More About the Traffic in Shame
The dragnets of the inhuman men and women who ply their terrible trade are spread day and night and are manipulated with a skill and precision which ought to strike terror to the heart of every careless or indifferent parent. The wonder is not that so many are caught in this net, but that they escape! “I count the week—I might almost say the day—a happy and fortunate one which does not bring to my attention as an officer of the state a deplorable case of this kind,” said Mrs. Ophelia Amigh.
Just to show how tightly and broadly the nets of these fishers for girls are spread, let me tell you of an instance which occurred to a girl from this institution:
This girl, whom I will call Nellie, is a very ordinary looking girl, and below the average of intelligence, but as tractable and obedient as she is ingenuous. She is wholly without the charm which would naturally attract the eye of the white slave trader.
Because of her quietness, her obedience and her good disposition, she was, in accordance with the rules of the institution, permitted to go into the family of a substantial farmer out in the west and work as a housemaid, a “hired girl”—her wages to be deposited to her credit against the time when she should reach the age of twenty-one and leave the Home.
She had been in her position for some time and was so quiet and satisfactory that one Sunday when the family were not going to church, the mistress said:
“Nellie, if you wish to go to church alone you may do so. The milk wagon will be along shortly and you can ride on that to the village—and here is seventy-five cents. You may want to buy your dinner and perhaps some candy.”
When Nellie reached town and was on her way past the railroad station to the church, the train for Chicago came in, and the impulse seized her to get aboard, go to the city and look up her father, whom she had not seen for several months. She went to the city and hardly stepped from the train into the big station when she heard a man’s voice saying, “Why, hello, Mary!”
Instantly—foolishly, of course—she answered him and replied: