"In the State of New York, as in other states and countries of the world, there are organized, ramified and well-equipped associations to secure girls for the purpose of prostitution. The recruiting of such girls in this country is largely among those who are poor, ignorant or friendless. The attention of the Commission has been called to one organization incorporated under the laws of New York State as a mutual benefit society, with alleged purpose, 'To promote the sentiment of regard and friendship among the members and to render assistance in case of necessity.' This society is, in reality, an association of gamblers, procurers and keepers of disorderly houses, organized for the purpose of mutual protection in their business. Some of the cafes, restaurants and other places conducted by the members are meeting places for those engaged in the business of importation. The organization includes a membership of about one hundred residents of New York City, and has representatives and correspondents in various cities of the country, notably in Pittsburg, Chicago and San Francisco."
The commission has not in the report given very much of the detail of the working of this Association, but Collier's Weekly in speaking of the dismissal of General Bingham as police commissioner of New York, says: "He has been police commissioner for three and a half years. Under his strong, rough hand the disorderly houses which flourished so prosperously three years ago, imprisoning helpless immigrant women, have gone out of business. There were one hundred of them running at full speed between 23rd and 69th Street and 6th and 9th Avenue. There are scarcely twenty now and they are only operating for old time patrons. The stranger inside the city walls will not find the easy welcome for his licentiousness which 1906 and 1907 could have given him. The profession of ruining, selling, and renting out girls has been reduced. That organization known as the New York Independent Benevolent Association has had its wings clipped. The gentlemen who run this association have been checked from their vile trade by the strict regime of Bingham. For two years they have had to turn to honest or semi-honest professions instead of squeezing blood money out of little foreign girls, raped by their agents and locked up in their chain of disorderly houses in the old and new Tenderloin. They have almost forgotten the dark tragedies hidden just a fathom underground in their burial lot in Washington Cemetery—the poor murdered women, the infants one span long."
While the immigration report and Collier's Weekly enter into little detail concerning the ramifications of this Association, it is not because they have no further information regarding it, but because many of the details are so vile they could not be written.
It can be said, however, that the 126 members of this Association have operated in Newark, N. J., Philadelphia, in Pittsburg, in Chicago, St. Louis, New Orleans, San Francisco and other cities, that they have plied their trade in South Africa, in Panama, and that different members of the Association have made repeated trips to Europe. This society has been in existence since 1896. In every large city in which an expose of the disorderly house element of the white slave traffic has been made, some of the members of that Association have been involved. At the present moment the graft investigation is going on in Chicago; one of the principal men indicted is Mike the Pike, who is well known in Philadelphia and New York. Some years ago Mike was a prominent member of the organization but quarreled with the officers and was expelled. Keller and Ullman, sent to prison by the federal authorities in Chicago for trafficking in white slaves, were members of this Association at the time of their conviction by the government. Several others indicted but never brought to trial were also members.
DISEASED CHILDREN IN THE POOR-HOUSE
Scores of children suffering from disease are to be found in the charity hospitals. The white slave trade is to blame for this state of affairs
NOBODY'S CHILDREN
No father—no mother—no name. Can you imagine anything more pitiful? The result of the white slave traffic
At the time of the great cleaning out of the disorderly elements in Philadelphia many members of this Association were driven out. Some of them went to New York, some to Newark. They plied their business in Newark for two or three years and when conditions became so bad that the public rose in protest and started a movement to clean out the dens of vice, it was the members of this association who stood together and fought the authorities. However, some of their members were convicted and sent to prison. The chief of police and other officials were accused of having some partnership with these men and of levying graft upon them, much in the same way as the evidence in the present Chicago graft proceedings alleges. The then chief of police in Newark, who was alleged to have been one of the men who received money from these men, went out into one of the lonely byroads outside of the city and committed suicide by shooting himself.
It has been said that some of these men were in South Africa, and it is an established fact that many of them went there and opened up houses of prostitution but were finally expelled from the country by the British Government. Some of them went to Panama (not in the Canal Zone) and opened houses there, and some of them at the present time are still doing business there.