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

by Unknown

At the request of the publishers this chapter will be very largely the relation of personal experiences in the war on the White Slave Trade. The personal pronoun is used in obedience to instructions. After all, that is the most useful testimony which grows out of what one has seen and heard.

It is just twelve years since my pastorate at the Lexington Avenue Church began. Half of that period had passed before I became really interested and informed concerning the strange thing now so widely known as the White Slave Traffic! What is this? Do you mean to tell me that girls and young women are bought and sold? Is it true that vile men own young women and live upon their earnings, the wages of sin? Is there a market to which these girls are brought and from which they are sent into all parts of the land? Are many of them tricked into infamous dens through promised employment and then locked in and kept for weeks and months and made to toil and respond to demands that at last break their hearts and drown their hopes? Are there men who spend their whole time traveling about the country getting acquainted with nice looking girls in the country stores, hotels, schools and even the homes, using every device, not stopping short of marriage, till they have sold their victims into the life that no language can describe and no clean mind imagine? Yes, O yes, it is more than true! When all this proved itself to my conscience, the facts burned themselves into my very heart. The call was so loud that response was immediate. But there were so few trying to do anything to stop the traffic. Rescue work was being done but the trade went on. The wicked men and women who bought and sold were not interfered with. The laws were weak and there were many loopholes. The workers were not of the earth's mighty and none of the churches and ministers were actively engaged. Here and there was a mission, now and then a Home opened, but all this was to save the sinner, who was there to find and punish the rascals? What could be done? It was a most discouraging and appalling task.

I remember that it was during the winter of the Spanish-American war that Rev. J. Q. A. Henry, D. D., then pastor of the La Salle Avenue Baptist Church of Chicago, invited me to go with himself and a friend to investigate the conditions in the "under world." At that time Dr. Henry was making a heroic fight on the frightful situation in the business district. Whole streets were given over to open vice. The vilest saloons flaunted their damning attractions in the face of every passer by. That good Minister of God had no small part in the awakening Chicago has since experienced. It was while with Dr. Henry that I visited for the first time the notorious resort at 441 South Clark street. It was then in its strength and full of pride. The madam carried a key to the police patrol box at the corner. No secret was made of the business carried on. The company within was friendly and tried to be entertaining, but under all was an awful sadness, the smiles were shallow, the whole air of the place spelled ruin. Only a few months thereafter and that house was closed. In the autumn of 1903 it was leased by Mr. O. H. Richards, superintendent of Beulah Home, and opened as Beulah Home South. Into those same parlors I went on Thanksgiving Day, 1903, and there united with a little band of Christian workers and helped to organize a company of people that has since given to the world the Midnight Mission in Chicago and the Illinois Vigilance Association for the suppression of traffic in women and girls.

In that house of sin, made into a house of prayer, I first met Rev. Ernest A. Bell, now the honored Superintendent of the Midnight Mission and the corresponding secretary of the Illinois Vigilance Association. It was he who suggested that the war be carried into the streets, and led by him a few men and women ventured forth and assailed the hosts of sin at the very doors of the brothels. The dens were invaded and men and women warned. The City Government was appealed to and in less than two years the business districts and Custom House Place, infamous across the world, were cleared of open houses of shame. Where the artful scarlet woman plied her deadly trade the streets are now full of children, and the houses once red with sin are now shops of new citizens, who have yet their mother tongue and the strange garb of lands across the seas.

So I was led to do what every true minister of Christ must do. I investigated the moral conditions of my home city. Knowledge of its culture, acquaintance with its commerce, friendship with its schools and homes and zeal for the respectable sinner were not enough. The man who is set to guard the moral interests of a community must go into the deeps and darks of his city. He must know first hand what the dangers to youth are, where the traps for girls and boys are set, what the bait used is, how the ruin is wrought and what the remedies are. Save as he does this his voice will not reach far, nor his protests have in them the moral ring of the man who knows. The daring youth and the toughened rascals soon detect whether a man talks from aroused conviction and a pointed purpose, or whether he is just preaching in the air and saying things that he thinks should be said.

