The same thing may be said regarding some of the immigrant homes, which are ostensibly for the purpose of protecting foreign girls on arrival in the city of New York. The federal authorities and the State Commission found homes that sent women to disorderly places. The State Commission found one home that was willing upon a donation of $5.00 to send a girl to work in a disorderly house. This donation seems not to have been recorded in the books of the home. Several other homes are at present under investigation by the Commissioner of Immigration at Ellis Island.
Since 1901 the Sicilian or Southern Italian has played quite a prominent part in the great traffic in women in New York City. At that time, after his triumphant entry into the corrupt politics of the city, it was estimated that Italians controlled from 750 to 1,000 women. Gangs of Italian criminals have grown up in New York City as a great asset of the corrupt political machines. Men like Paul Kelly, Jimmie Kelly and other Italians masquerading under Irish names play a prominent part in Tammany politics, supplying "strong arm" men as repeaters in the elections, whom they recruit from the boxing and other athletic clubs with which they are affiliated. Jimmie Kelly manages one or two high class pugilists, but around his saloon are to be found many preliminary boxers. These men cannot make a living as preliminary boxers and must depend on something else to eke out a livelihood. Through their connection with men like Kelly they are given the protection necessary to enable them to conduct immoral resorts or to keep women soliciting on the streets, without interference from the police. In return for this immunity they help Kelly deliver the illegal vote necessary to keep the corrupt Tammany machine in power. The Italian because he is more prone to crimes of violence pays for his political protection in votes, while the Jew largely pays cash. The Italian, unlike the Jew, very rarely puts women of his own race into the awful life; there are relatively very few Italian prostitutes. The Italian traders seem likely to displace the French, as they are kinder to the women and they adapt themselves to the political environment in a way that the French do not understand.
We quote again from Mr. George Kibbe Turner in McClure's Magazine for June, 1909:
"The Jew makes the most alert and intelligent citizen of all the great immigrant races that have populated New York. He was a city dweller before the hairy Anglo-Saxon came out of the woods; and every fall the East Side resolves itself into one great clamorous political debating society.
"Out of the Bowery and Red Light districts have come the new development in New York politics—the great voting power of the organized criminals. It was a notable development not only for New York, but for the country at large. And no part of it was more noteworthy than the appearance of the Jewish dealer in women, a product of New York politics, who has vitiated, more than any other single agency, the moral life of the great cities of America in the past ten years."
It is absolute fact that corrupt Jews are now the backbone of the loathsome traffic in New York and Chicago. The good Jews know this and feel keenly the unspeakable shame of it. The American Hebrew says in an editorial:
"If Jews are the chief sinners, it is appropriate that Jews should be the chief avengers of the dishonor done to their own people, and in many cases to their own women. We feel confident that unless something is done, and done quickly, a scandal of the most intense character will break forth, and only by prompt action can its worst effects be warded off from the fair name of American Jewry."
Hon. Oscar S. Straus wrote in his report as Secretary of Commerce and Labor, for 1908:
"It is highly necessary that this diabolical traffic, which has attained international proportions, should be dealt with in a manner adequate to compass its suppression. No punishment is too severe to inflict upon the procurers in this vile traffic."
B. C.