he may keep her, making arrangements for her hunting men. She must walk the streets and secure her patrons, to be exploited, not for her own sake, but for that of her owner. Often he does not tell her even his real name. If she tries to leave her man, she is threatened with arrest. If she resists, she may be beaten; in some cases, when she has betrayed her betrayer, she has been murdered.

The ease and apparent certainty of profit has led thousands of our younger men, usually those of foreign birth or the immediate sons of foreigners, to abandon the useful arts of life to undertake the most accursed business ever devised by man.

Those who recruit women for immoral purposes watch all places where young women are likely to be found under circumstances which will give them a ready means of acquaintance and intimacy, such as picture shows, dance-halls, sometimes waiting rooms in large department stores, railroad stations, manicuring and hair dressing establishments.

The strongest appeal to the instincts of humanity in every right-minded person is made by a consideration of the brutal system employed by these traffickers to in every way exploit their victims, the hardened prostitute as well as the innocent maiden. It is probable that a somewhat larger proportion of the American girls are free from the control of a master; and yet, according to the best evidences obtainable—according to the stories of the women themselves and the keepers of the houses—nearly all the women now engaged in this business in our large cities are subject to pimps, to whom they give most of their earnings, or else they are under the domination of keepers of houses, a condition that is practically the same.

It is the business of the man who controls the women to provide police protection, either by bribing the police not to arrest her, or, in case of arrest, to secure bail, pay the fine, etc., to make all business arrangements, to decide what streets, restaurants, dance-halls, saloons and similar places she shall frequent.

There are large numbers of Jews scattered throughout the United States, although mainly located in New York and Chicago, who seduce and keep girls. Some of them are engaged in importation, but apparently they prey rather upon young girls whom they find on the street, in the dance-halls, and similar places, and who, by the methods already indicated—love-making and pretense of marriage—they deceive and ruin. Many of them are petty thieves, pickpockets and gamblers. They also have various resorts where they meet and receive their mail, and transact business with one another, and visit. Perhaps the best known organization of this kind throughout this Country was one legally incorporated in New York in 1904, under the name of the New York Benevolent Association.

It is, of course, difficult to prove by specific cases the relation of the police to this traffic, and to establish by specific evidence the fact generally accepted that the girls of disorderly house keepers regularly pay the police for protection; but high police officials, prosecuting officers, and social workers in all quarters assert that in many, if not all of our large cities, much corruption of this kind exists.

The importation and harboring of alien women and girls for immoral purposes and the practice of prostitution by them—the so-called “white slave traffic”—is the most pitiful and revolting phase of the immigration question. This business has assumed large proportions, and it has been exerting so evil an influence upon our Country that the Immigration Commission felt compelled to make it the subject of a thorough investigation.

The investigation was begun in November, 1907, under the active supervision of a special committee of the Immigration Commission; and the work was conducted by a special agent in charge, with numerous assistants.

The investigation has covered the cities of New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Salt Lake City, Ogden, Butte, Denver, Buffalo, Boston and New Orleans.