My investigations convinced me that all thus far said was true, and far more than any respectable man can know was terribly rampant every night in Chicago. It was very apparent that more men and women of influence and power must give earnest thought and much time to the solution of this menacing problem. A Pastor's part was very clear to my mind. It is said that the Chinese employ a physician to keep the family in good health, he draws his fees while health obtains. That is something like the position of a Christian minister in his community. It is his business to promote good health, high morals, finest ideals; to rebuke evil in all of its forms, and especially that kind of evil nearest his own doors and in his own city. What would be thought of the physician that spent his time playing with the children, reading fine poems to the family, indulging in pretty speeches, but running away when dread diseases began to show themselves, refusing to treat cancer, smallpox, or other fearful plagues. So is the preacher who is content to do the ordinary work of his pastorate and takes no pains to investigate the moral and social conditions of his town. It is the sacred duty of every pastor to know his community on its unclean and diseased side.

But I saw that such a course would open one to grave misunderstandings. It is not according to the accepted order that a minister of a large city church should browse around the slums and visit in the brothels. The saloons were not a part of his expected field of labor. It was prudent and indeed necessary that the Church should speak its own mind in these matters. Therefore the whole problem was laid before the Board of Deacons and later before the Church itself, with the result that the Church voted most heartily that the Pastor should feel free to use one day a week in such labors on behalf of the fallen and outcast as he might feel led to do. Further the Church placed the work of the Midnight Mission upon its regular calendar for 4 per cent of all the missionary funds, contributions to be made quarterly towards its work, thus putting the city-saving work on a level with every other missionary enterprise of the denomination. So was the Pastor given the endorsement of his people. Such action provided ample protection and was as wings for the accomplishing of the gigantic tasks set for a small band of heroic men and women. The Church was kept informed from time to time as to the progress of the midnight work. Care was taken not to allow this work to become a mere fad, but it was so presented as to rank with every other ministry of the Church. The young people were not drawn into this type of work at all, as it was not deemed advisable to take young people into the streets of sin where the fight against the White Slave Traffic was being waged. Earnest warnings were given the young folk and the young men were especially instructed in the dangers and allurements of the scarlet woman. Thus the Church was related to this needed warfare in both a physical and spiritual manner. The results upon the Church are most striking and satisfactory. It can be said with full agreement that the outcasts need the Church, but it is equally true that the Church needs this kind of service and without it suffers a loss of sympathy and aggressiveness that is fatal to the peace and prosperity of the Church. A Church ought to die fighting itself that refuses to give battle to the White Slave Traders! Shame on the minister and the Church that is indifferent under the revelations that are made every day showing to what depths the vile creatures of the red light districts have sunken to gain a little more of cruel gold! God will not hold guiltless men and women who, hearing the stifled cries of the enslaved, heed them not! It behooves the sons and daughters of the brave men who freed the black slaves to rise in another and holier crusade to free the white slaves from a bondage blacker and more damning than any the world has yet known. Yes, it is high time that every preacher of the Gospel investigated the conditions of his own city and town.

Country ministers have great opportunity in this warfare on behalf of women and girls. It is in the country that the procurers work. There is need for education, outspoken, persistent warnings that parents must be compelled to hear. The wise and earnest words of United States District Attorney Edwin W. Sims, found in another chapter of this book, should be carefully pondered by all who desire to protect young womanhood. Here the country preacher will find his cue and will be instructed as to what he can and ought to do.

There is need that the Pastor co-operate with existing organizations that have for their purpose the suppression of this frightful evil. Already in nearly every city of any size there are companies of good people banded together to wipe out the White Slave Traffic. Let the Pastor seek out such folk and give them a hearty word of cheer. Such action will attract other persons of influence and wealth and give character and power to the crusade. If the folk already engaged in this holy cause are humble, unlearned and obscure, let the man of God remember that "He hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the mighty."

If the Pastor is wise there is a surprising weight of public sentiment that will arouse at once at his call. The Press in nearly all of its forms will aid him and give wide currency to his protests and suggested methods. This has nowhere been more clearly shown than in the late session of the Illinois State Legislature. Two new bills were up for passage, they had passed the Lower House without an opposing vote and were on the calendar of the Senate on a morning when I happened to be present. The President of the Senate entertained a motion to send the bills to third reading without reference to a committee, one of the Senators was busy at his desk reading a report or something when he became suddenly aware that some bills were passing to third reading without the customary reference to a committee. With startled air he arose and demanded what those bills were. The President waved his gavel at him and said, "the White Slave Bills"! "O," said the Senator, "that's all right," and sat down to resume the reading of his report. The bills then passed to third reading without a sign of opposition on any man's part. This action proved to me how very strong and immediate is the response of the good people of any community to a call like that which this book send up.