THE EFFECT OF THE SUPREME COURT DECISION.
The Congress of the United States, on February 20, 1907, passed what is known as the Immigration Act. This Act covers twenty-three printed pages affecting the immigration of all classes of peoples to the United States. Among other provisions, Section 3 of this Act attempted to prohibit the importation of alien women and girls for immoral purposes. This section was made sufficiently broad to prohibit not only the importation, but the keeping, even with the consent of the alien, of any foreign woman or girl for immoral purposes. The Act is as follows:
Sec. 3. That the importation into the United States of any alien woman or girl for the purpose of prostitution, or for any other immoral purpose, is hereby forbidden; and whoever shall, directly or indirectly, import, or attempt to import, into the United States, any alien woman or girl for the purpose of prostitution, or for any other immoral purpose, or whoever shall hold or attempt to hold any alien woman or girl for any such purpose in pursuance of such illegal importation, or whoever shall keep, maintain, control, support, or harbor in any house or other place, for the purpose of prostitution, or for any other immoral purpose, any alien woman or girl, within three years after she shall have entered the United States, shall, in every such case, be deemed guilty of a felony, and on conviction thereof be imprisoned not more than five years and pay a fine of not more than five thousand dollars; and any alien woman or girl who shall be found an inmate of a house of prostitution or practicing prostitution, at any time within three years after she shall have entered the United States, shall be deemed to be unlawfully within the United States and shall be deported as provided by sections twenty and twenty-one of this Act.
It is this section of the Act under which the prosecutions in the Northern District of Illinois were instituted by United States District Attorney Sims in June of nineteen hundred and eight, and which resulted in the imprisonment of so many procurers and keepers of houses of ill-fame. Among the cases which were tried before a jury and which resulted in a conviction of the keepers, was a case entitled United States v. Keller and Ullman. These defendants were charged with having harbored Irene Bodi, a native of Austria, within three years after she had entered the United States, and found guilty by the jury and sentenced to imprisonment in the penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth for one and one-half years each. They thereupon prosecuted an appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States, alleging among other things that the law under which they were convicted was unconstitutional, in that the clause "keep, maintain, control, support, or harbor," attempted to embrace powers not given by the constitution to Congress, but reserved to the respective states and to be within their police powers. This contention was upheld by the Supreme Court. The result is that so much of Section 3 of the Act of February 20, 1907, as attempted to prosecute a keeper who simply harbored or permitted to be within his house of prostitution an alien woman or girl within three years after her arrival in this country was wiped out of the statute, and the section of the Act must now be read as follows:
Sec. 3. That the importation into the United States of any alien woman or girl for the purpose of prostitution, or for any other immoral purpose, is hereby forbidden; and whoever shall, directly or indirectly, import, or attempt to import, into the United States, any alien woman or girl for the purpose of prostitution, or for any other immoral purpose, or whoever shall hold or attempt to hold any alien woman or girl for any such purpose in pursuance of such illegal importation, shall, in every such case, be deemed guilty of a felony, and on conviction thereof be imprisoned not more than five years and pay a fine of not more than five thousand dollars; and any alien woman or girl who shall be found an inmate of a house of prostitution or practicing prostitution, at any time within three years after she shall have entered the United States, shall be deemed to be unlawfully within the United States and shall be deported as provided by sections twenty and twenty-one of this Act.
It will thus be seen, by comparing the Act as originally signed by the President and the Act as it now reads, after the decision of the Supreme Court, that it is necessary in every case to show that the person who holds the alien had directly or indirectly imported the same alien into the United States for immoral purposes. In other words, the federal authorities are now restricted to cases where they are able to prove that the defendant imported the girl prior to the time she was found in his house of prostitution. This will very materially lessen the number of federal prosecutions, as it is extremely difficult in the vast majority of cases to show that the person in whose house the alien was found was in every instance responsible for her importation. It is to be hoped that Congress during its coming session shall see fit to enact remedial legislation which shall correct that clause of the Act declared unconstitutional, or if this shall be found impossible, to at least broaden the present scope of Section 3 of the Immigration Act so that it can be made more comprehensive and far-reaching.
WHERE YOUNG MEN BUY INSANITY CHEAP
A whole row of low dives and vice resorts. It is here that the white slaves are taken; it is here where the sinful pleasures of the young men wreck their bodies and steal their manhood.
OLD GLORY AND OLDER GLORY—"THESE DIVES MUST GO"
The author, Rev. Ernest A. Bell, holding a meeting in the vice district—at the open door of a notorious resort