Of course, the police will tell you nowadays that the old debt system has been abolished, and that girls are not allowed to be in debt to the house where they are kept, and it may be that a sort of fiction is maintained, by which, if an investigation were forced, the divekeeper would pretend to be an agent for the storekeeper that sells the supplies. But the condition of debt is none the less real, although as always it be fraudulent. The divekeeper, the storekeeper and the police are all partnership in it.
Of course, it is not lawful to keep a girl a prisoner because she happens to be in debt, but she is made to believe that it is. She is told strange stories about laws that are enacted for the government of her "class," and she recognizes, all too plainly, the power of the arm of the police always outstretched in behalf of the divekeeper.
Police officers come and go in the dive. They register all "inmates" upon arrival and give formal, though, of course, unlawful sanction to the business. If a girl becomes refractory and the divekeeper threatens her with the vengeance of the police, she has every reason to believe that the threat is well founded, whether it is or not.
If, in spite of all this, a girl should be brave enough or rash enough to try to make her way out of the dive, and escape, almost nude, as she is kept, into the street, perhaps she would be allowed to go. Perhaps, too, the police might not bring her back, but they certainly would not assist her escape; and if they did not force her back into the den from which she had escaped they would certainly send her to prison.
I have seen dozens of girls who wanted to get out from these dives, wanted to leave the life that they were living, but who, under the conditions that I have enumerated, did not—I think I may fairly say—could not do it.
I had been in my position as housekeeper but a little while when my owner discovered that I could be profitably employed in another line, that is, in importing slaves from other cities.
Some months before, the firm for which I was then working had sent me to Milwaukee to sell toilet preparations, and this business had brought me in contact with a considerable number of foolish young women. I knew that some of them were anxious to come to Chicago and I was sent to Milwaukee to induce them to come and bring them with me.
I made several such journeys to Milwaukee and other cities, bringing a number of victims for Chicago's slave market. I attempt no defense for this infamous work. I ask for no moderation of judgment against me, but I feel that I have a right to call the attention of the public to the glaring injustice of the situation that puts me behind these bars, with long months of imprisonment before me, and leaves others who were equally guilty with me, and who are equally well known in their guilt, to go on with their wicked work.
IN THE HOSPITAL—SINS OF THE FATHERS VISITED UPON THE CHILDREN
These poor mites of humanity are brought into the world with the double handicap of poverty and disease—a charge upon the county