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CHAPTER II
RECENT LEGAL ENACTMENTS
At the present moment even the least con-
scientious citizens agree that, first and foremost,
the organized traffic in what has come to be
called white slaves must be suppressed and that
those traffickers who procure their victims for
purely commercial purposes must be arrested
and prosecuted. As it is impossible to rescue
girls fraudulently and illegally detained, save
through governmental agencies, it is naturally
through the line of legal action that the most
striking revelations of the white slave traffic
have come. For the sake of convenience, we
may divide this legal action into those cases
dealing with the international trade, those with
the state and interstate traffic, and the regulations
with which the municipality alone is concerned.
First in value to the white slave commerce is
the girl imported from abroad who from the
nature of the case is most completely in the power
of the trader. She is literally friendless and [18]
unable to speak the language and at last dis-
couraged she makes no effort to escape. Many
cases of the international traffic were recently
tried in Chicago and the offenders convicted by
the federal authorities. One of these cases,
which attracted much attention throughout the
country, was of Marie, a French girl, the daughter
of a Breton stone mason, so old and poor that
he was obliged to take her from her convent
school at the age of twelve years. He sent her
to Paris, where she became a little household
drudge and nurse-maid, working from six in the
morning until eight at night, and for three years
sending her wages, which were about a franc a
day, directly to her parents in the Breton village.
One afternoon, as she was buying a bottle of
milk at a tiny shop, she was engaged in conver-
sation by a young man who invited her into a
little patisserie where, after giving her some
sweets, he introduced her to his friend, Monsieur
Paret, who was gathering together a theatrical
troupe to go to America. Paret showed her
pictures of several young girls gorgeously arrayed
and announcements of their coming tour, and
Marie felt much flattered when it was intimated [19]
that she might join this brilliant company.
After several clandestine meetings to perfect the
plan, she left the city with Paret and a pretty
French girl to sail for America with the rest of
the so-called actors. Paret escaped detection
by the immigration authorities in New York,
through his ruse of the "Kinsella troupe," and
took the girls directly to Chicago. Here they
were placed in a disreputable house belonging to
a man named Lair, who had advanced the money
for their importation. The two French girls
remained in this house for several months until
it was raided by the police, when they were sent
to separate houses. The records which were
later brought into court show that at this time
Marie was earning two hundred and fifty dollars
a week, all of which she gave to her employers.
In spite of this large monetary return she was
often cruelly beaten, was made to do the house-
hold scrubbing, and was, of course, never allowed
to leave the house. Furthermore, as one of the
methods of retaining a reluctant girl is to put
her hopelessly in debt and always to charge
against her the expenses incurred in securing
her, Marie as an imported girl had begun at once [20]
with the huge debt of the ocean journey for
Paret and herself. In addition to this large
sum she was charged, according to universal
custom, with exorbitant prices for all the clothing
she received and with any money which Paret
chose to draw against her account. Later, when
Marie contracted typhoid fever, she was sent for
treatment to a public hospital and it was during
her illness there, when a general investigation
was made of the white slave traffic, that a federal
officer visited her. Marie, who thought she was
going to die, freely gave her testimony, which
proved to be most valuable.
The federal authorities following up her state-
ments at last located Paret in the city prison at
Atlanta, Georgia, where he had been convicted
on a similar charge. He was brought to Chicago
and on his testimony Lair was also convicted and
imprisoned.
Marie has since married a man who wishes to
protect her from the influence of her old life,
but although not yet twenty years old and making
an honest effort, what she has undergone has
apparently so far warped and weakened her will
that she is only partially successful in keeping [21]
her resolutions, and she sends each month to her
parents in France ten or twelve dollars, which
she confesses to have earned illicitly. It is as
if the shameful experiences to which this little
convent-bred Breton girl was forcibly subjected,
had finally become registered in every fibre of
her being until the forced demoralization has
become genuine. She is as powerless now to
save herself from her subjective temptations as
she was helpless five years ago to save herself
from her captors.
Such demoralization is, of course, most valu-
able to the white slave trader, for when a girl has
become thoroughly accustomed to the life and
testifies that she is in it of her own free will, she
puts herself beyond the protection of the law.
She belongs to a legally degraded class, without
redress in courts of justice for personal outrages.
Marie, herself, at the end of her third year in
America, wrote to the police appealing for help,
but the lieutenant who in response to her letter
visited the house, was convinced by Lair that
she was there of her own volition and that there-
fore he could do nothing for her. It is easy to
see why it thus becomes part of the business to [22]
break down a girl's moral nature by all those
horrible devices which are constantly used by the
owner of a white slave. Because life is so often
shortened for these wretched girls, their owners
degrade them morally as quickly as possible,
lest death release them before their full profit
has been secured. In addition to the quantity
of sacrificed virtue, to the bulk of impotent suf-
fering, which these white slaves represent, our
civilization becomes permanently tainted with
the vicious practices designed to accelerate the
demoralization of unwilling victims in order to
make them commercially valuable. Moreover,
a girl thus rendered more useful to her owner,
will thereafter fail to touch either the chivalry
of men or the tenderness of women because good
men and women have become convinced of her
innate degeneracy, a word we have learned to
use with the unction formerly placed upon
original sin. The very revolt of society against
such girls is used by their owners as a protection
to the business.
The case against the captors of Marie, as well
as twenty-four other cases, was ably and vigor-
ously conducted by Edwin W. Sims, United [23]
States District Attorney in Chicago. He prose-
cuted under a clause of the immigration act
of 1908, which was unfortunately declared un-
constitutional early the next year, when for the
moment federal authorities found themselves
unable to proceed directly against this inter-
national traffic. They could not act under the
international white slave treaty signed by the
contracting powers in Paris in 1904, and pro-
claimed by the President of the United States in
1908, because it was found impossible to carry
out its provisions without federal police. The
long consideration of this treaty by Congress
made clear to the nation that it is in matters of
this sort that navies are powerless and that as
our international problems become more social,
other agencies must be provided, a point which
arbitration committees have long urged. The
discussion of the international treaty brought the
subject before the entire country as a matter for
immediate legislation and for executive action,
and the White Slave Traffic Act was finally
passed by Congress in 1910, under which all
later prosecutions have since been conducted.
When the decision on the immigration clause [24]
rendered in 1909 threw the burden of prosecu-
tion back upon the states, Mr. Clifford Roe,
then assistant State's Attorney, within one year
investigated 348 such cases, domestic and foreign,
and successfully prosecuted 91, carrying on the
vigorous policy inaugurated by United States
Attorney Sims. In 1908 Illinois passed the
first pandering law in this country, changing
the offence from disorderly conduct to a mis-
demeanor, and greatly increasing the penalty.
In many states pandering is still so little defined
as to make the crime merely a breach of man-
ners and to put it in the same class of offences
as selling a street-car transfer.
As a result of this vigorous action, Chicago
became the first city to look the situation squarely
in the face, and to make a determined business-
like fight against the procuring of girls. An
office was established by public-spirited citizens
where Mr. Roe was placed in charge and
empowered to follow up the clues of the traffic
wherever found and to bring the traffickers to
justice; in consequence the white slave traders
have become so frightened that the foreign im-
portation of girls to Chicago has markedly de- [25]
clined. It is estimated by Mr. Roe that since
1909 about one thousand white slave traders,
of whom thirty or forty were importers of foreign
girls, have been driven away from the city.
Throughout the Congressional discussions of
the white slave traffic, beginning with the Howell-
Bennett Act in 1907, it was evident that the
subject was closely allied to immigration, and
when the immigration commission made a partial
report to Congress in December, 1909, upon "the
importation and harboring of women for immoral
purposes," their finding only emphasized the
report of the Commissioner General of Immi-
gration made earlier in the year. His report
had traced the international traffic directly to
New York, Chicago, Boston, Buffalo, New Or-
leans, Denver, Seattle, Portland, Salt Lake City,
Ogden, and Butte. As the list of cities was com-
paratively small, it seemed not unreasonable to
hope that the international traffic might be
rigorously prosecuted, with the prospect of finally
doing away with it in spite of its subtle methods,
its multiplied ramifications, and its financial
resources. Only officials of vigorous conscience
can deal with this traffic; but certainly there [26]
can be no nobler service for federal and state
officers to undertake than this protection of
immigrant girls.
It is obvious that a foreign girl who speaks
no English, who has not the remotest idea
in what part of the city her fellow-country-
men live, who does not know the police station
or any agency to which she may apply, is
almost as valuable to a white slave trafficker
as a girl imported directly for the trade. The
trafficker makes every effort to intercept such
a girl before she can communicate with her rela-
tions. Although great care is taken at Ellis
Island, the girl's destination carefully indicated
upon her ticket and her friends communicated
with, after she boards the train the governmental
protection is withdrawn and many untoward
experiences may befall a girl between New York
and her final destination. Only this year a
Polish mother of the Hull House neighborhood
failed to find her daughter on a New York train
upon which she had been notified to expect her,
because the girl had been induced to leave the
New York train at South Chicago, where she
was met by two young men, one of them well [27]
known to the police, and the other a young Pole,
purporting to have been sent by the girl's mother.
The immigrant girl also encounters dangers
upon the very moment of her arrival. The cab-
men and expressmen are often unscrupulous.
One of the latter was recently indicted in Chicago
upon the charge of regularly procuring immi-
grant girls for a disreputable hotel. The non-
English speaking girl handing her written address
to a cabman has no means of knowing whither
he will drive her, but is obliged to place herself
implicitly in his hands. The Immigrants' Pro-
tective League has brought about many changes
in this respect, but has upon its records some
piteous tales of girls who were thus easily
deceived.
An immigrant girl is occasionally exploited by
her own lover whom she has come to America to
marry. I recall the case of a Russian girl thus
decoyed into a disreputable life by a man
deceiving her through a fake marriage ceremony.
Although not found until a year later, the girl
had never ceased to be distressed and rebellious.
Many Slovak and Polish girls, coming to America
without their relatives, board in houses already [28]
filled with their countrymen who have also pre-
ceded their own families to the land of promise,
hoping to earn money enough to send for them
later. The immigrant girl is thus exposed to
dangers at the very moment when she is least
able to defend herself. Such a girl, already be-
wildered by the change from an old world village
to an American city, is unfortunately sometimes
convinced that the new country freedom does
away with the necessity for a marriage ceremony.
Many others are told that judgment for a moral
lapse is less severe in America than in the old
country. The last month's records of the Munic-
ipal Court in Chicago, set aside to hear domestic
relation cases, show sixteen unfortunate girls, of
whom eight were immigrant girls representing
eight different nationalities. These discouraged
and deserted girls become an easy prey for the
procurers who have sometimes been in league
with their lovers.
Even those girls who immigrate with their
families and sustain an affectionate relation with
them are yet often curiously free from chaperon-
age. The immigrant mothers do not know where
their daughters work, save that it is in a vague [29]
"over there" or "down town." They them-
selves were guarded by careful mothers and they
would gladly give the same oversight to their
daughters, but the entire situation is so unlike
that of their own peasant girlhoods that, dis-
couraged by their inability to judge it, they make
no attempt to understand their daughters' lives.
The girls, realizing this inability on the part
of their mothers, elated by that sense of inde-
pendence which the first taste of self-support
always brings, sheltered from observation during
certain hours, are almost as free from social con-
trol as is the traditional young man who comes up
from the country to take care of himself in a
great city. These immigrant parents are, of
course, quite unable to foresee that while a girl
feels a certain restraint of public opinion from the
tenement house neighbors among whom she lives,
and while she also responds to the public opinion
of her associates in a factory where she works,
there is no public opinion at all operating as a
restraint upon her in the hours which lie be-
tween the two, occupied in the coming and going
to work through the streets of a city large enough
to offer every opportunity for concealment. So [30]
much of the recreation which is provided by
commercial agencies, even in its advertisements,
deliberately plays upon the interest of sex because
it is under such excitement and that of alcohol
that money is most recklessly spent. The great
human dynamic, which it has been the long
effort of centuries to limit to family life, is
deliberately utilized for advertising purposes, and
it is inevitable that many girls yield to such
allurements.
On the other hand, one is filled with admira-
tion for the many immigrant girls who in the
midst of insuperable difficulties resist all tempta-
tions. Such admiration was certainly due Olga,
a tall, handsome girl, a little passive and slow,
yet with that touch of dignity which a continued
mood of introspection so often lends to the young.
