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

by Unknown

HON. HARRY A. PARKIN

As this phase of business in the underworld is one of the main props of white slavery it is well to go into it with definiteness and to give examples which illustrates its operation.

In one of the recent raids a big Irish girl was taken and held as a witness. She was old enough, strong enough and wise enough, it seemed to me, to have overcome almost any kind of opposition—even physical violence. She could have put up a fight which few men, no matter how brutal, would care to meet. I asked her why she did not get out of the house, which was one of the worst in Chicago. Her answer was: "Get out—I can't. They make us buy the cheapest rags and they are charged against us at fabulous prices; they make us change outfits at intervals of two or three weeks, until we are so deeply in debt that there is no hope of ever getting out from under. Then, to make such matters worse, we seldom get an accounting oftener than once in six months and sometimes ten months or a year will pass between settlements—and when we do get an accounting it is always to find ourselves deeper in debt than before. We've simply got to stick and that's all there is to it."

To frame an enactment which will knock this prop of indebtedness system out from under the white slave business might appear to be a most difficult matter, and yet I believe that the legislature which enacts a statute of which the following clause is the essential part will go a long way towards accomplishing this most desired result:

"And whoever shall hold, detain, restrain, or attempt to hold, detain or restrain in any house of prostitution or other place, any female for the purpose of compelling such female, directly or indirectly, by her voluntary or involuntary service or labor, to pay, liquidate or cancel any debt, dues or obligation incurred therein or said to have been incurred in such house of prostitution or other place, shall be deemed guilty of a felony and, upon conviction thereof, shall be imprisoned in the penitentiary at hard labor for not less than two or more than ten years."

There is only one other enactment which all legislatures should be urged to pass, and that is one which strikes directly at the white slaver, the "procurer," the owner or the "fellow." Keepers of houses of ill-fame have discovered that the hideous task of keeping the unwilling white slave in subjection is much easier if a certain ownership of her is vested in a man. In many cases this man is the one who is directly responsible for placing the girl in the house, but this is not invariably the case. When it is the case he receives not only a lump purchase price down on the delivery of his victim to the house, but he is recognized by the keeper as her owner and master, the one to whom a certain percentage of her income is paid and with whom all settlements on her account are made. What is more important in the eyes of the keeper is that this man is held absolutely responsible for the girl's subjection, and if she attempts to escape he must cajole, threaten or beat her into subjection. In one of the recent raids I chanced to come upon visual demonstration of how this peculiar phase of white slavery operates in actual practice. One of these "fellows" was disciplining a girl whom he "owned"—and doing so by the gentle process of forcing her against the wall with his hands at her throat.

Some of these "fellows" "own" two or three, or perhaps more, white slaves, and on the income of their slavery these brutes live in luxury at expensive hotels, maintain expensive automobiles and lead lives of luxury, idleness and dissipation.

While some states have statutes directly aimed at this system, it has been found extremely difficult to secure convictions against these most contemptible of all white slavers, for the reason that all of the existing statutes, so far as I am informed, make it necessary, at least by implication, for the prosecution to establish the fact that they derive their entire support from white slaves under their control—in other words, it devolves upon the state to demonstrate that the man on trial has no other visible means of support. As a consequence the defense set up is almost invariably calculated to prove that the man on trial is a solicitor for a tailoring establishment, a laundry or some other legitimate business enterprise.

In view of this fact, it seems to me an enactment drawn upon the following lines would be effective: