Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls; Or, War on the White Slave Trade

by Unknown

Many of these letters have been from fathers and mothers aroused to anxiety about daughters who have been allowed to seek a livelihood in large cities without suitable oversight or protection. In some instances the worst fears of these parents have been, by definite investigation, shown to be all too well founded.

Other letters have come, by the score, from public officials and from public spirited men and women who have at last been stirred to a realization that there is an actual, systematic and widespread traffic in girls as definite, as established, as mercenary and as fiendish as was the African slave trade in its blackest days. And practically all these letters indicate that very few of those who have been finally aroused to the enormity of existing conditions have any clear idea of what should or may be done to protect these daughters of our own people from the ravages of the white slave traders.

A letter from the Mayor of a Connecticut city is typical of the common misconception among cultivated and well informed public officials who have not given the legal phases of the repression of the white slave trade especial and exhaustive study. The Mayor writes:

"I should think that the Federal Government would have to pass stringent laws providing a heavy penalty for all who are engaged in this business. The law would then be the same in all states and people could not escape from its provision as they would if the states tried to take up the matter and passed conflicting statutes. An organization might secure the passage of such an act by the Federal Government, but it hardly seems to me that it is necessary, more than to state the facts, and have the members of congress take immediate action that would put an end to the whole matter."

While it is probably true that the Federal Government has power to prohibit the carrying of women from one state to another for immoral purposes, that power has not yet been specifically established by actual tests in court and is therefore, in a sense, undefined. On the other hand the states, under their police power, have a remedy in their own hands, and it would seem both logical and natural that this power be exercised in the protection of its own homes and daughters. As a matter of fact we have found literally scores of cases, in our investigations relative to the importation from foreign countries of girls destined for immoral houses, where American born girls have been lured or kidnaped from a home in one state and carried to some large city in another state, there to be broken to the life of shame.

The federal investigations in Chicago and other localities have clearly established the fact, that, generally speaking, houses of ill-fame in large cities do not draw their recruits to any great extent from the territory immediately surrounding them; for obvious reasons the white slavers who are the recruiting agents for the vile traffic prefer to work in states more or less distant from the centers to which their victims are destined.

In view of all this it must be clearly apparent that the need of the hour is legislation which will make it as difficult and dangerous for a white slaver to take his victim from one state into another as it is for him to bring a girl from France or Italy or Canada, or any other foreign country, to a house of ill-fame in Chicago or any American city. Therefore, it is suggested that if each state in the union would pass and enforce severe and stringent laws against this importation, this terrible traffic would be dealt a blow in its most vulnerable part. Such an enactment might well be worded as follows:

"Whoever shall induce, entice or procure, or attempt to induce, entice or procure, to come into this state, any woman or girl for the purpose of prostitution or concubinage, or for any other immoral purpose, or to enter any house of prostitution in this state, shall, upon conviction, be imprisoned in the penitentiary for a period of not less than one (1) nor more than five (5) years and be fined not more than five thousand ($5,000) dollars."

One of the strangest results brought about by the recent white slave prosecutions in Chicago and the publicity which they have received, has been the astonishment of thousands of persons, as evidenced by letters, at the fact that such a wholesale traffic is actually in existence. But what is still more astounding, not to say discouraging, is the reluctance of the other thousands to believe that many hundreds of men and women are actually engaged in the business of luring girls and women to their destruction, and that this infamous traffic is being carried on in every state of the union every day of the year.

Perhaps the actuality of this awful avocation may be made more clearly apparent to the innocent and unsophisticated doubters whose awakening and moral support is needed, if I cite one or two instances which have come to my personal knowledge within the last few days.