Olga had been in Chicago for a year living with
an aunt who, when she returned to Sweden,
placed her niece in a boarding-house which she
knew to be thoroughly respectable. But a
friendless girl of such striking beauty could not
escape the machinations of those who profit by
the sale of girls. Almost immediately Olga
found herself beset by two young men who con- [31]
tinually forced themselves upon her attention,
although she refused all their invitations to shows
and dances. In six months the frightened girl
had changed her boarding-place four times,
hoping that the men would not be able to follow
her. She was also obliged constantly to look
for a cheaper place, because the dull season in
the cloak-making trade came early that year.
In the fifth boarding-house she finally found her-
self so hopelessly in arrears that the landlady,
tired of waiting for the "new cloak making to
begin," at length fulfilled a long-promised threat,
and one summer evening at nine o'clock literally
put Olga into the street, retaining her trunk in
payment of the debt. The girl walked the street
for hours, until she fancied that she saw one of
her persecutors in the distance, when she hastily
took refuge in a sheltered doorway, crouching in
terror. Although no one approached her, she
sat there late into the night, apparently too
apathetic to move. With the curious inconse-
quence of moody youth, she was not aroused
to action by the situation in which she found
herself. The incident epitomized to her the
everlasting riddle of the universe to which she [32]
could see no solution and she drearily decided to
throw herself into the lake. As she left the door-
way at daybreak for this pitiful purpose, she
attracted the attention of a passing policeman.
In response to his questions, kindly at first but
becoming exasperated as he was convinced that
she was either "touched in her wits" or "guy-
ing" him, he obtained a confused story of the
persecutions of the two young men, and in sheer
bewilderment he finally took her to the station
on the very charge against the thought of which
she had so long contended.
The girl was doubtless sullen in court the next
morning; she was resentful of the policeman's
talk, she was oppressed and discouraged and
therefore taciturn. She herself said afterwards
that she "often got still that way." She so
sharply felt the disgrace of arrest, after her long
struggle for respectability, that she gave a false
name and became involved in a story to which
she could devote but half her attention, being
still absorbed in an undercurrent of speculative
thought which continually broke through the
flimsy tale she was fabricating.
With the evidence before him, the judge felt [33]
obliged to sustain the policeman's charge, and
as Olga could not pay the fine imposed, he sen-
tenced her to the city prison. The girl, however,
had appeared so strangely that the judge was
uncomfortable and gave her in charge of a repre-
sentative of the Juvenile Protective Association
in the hope that she could discover the whole
situation, meantime suspending the sentence. It
took hours of patient conversation with the girl
and the kindly services of a well-known alienist
to break into her dangerous state of mind and to
gain her confidence. Prolonged medical treat-
ment averted the threatened melancholia and she
was at last rescued from the meaningless despon-
dency so hostile to life itself, which has claimed
many young victims.
It is strange that we are so slow to learn that
no one can safely live without companionship
and affection, that the individual who tries the
hazardous experiment of going without at least
one of them is prone to be swamped by a black
mood from within. It is as if we had to build
little islands of affection in the vast sea of im-
personal forces lest we be overwhelmed by them.
Yet we know that in every large city there are [34]
hundreds of men whose business it is to discover
girls thus hard pressed by loneliness and despair,
to urge upon them the old excuse that "no one
cares what you do," to fill them with cheap
cynicism concerning the value of virtue, all to
the end that a business profit may be secured.
Had Olga yielded to the solicitations of bad
men and had the immigration authorities in the
federal building of Chicago discovered her in
the disreputable hotel in which her captors wanted
to place her, she would have been deported to
Sweden, sent home in disgrace from the country
which had failed to protect her. Certainly the
immigration laws might do better than to send
a girl back to her parents, diseased and dis-
graced because America has failed to safeguard
her virtue from the machinations of well-known
but unrestrained criminals. The possibility of
deportation on the charge of prostitution is
sometimes utilized by jealous husbands or re-
jected lovers. Only last year a Russian girl
came to Chicago to meet her lover and was de-
ceived by a fake marriage. Although the man
basely deserted her within a few weeks he be-
came very jealous a year later when he discovered [35]
that she was about to be married to a prosperous
fellow-countryman, and made charges against
her to the federal authorities concerning her
life in Russia. It was with the greatest difficulty
that the girl was saved from deportation to
Russia under circumstances which would have
compelled her to take out a red ticket in Odessa,
and to live forevermore the life with which her
lover had wantonly charged her.
May we not hope that in time the nation's policy
in regard to immigrants will become less negative
and that a measure of protection will be extended
to them during the three years when they are so
liable to prompt deportation if they become
criminals or paupers?
While it may be difficult for the federal author-
ities to accomplish this protection and will doubt-
less require an extension of the powers of the
Department of Immigration, certainly no one
will doubt that it is the business of the city itself
to extend much more protection to young girls
who so thoughtlessly walk upon its streets.
Yet, in spite of the grave consequences which
lack of proper supervision implies, the municipal
treatment of commercialized vice not only differs [36]
in each city but varies greatly in the same city
under changing administrations.
The situation is enormously complicated by
the pharisaic attitude of the public which wishes
to have the comfort of declaring the social evil
to be illegal, while at the same time it expects
the police department to regulate it and to make
it as little obvious as possible. In reality the
police, as they themselves know, are not expected
to serve the public in this matter but to consult
the desires of the politicians; for, next to the fast
and loose police control of gambling, nothing
affords better political material than the regula-
tion of commercialized vice. First in line is the
ward politician who keeps a disorderly saloon
which serves both as a meeting-place for the
vicious young men engaged in the traffic and as
a market for their wares. Back of this the politi-
cian higher up receives his share of the toll which
this business pays that it may remain undis-
turbed. The very existence of a segregated dis-
trict under police regulation means, of course,
that the existing law must be nullified or at least
rendered totally inoperative. When police regu-
lation takes the place of law enforcement a [37]
species of municipal blackmail inevitably be-
comes intrenched. The police are forced to
regulate an illicit trade, but because the men
engaged in an unlawful business expect to pay
money for its protection, the corruption of the
police department is firmly established and, as
the Chicago vice commission report points out,
is merely called "protection to the business."
The practice of grafting thereafter becomes al-
most official. On the other hand, any man who
attempts to show mercy to the victims of that
business, or to regulate it from the victim's point
of view, is considered a traitor to the cause. Quite
recently a former inspector of police in Chicago
established a requirement that every young
girl who came to live in a disreputable house
within a prescribed district must be reported to
him within an hour after her arrival. Each one
was closely questioned as to her reasons for enter-
ing into the life. If she was very young, she was
warned of its inevitable consequences and urged
to abandon her project. Every assistance was
offered her to return to work and to live a normal
life. Occasionally a girl was desperate and
it was sometimes necessary that she be forcibly [38]
detained in the police station until her friends
could be communicated with. More often she
was glad to avail herself of the chance of escape;
practically always, unless she had already become
romantically entangled with a disreputable young
man, whom she firmly believed to be her genuine
lover and protector.
One day a telephone message came to Hull
House from the inspector asking us to take
charge of a young girl who had been brought into
the station by an older woman for registration.
The girl's youth and the innocence of her replies
to the usual questions convinced the inspector
that she was ignorant of the life she was about to
enter and that she probably believed she was
simply registering her choice of a boarding-house.
Her story which she told at Hull House was as
follows: She was a Milwaukee factory girl,
the daughter of a Bohemian carpenter. Ten
days before she had met a Chicago young man
at a Milwaukee dance hall and after a brief
courtship had promised to marry him, arranging
to meet him in Chicago the following week.
Fearing that her Bohemian mother would not
approve of this plan, which she called "the Ameri- [39]
can way of getting married," the girl had risen
one morning even earlier than factory work
necessitated and had taken the first train to
Chicago. The young man met her at the station,
took her to a saloon where he introduced her to
a friend, an older woman, who, he said, would
take good care of her. After the young man dis-
appeared, ostensibly for the marriage license,
the woman professed to be much shocked that
the little bride had brought no luggage, and
persuaded her that she must work a few weeks
in order to earn money for her trousseau, and
that she, an older woman who knew the city,
would find a boarding-house and a place in a
factory for her. She further induced her to
write postal cards to six of her girl friends in
Milwaukee, telling them of the kind lady in
Chicago, of the good chances for work, and urging
them to come down to the address which she
sent. The woman told the unsuspecting girl
that, first of all, a newcomer must register her
place of residence with the police, as that was the
law in Chicago. It was, of course, when the
woman took her to the police station that the
situation was disclosed. It needed but little [40]
investigation to make clear that the girl had
narrowly escaped a well-organized plot and that
the young man to whom she was engaged was
an agent for a disreputable house. Mr. Clifford
Roe took up the case with vigor, and although
all efforts failed to find the young man, the
woman who was his accomplice was fined one
hundred and fifty dollars and costs.
The one impression which the trial left upon
our minds was that all the men concerned in the
prosecution felt a keen sense of outrage against
the method employed to secure the girl, but took
for granted that the life she was about to lead
was in the established order of things, if she had
chosen it voluntarily. In other words, if the
efforts of the agent had gone far enough to in-
volve her moral nature, the girl, who although
unsophisticated, was twenty-one years old, could
have remained, quite unchallenged, in the hideous
life. The woman who was prosecuted was well
known to the police and was fined, not for her
daily occupation, but because she had become
involved in interstate white slave traffic. One
touch of nature redeemed the trial, for the girl
suffered much more from the sense that she had [41]
been deserted by her lover than from horror over
the fate she had escaped, and she was never
wholly convinced that he had not been genuine.
She asserted constantly, in order to account for
his absence, that some accident must have
befallen him. She felt that he was her natural
protector in this strange Chicago to which she
had come at his behest and continually resented
any imputation of his motives. The betrayal of
her confidence, the playing upon her natural desire
for a home of her own, was a ghastly revelation
that even when this hideous trade is managed
upon the most carefully calculated commercial
principles, it must still resort to the use of the old-
est of the social instincts as its basis of procedure.
This Chicago police inspector, whose desire
to protect young girls was so genuine and
so successful, was afterward indicted by the
grand jury and sent to the penitentiary on the
charge of accepting "graft" from saloon-keepers
and proprietors of the disreputable houses in his
district. His experience was a dramatic and
tragic portrayal of the position into which every
city forces its police. When a girl who has been
secured for the life is dissuaded from it, her [42]
rescue represents a definite monetary loss to the
agency which has secured her and incurs the
enmity of those who expected to profit by her.
When this enmity has sufficiently accumulated,
the active official is either "called down" by
higher political authority, or brought to trial for
those illegal practices which he shares with his
fellow-officials. It is, therefore, easy to make
such an inspector as ours suffer for his virtues,
which are individual, by bringing charges against
his grafting, which is general and almost official.
So long as the customary prices for protection
are adhered to, no one feels aggrieved; but the
sentiment which prompts an inspector "to side
with the girls" and to destroy thousands of
dollars' worth of business is unjustifiable. He
has not stuck to the rules of the game and the
pack of enraged gamesters, under full cry of
"morality," can very easily run him to ground,
the public meantime being gratified that police
corruption has been exposed and the offender
punished. Yet hundreds of girls, who could
have been discovered in no other way, were
rescued by this man in his capacity of police
inspector. On the other hand, he did little to [43]
bring to justice those responsible for securing the
girls, and while he rescued the victim, he did not
interfere with the source of supply. Had he
been brought to trial for this indifference, it
would have been impossible to find a grand jury
to sustain the indictment. He was really brought
to trial because he had broken the implied con-
tract with the politicians; he had devised illicit
and damaging methods to express that instinct
for protecting youth and innocence, which every
man on the police force doubtless possesses.
Were this instinct freed from all political and
extra legal control, it would in and of itself be a
tremendous force against commercialized vice
which is so dependent upon the exploitation of
young girls. Yet the fortunes of the police are
so tied up to those who profit by this trade and
to their friends, the politicians, that the most
well-meaning man upon the force is constantly
handicapped. Several illustrations of this occur
to me. Two years ago, when very untoward
conditions were discovered in connection with a
certain five-cent theatre, a young policeman
arrested the proprietor, who was later brought
before the grand jury, indicted and released upon [44]
bail for nine thousand dollars. The crime was
a heinous one, involving the ruin of fourteen
little girls; but so much political influence had
been exerted on behalf of the proprietor, who was
a relative of the republican committeeman of
his ward, that although the license of the theatre
was immediately revoked, it was reissued to
his wife within a very few days and the man
continued to be a menace to the community.
When the young policeman who had made the
arrest saw him in the neighborhood of the theatre
talking to little girls and reported him, the officer
was taken severely to task by the highest repub-
lican authority in the city. He was reprimanded
for his activity and ordered transferred to the
stockyards, eleven miles away. The policeman
well understood that this was but the first step
in the process called "breaking;" that after he
had moved his family to the stockyards, in a
few weeks he would be transferred elsewhere,
and that this change of beat would be continued
until he should at last be obliged to resign from
the force. His offence, as he was plainly told,
had been his ignorance of the fact that the theatre
was under political protection. In short, the [45]
young officer had naively undertaken to serve
the public without waiting for his instructions
from the political bosses.
A flagrant example of the collusion of the police
with vice is instanced by United States District
Attorney Sims, who recently called upon the
Chicago police to make twenty-four arrests
on behalf of the United States government for
violations of the white slave law, when all of the
men liable to arrest left town two hours after
the warrants were issued. To quote Mr. Sims:
"We sent the secret service men who had been
working in conjunction with the police back to
Washington and brought in a fresh supply.
These men did not work with the police, and
within two weeks after the first set of secret
service men had left Chicago, the men we wanted
were back in town, and without the aid of the
city police we arrested all of them."
When the legal control of commercialized vice
is thus tied up with city politics the functions
of the police become legislative, executive and
judicial in regard to street solicitation: in a sense
they also have power of license, for it lies with
them to determine the number of women who [46]
are allowed to ply their trade upon the street.
Some of these women are young earthlings, as it
were, hoping to earn money for much-desired
clothing or pleasure. Others are desperate crea-
tures making one last effort before they enter a
public hospital to face a miserable end; but by
far the larger number are sent out under the
protection of the men who profit by their earnings,
or they are utilized to secure patronage for dis-
reputable houses. The police regard the latter
"as regular," and while no authoritative order is
ever given, the patrolman understands that they
are protected. On the other hand, "the strag-
gler" is liable to be arrested by any officer who
chooses, and she is subjected to a fine upon his
unsupported word. In either case the police
regard all such women as literally "abandoned,"
deprived of ordinary rights, obliged to live in
specified residences, and liable to have their
personal liberties invaded in a way that no other
class of citizens would tolerate.
The recent establishment of the Night Court in
New York registers an advance in regard to the
treatment of these wretched women. Not only
does the public gradually become cognizant of [47]
the treatment accorded them, but some attempt
at discrimination is made between the first offen-
ders and those hardened by long practice in that
most hideous of occupations. Furthermore, an
adult probation system is gradually being sub-
stituted for the system of fines which at present
are levied in such wise as to virtually constitute
a license and a partnership with the police de-
partment.
While American cities cannot be said to have
adopted a policy either of suppression or one of
regulation, because the police consider the former
impracticable and the latter intolerable to public
opinion, we may perhaps claim for America a little
more humanity in its dealing with this class of
women, a little less ruthlessness than that exhib-
ited by the continental cities where reglementa-
tion is relentlessly assumed.
The suggestive presence of such women on the
streets is perhaps one of the most demoralizing
influences to be found in a large city, and such
vigorous efforts as were recently made by a former
chief of police in Chicago when he successfully
cleared the streets of their presence, demonstrates
that legal suppression is possible. At least this [48]
obvious temptation to young men and boys who
are idly walking the streets might be avoided, for
in an old formula one such woman "has cast
down many wounded; yea, many strong men
have been slain by her." Were the streets kept
clear, many young girls would be spared familiar
knowledge that such a method of earning money
is open to them. I have personally known
several instances in which young girls have begun
street solicitation through sheer imitation. A
young Polish woman found herself in dire
straits after the death of her mother. Her only
friends in America had moved to New York,
she was in debt for her mother's funeral, and as
it was the slack season of the miserable sweat-
shop sewing she had been doing, she was unable to
find work. One evening when she was quite
desperate with hunger, she stopped several men
upon the street, as she had seen other girls do,
and in her broken English asked them for some-
thing to eat. Only after a young man had given
her a good meal at a restaurant did she realize
the price she was expected to pay and the horrible
things which the other girls were doing. Even
in her shocked revolt she could not understand, [49]
of course, that she herself epitomized that hideous
choice between starvation and vice which is
perhaps the crowning disgrace of civilization.
