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

by Unknown

If this is not slavery, I have no definition for it.

Let me make it entirely clear that the white slave is an actual prisoner. She is under the most constant surveillance, both by the keeper to whom she is "let" and by the procurer who owns her. Not until she has lost all possible desire to escape is she given any liberty.

Many—very many—letters have been received from parents who read the first article on this subject. A considerable number of them are from ministers of the gospel, from officers and members of law and order leagues, woman's clubs and kindred organizations. But there is a pathetic reminder which does not come from the public-spirited servants of the common good. These letters are from the fathers and mothers whose fears and suspicions were aroused by the warning that the girl who has left her home in the country, gone up to the city and does not come home to visit, needs to be looked up.

Before me, as I write, is a letter from a father which is a tragedy in a page. He begins the note by saying that the warning has aroused him to inquire after his "little girl." There is a pathetic pride in his admission that she was considered an uncommonly "pretty girl" when she left her home to take a position in Chicago. Her letters, he states, have been more and more infrequent, but that she does occasionally write home, and sometimes encloses a small amount of money. From the tone of the father's note it is evident that, while he is a trifle anxious, he asks that his daughter be "looked up" rather to confirm his feelings of confidence that she is all right than otherwise.

A glance at the address where she was to be found left no possible question as to the fate which had overtaken this daughter of a country home. So far as a knowledge of the girl's mode of life is concerned, no investigation was necessary—the location named being in the center of Chicago's "red light" district.

While the case was a sad one there appeared to be no violation of the Federal laws, the girl having come from a neighboring state. A Federal prosecution against those detaining her was, therefore, impossible. However, the case was placed in the hands of Mr. Bell of the Illinois Vigilance Association. Through his efforts she was rescued and shortly thereafter returned to her mother and brothers and sisters who had supposed that she was holding a respectable, but poorly paid position. They, however, welcomed a very different person from the pretty girl who went out from that home to make her way in the big city. She was pitifully wasted by the life which she had led, and her constitution is so broken down that she cannot reasonably expect many years of life, even under the tenderest care. What is still worse, the fact cannot be denied that her moral fibre is shattered and the work of reclamation must be more than physical.

The "white slaves" who have been taken in the course of the present prosecution have, generally, been very grateful for the liberation and glad to return to their homes. It has been necessary—for their own protection as well as for other reasons—to commit some of these unfortunates to various prisons pending the trial of the cases in which they are to appear as witnesses, and practically every one of them gives unmistakable evidence that imprisonment is a welcome liberation by comparison with the life of "white slavery."

Now as to the practical means which parents should use to prevent this unspeakable fate from overtaking their daughters. They cannot do it by assuming that their daughter is all right and that she will take care of herself in the big city. In a large measure it seems impossible to arouse parents—especially those in the country—to a realization that there is in every big city a class of men and women who live by trapping girls into a life of degradation and who are as inhumanely cunning in their awful craft as they are in other instincts; that these beasts of the human jungle are as unbelievably desperate as they are unbelievably cruel, and that their warfare upon virtue is as persistent, as calculating, and as unceasing as was the warfare of the wolf upon the unprotected lamb of the pioneer folk in the early days of the Western frontier.

I cannot escape the conclusion that the country girl is in greater danger from the "white slavers" than the city girl. The perusal of the testimony of many "white slaves" enforces this conclusion. That is because they are less sophisticated, more trusting and more open to the allurements of those who are waiting to prey upon them.

It is a fact which parents of girls in the country should remember that the "white slavers" are busy on the trains coming into the city and make it a point to "cut out" an attractive girl whenever they can. This "cutting out" process (I use the technical term) consists of making the girl's acquaintance, gaining her confidence and, on one pretext or another, inducing her to leave the train before the main depot is reached. This is done because the various protective and law and order organizations have watchers at the main railroad stations who are trained to the work of "spotting," and quickly detect a girl in the hands of one of these human beasts of prey. Generally these watchers are women and wear the badges of their organizations.