Those were the first white slave traders of whom I, a young missionary, had ever heard. Last year in Chicago a French trader told me that he had been in India, and I could not but wonder whether he had been deported from Calcutta or Bombay and made welcome in Chicago. The United States government soon afterward put him out of his wicked business.
Rev. Dr. Homer C. Stuntz, formerly of Calcutta, now of New York, told me of a frightened European girl who nervously rang his doorbell in Calcutta late at night. She had been deceived into going to India by false promises made to her by the hunters of girls. Learning their real purpose just in time, she fled from them, and inquiring the way to a missionary, she was directed to Dr. and Mrs. Stuntz, with whom she was safe, and thankful a million times.
How many hundreds of innocent American and European girls have been led away to heathen and Mohammedan lands, on false promises of good positions as teachers, governesses, or even as missionaries, only the open books of the day of judgment will disclose.
E. A. B.
CHAPTER II.
THE SUPPRESSION OF THE WHITE SLAVE TRAFFIC.
By William Alexander Coote, Secretary National Vigilance Association for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic, London, England.
Let me first of all greet you as co-workers in a cause which is very dear to the heart of God, and which is really Christianity in practice. How literally true it is that in this special form of social and humanitarian work we are seeking to save that which is lost! If this work is to be successfully done, if we are to find that which has been lost, then we must have a whole-hearted devotion to the search, and a close and intimate co-operation amongst the searchers.
We may belong to different political and social camps, we may even be as far apart as the poles in our religious sympathies and convictions, but within sound of the Divine call to this labour, in the presence of so gigantic an evil, we must unite, we dare not act as isolated units however enthusiastic or clever we may be, we must close up our ranks, and not only join hands but also hearts, and in the strength of God, with a strong inspiration from the Holy One, go forth to meet this Apollyon of evil, and in the name of humanity, and better still, in the name of God, give battle until the foe is vanquished, yea, eternally routed, the honour of womanhood vindicated, and the chains of lust loosened from the minds and hearts of humanity.