When once a white slave is sold and landed in a house or dive, she becomes a prisoner. The raids disclosed the fact that in each of these places is a room having but one door, to which the keeper holds the key. In here are locked all the street clothes, shoes and the ordinary apparel of a woman.
The finery which is provided for the girl for house wear is of a nature to make her appearance in the street impossible. Then added to this handicap, is the fact that at once the girl is placed in debt to the keeper for a wardrobe of “fancy” clothes, which are charged to her at preposterous prices. She cannot escape while she is in debt to the keeper—and she is never allowed to get out of debt—at least until all desire to leave the life is dead within her.
The examination of witnesses have brought out the fact that not many of the women in this class expect to live more than ten years, after they enter upon their voluntary or involuntary life of white slavery. Perhaps the average is less than that. Many die painful deaths by disease, many by consumption, but it is hardly beyond the truth to say that suicide is their general expectation. “We’ll all come to it sooner or later,” one of the witnesses remarked to her companions in the jail, the other day, when reading in the newspaper of the suicide of a girl inmate of a notorious house.
A volume could be written on this revolting subject, but I have no disposition to add a single word but what will open the eyes of parents to the fact that white slavery is an existing condition—a system of girl hunting that is national and international in its scope, that it literally consumes thousands of girls—clean, innocent girls—every year; that it is operated with a cruelty, a barbarism that gives a new meaning to the word fiend; that it is imminent peril to every girl in the country who had a desire to get into the city and taste its excitements and its pleasures.
The facts stated here are for the awakening of parents and guardians of girls. If I were to presume to say anything to the possible victims of this awful scourge of white slavery it would be this: “Those who enter here leave hope behind;” the depths of debasement and suffering disclosed by the investigation now in progress would make the flesh of a seasoned man of the world creep with horror and shame.
Why Girls Go Astray
Right at the outset let me say in all frankness that I would never, from personal choice, write upon a subject of this character. Its sensationalism is personally repellant to me and cannot fail to be of actual protective benefit to many homes; and to withhold the facts and disclosures which have come to me as investigator would be to deprive the innocent and the worthy of a protection which might save many a home from sorrow, disgrace and ruin.
The results of this work and of the explanations of the conditions uncovered in this book have brought to me a gratifying knowledge of the practical rescue work being done by the settlement and “slum” workers of Chicago. They are not only specialists in this field, but they are as devoted as they are practical.