What a call to this Congress to be up and doing! You must not rest, you dare not hesitate, until you have renewed that law, and if needs be, strengthened it so as to deal effectively with these inhuman monsters. This is the one thing for you to be doing until it is done. Rouse the public to a sense of the gravity of the situation. Give your legislators no rest, until they have amended the law in the direction indicated.
In London the operation of this clause has been demonstrated by the improved condition of our streets. The open parade of flaunting vice has been much modified, and the foreign element of evil has found it far more difficult to carry on its ramifications than formerly.
There will be no difference of opinion amongst us as to the usefulness of Article 6 in the Protection of Young Girls, which is as follows:
"The Contracting Governments undertake, within legal limits, to exercise supervision, as far as possible, over the offices or agencies engaged in finding employment for women or girls abroad."
It is common knowledge that the Servant's Registry Office, has, like the railway station, been too ready a means in the hands of the unscrupulous traders in vice. An application for a servant, governess, or a companion to a lady, offering good wages and a comfortable home, in a foreign country, has always met with a ready response, and by such methods these traders have been able to command the flower of girlhood. How many scores of young women have by these means been inveigled into a foreign land, to find themselves hopelessly enslaved into a life which is worse than a living death. The nature of this evil was well-known to those who took part in the Official Conference, and they set themselves to work to prevent these registry offices being the means, even innocently, of acting as agents for the traffickers in vice. That their efforts were effective is proved in those countries where Article 6 has been put into operation.
We can bear testimony to its efficient working in many places in England. Where it is in operation, the registry office proprietors are compelled to ascertain the bona fide character of the situations abroad offered to young women, and in this way it has foiled and de-accustomed to use these agencies to decoy young girls to their moral ruin.
I have only been able to refer to a few of the many plans for the better moral protection of young women, provided by the work for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic, but sufficient has been adduced to show how many new weapons have been forged in this direction by the International Agreement, for the use of individuals as well as of nations. It is a woman's charter, which for the first time in the history of the world, regards the moral well-being of a young woman as a national asset of great value to the country in which she lives. But the Agreement can only be of real value in those countries where the people have sufficient interest in the welfare of their young women to organise themselves to assist their Governments in its working.
Let me close this paper with a strong appeal, a loud call, to the men and women of America with like passions and sympathies with their English brethren across the Atlantic. We have much in common. Our hearts as well as our language are the same. We are influential and actuated by the same religious impulses. Let us then as one people, join hands across the sea in this holy enterprise, and sweep from the world this awful blight upon young womanhood. Remember it is not a crime peculiar or common to men of one nationality. All nations, more or less, have taken part. Be it ours, at this Congress, to inaugurate a world-wide crusade, in the name of God and of our common humanity, against this crime. Remember, the forces of righteousness and purity are stronger than the forces of impurity. We may receive checks when engaged in the conflict, but about the ultimate victory there is no shadow of doubt. Let us in strong faith look up unto the hills from whence cometh our help, and the battle, however prolonged, is won. Let the old and the new world link themselves together, under one banner and one leadership, spread the Light of Truth on this question, and scatter the men who delight in evil, and the darkness by which their deeds are surrounded.
I appeal especially to the women of America to rise in the dignity of womanhood, and demand the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic in America, yea in the whole world, and thus give to young women those rights and that protection which should be their common heritage. Let me close by quoting Lowell's words, which on many occasions have proved a trumpet call to some forgotten duty:
"Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight,
Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right.
And the choice goes on for ever 'twixt that darkness and that light."