Among those who came to take shelter at the Florence Crittenton Home in those early days were beautiful twins, not sixteen years old, from a country village. We called them "Mary and Martha." Both of them had been brought to New York under a promise of marriage and sold into a life of sin. We did all we could to free them from their masters, but it was impossible. They were determined that they would not be robbed of their prey which was so valuable a financial investment. Time and time again they were hunted down by their masters and lost their positions through the interference of these men. In two years one of the girls died from the mistreatment and shame she had endured. It is not unusual for me to see the other one in New York whenever I am there, still under the bondage of her so-called husband, and for her to tell me that it is no use trying to escape. Long since she has given up all hope, and that she expects to die where she is, earning money to supply her master with the luxuries of life, by selling her poor little body.
DAISY UNDER TWENTY, DYING IN THE POOR-HOUSE
Less than three years after leaving her home she was found in the poor-house, forgotten by family and friends, and dying of a loathsome disease
DAISY'S LONELY FUNERAL PAID FOR BY CHARITY
The charity nurses took up a subscription and saved her from the potter's field. No flowers. No friends. No relatives. Only the undertaker and his assistants
Among the many methods used by these fiends in human form to trap girls into houses of sin, is courtship and false marriage. These men go into the country districts and, under the guise of commercial men, board at the best hotels, dress handsomely, cultivate the most captivating manners, and then look for their prey. Upon the streets they see a pretty girl and immediately lay plans to become acquainted. Then the courtship begins. In the present condition of society it is a very easy thing for well reared girls to begin a promiscuous acquaintance, with ample opportunity for courtship. There was never a time when the bars were so low. With the public dance, or even the more exclusive german, the skating rink and the moving picture arcades, all of which lend themselves to the making of intimate and promiscuous acquaintances under questionable surroundings, it is easy for a man to come into a community and in a few days meet even the best class of girls, to say nothing of the girls who are earning a living and who have no home influence. These girls are flattered by the handsome, well-dressed stranger paying them marked attention, and are quick to accept invitations to the theater or to walk or drive with him. If the girl is religious, he is not above using the cloak of religion, expressing fondness for church and prayer meetings and is frequently to be found at such places. When a girl's confidence and affection have been won, it is a comparatively easy thing to accomplish her ruin, by proposing an elopement. Her scruples and arguments are easily overcome by the skilled deceiver, and trusting him implicitly as her accepted lover, she unwittingly goes to her doom. When they arrive in the city a mock marriage is performed, for there are accomplices on every hand, and the child wife is taken into a house of sin, which she has been told by her pretended husband is an elegant boarding house.
Can you imagine any greater horror than that of this trusting child wife, when she realizes she is a prisoner and a slave in that den of shame? And such slavery! the blackest that has ever stained human history. Shut up beyond the reach of friends—for no letter she may write finds its way beyond the doors of her prison house. Should she call a police officer the chances are he is receiving bribes from her keeper and he will not help her to freedom. Is it strange that soon she eagerly drinks the wine that is constantly offered her, and sometimes actually forced down her throat, and smokes the cigarette with its benumbing effect of opium and tobacco, so that under the influences of these fatal drugs she may forget her awful fate and hasten her early death, for surely no hell in the other world can be more dreadful than a house of shame in this world.
And then good women and good men who see her poor painted face later peering out between the lace curtains of her dread abode, or, if meeting her on the street, draw away from her and say, "Oh! I guess she is there because she wants to be."
This expression is one of the reasons that this condition has existed so long unchanged. It is frequently made because of the ignorance of the general public upon the subject. But the thought that when one sees a woman in a life of sin, she is there because she likes it and wants to be, has become so deeply engraved upon the human mind that it is difficult to change it. Some people are conscientious in thinking this, because they are ignorant. Others know better, but in order that they may not feel called upon to take an active part against these conditions, try to salve their conscience by saying that a fallen girl cannot be helped—nothing can be done for them. And so it goes—anything to remove the responsibility of bettering conditions from their shoulders.
But today we are facing a very different condition from that which has existed ever since I have been interested in rescue work, and for centuries before. The International Agreement for the Abolition of the White Slave Traffic between the civilized nations of the world, which was entered into some ten years ago by all of the civilized nations except the United States, and which was subscribed to by the United States last June, has put an entirely different aspect upon the whole subject. The abolition of the white slave traffic is now no longer to be considered as the feverish dream of enthusiastic reformers, but its effacement has become a part of a great international agreement between nations of the world, and takes its place along with other great international questions which are adjudicated by the same process.