Let me tell you of a twenty-one-year-old girl in Boston. She was born in New York City. Her father is dead and her mother is an actress. She is pretty and well educated. This girl, by living a disreputable life, supports a Jewish "cadet" who is coarse and vulgar, and who beats her when she fails to bring back to him as much money as he desires.
Many of the girls come from or go to Washington. There seems to be a sort of an underground roadway between Boston and Washington which many of these girls travel. Hundreds of these girls do not live in the disorderly houses, but have their own apartments, and are summoned to the houses by telephone. The houses to which they are thus summoned are known as "call houses." At these houses descriptions of the various girls are kept, as to height, complexion, etc. In examining the laws of Massachusetts relating to procuring, we find the same flaws which existed in Illinois and the other states before the passage of the pandering laws.
In the revised laws of Massachusetts, 1902, Vol. 2, page 1785, Sec. 2, the procuring must be fraudulent and deceitful and the woman must be unmarried and of chaste life. If the procurer marries the girl to circumvent the law he cannot be prosecuted; if the girl makes one mistake in life, she cannot be protected from being procured. In many cities the evidence in the cases shows that "cadets" are paid to marry girls by White Slave traders so that prosecution may be avoided and they may thus crawl through one of the many loopholes in moss-covered laws made before pandering became a curse upon civilization. Because a girl is not of chaste life is no reason she wants to become a prostitute. One wrong step and she is no longer chaste, and then we say, according to the law, let her shift for herself. We all make mistakes, so let us be charitable. The words "previous chaste life" should be erased from the law and all female persons should be protected from the traders.
There are four ways of combating the White Slave evil; proper laws regulating the procuring of girls; the enforcement of these laws; education as to this great social evil, and publicity—that is, finding the evil and then making it known. Let New England awaken and look about her and she will catch the true spirit of this article, which is meant to be one of helpfulness and written only with kindest motives. Embellished with quaint landmarks and historical retreats dear to all the nation and beautiful in its past, let it not live in this past alone, but be alive to modern ideas and agencies. There is one society known as the New England Watch and Ward, with headquarters in Boston, which has begun to pierce into the hidden mystery of the traffic in girls. It is managed by able men, and its secretary, J. Frank Chase, is already on the trail of the White Slave monster. Through this society great efforts will be made no doubt in the near future to eliminate whatever exists of this nefarious traffic in Boston. Let us hope the Boston people will meet this problem fearlessly, candidly and honestly, and when they do they will have gone a long way toward stamping out the worst evil of the age.
CHAPTER XII.
THE AUCTIONEER OF SOULS.
By Clifford G. Roe, Assistant State's Attorney of Cook County, Illinois.
"Hear ye! Hear ye! How much will ye give for a human being—body and soul?"
"What is the soul worth?"