"You surely will not question the worthiness or the need of laws of this kind and I ask the further favor of a reply from you indicating your attitude with regard to this most important matter.
"Yours sincerely,
..............."
Also I would suggest that readers who are members of churches or habitual attendants upon church services, take this matter up with the pastors of their churches, each requesting his or her pastor to confer with the other pastors of his community to the end of preparing a petition to be sent to the representatives from that district in the legislature, urging the passage of the enactments above suggested. If these petitions are vigorously circulated they will receive the signatures of practically the entire citizenship of every community and will have a powerful, not to say compelling, influence upon the representatives and state senators who receive them. Women's Clubs, Law and Order Leagues, Christian Endeavor Societies, Epworth Leagues, Grangers and Farmers' Institutes, Young Men's Christian Associations, Young Women's Christian Associations and Women's Temperance Unions in every city, village and hamlet of the country, scan also exert a powerful and practical influence in securing such legislation as a protection against the ravages of the white slavers by passing suitable resolutions of endorsement and sending those resolutions to the men representing their several communities in the general assembly of their state. While, as I say, these memorials on the part of respected organizations will do a useful work in shaping the course of legislation, this will not take the place or do the work of the individual personal letter, and every reader who is sincerely and earnestly interested in securing such legislation as I have outlined will miss the main stroke of influence if he or she fails to write a personal letter to the men representing his or her district in the general assembly of the state.
And whenever such a letter is written the various clauses given in this article should be incorporated in the letter; this will put your request in definite and explicit terms, a result greatly to be desired.
I cannot close this article without recurring to the statement made at the outset to the effect that many persons still remain unconvinced that the white slave traffic is a thing of widespread and actual existence; that it is the established calling of hundreds of men to lure and kidnap innocent girls into a life of shame and to sell them into houses of prostitution, where they are kept against their will in the most revolting of all human slaveries.
In my desk at this moment is a letter from which the following is taken:
"There are in that house, No. ——, two girls by the names of Annie and Edith. One has been there for two years and is not allowed to go out of the house. . . . is not even allowed to write to her own people, and whose mail is opened and read before she is allowed to look at it. The other girl has been there seven months and has never been out of the house."
This letter was written by one who knew the facts in the case.
A very few days ago this pitiful case was, in an official way, brought to my attention. A little German girl in Buffalo married a man who deserted her about the time her child was born. Her baby is now about eight or nine months old. Almost immediately after her husband ran away she formed the acquaintance of an engaging young man who claimed to take deep interest in her welfare, and in that of a certain girl friend of hers. He persuaded them both that if they would accompany him to Chicago he would immediately place them in employment which would be far more profitable than anything they could obtain in Buffalo. Supposing that the work awaiting her was entirely legitimate and respectable the little mother took her baby and, in company with the young man and with her friend, came to Chicago. The next task of this human fiend was to persuade this "child widow" that it would be necessary for her to place her baby temporarily in a foundling's home in order that it might not interfere with her employment. This accomplished, he took the two young women at once to a notorious house and sold them into white slavery. Thenceforth this fellow has lived in luxury upon the shameful earnings of these two victims. The young mother has attempted by every means imaginable to escape from his clutches and at last has importuned him into a promise to release his hold upon her on the payment of $300. She is still "working out" the price of her release. It is scarcely too much to say that she looks twice her age.