The legal suppression of street solicitation
would not only protect girls but would enor-
mously minimize the risk and temptation to boys.
The entire system of recruiting for commercial-
ized vice is largely dependent upon boys who are
scarcely less the victims of the system than are
the girls themselves. Certainly this aspect of
the situation must be seriously considered.
In 1908, when Mr. Clifford Roe conducted
successful prosecutions against one hundred and
fifty of these disreputable young men in Chicago,
nearly all of them were local boys who had
used their personal acquaintance to secure
their victims. The accident of a long ac-
quaintance with one of these boys, born
in the Hull-House neighborhood, filled me
with questionings as to how far society may
be responsible for these wretched lads, many of
them beginning a vicious career when they are
but fifteen or sixteen years of age. Because the
trade constantly demands very young girls, the
procurers require the assistance of immature [50]
boys, for in this game above all others "youth
calls to youth." Such a boy is often incited by
the professional procurer to ruin a young girl,
because the latter's position is much safer if the
character of the girl is blackened before he sells
her, and if he himself cannot be implicated in
her downfall. He thus keeps himself within the
letter of the law, and when he is even more cau-
tious, he induces the boy to go through the cere-
mony of a legal marriage by promising him a
percentage of his wife's first earnings.
Only yesterday I received a letter from a
young man whom I had known from his early
boyhood, written in the state penitentiary, where
he is serving a life sentence. His father was a
drunkard, but his mother was a fine woman, de-
voted to her children, and she had patiently sup-
ported her son Jim far beyond his school age. At
the time of his trial, she pawned all her personal
possessions and mortgaged her furniture in order
to get three hundred dollars for his lawyer.
Although Jim usually led the life of a loafer
and had never supported his mother, he was
affectionately devoted to her and always kindly
and good-natured. Perhaps it was because he
had been so long dependent upon a self-sacrificing [51]
woman that it became easy for him to be depend-
ent upon his wife, a girl whom he met when he
was temporarily acting as porter in a disreputable
hotel. Through his long familiarity with vice,
and the fact that many of his companions habitu-
ally lived upon the earnings of "their girls," he
easily consented that his wife should continue
her life, and he constantly accepted the money
which she willingly gave him. After his marriage
he still lived in his mother's house and refused to
take more money from her, but she had no idea
of the source of his income. One day he called
at the hotel, as usual, to ask for his wife's earnings,
and in a quarrel over the amount with the land-
lady of the house, he drew a revolver and killed
her. Although the plea of self-defense was
urged in the trial, his abominable manner of life
so outraged both judge and jury that he received
the maximum sentence. His mother still insists
that he sincerely loved the girl, whom he so
impulsively married and that he constantly tried
to dissuade her from her evil life. Certain it
is that Jim's wife and mother are both filled with
genuine sorrow for his fate and that in some wise
the educational and social resources in the city
of his birth failed to protect him from his own [52]
lower impulses and from the evil companionship
whose influence he could not withstand. He is
but one of thousands of weak boys, who are con-
stantly utilized to supply the white slave trafficker
with young girls, for it has been estimated that
at any given moment the majority of the girls
utilized by the trade are under twenty years of
age and that most of them were procured when
younger. We cannot assume that the youths who
are hired to entice and entrap these girls are all
young fiends, degenerate from birth; the majority
of them are merely out-of-work boys, idle upon
the streets, who readily lend themselves to these
base demands because nothing else is presented
to them.
All the recent investigations have certainly
made clear that the bulk of the entire traffic is
conducted with the youth of the community, and
that the social evil, ancient though it may be,
must be renewed in our generation through its
younger members. The knowledge of the youth
of its victims doubtless in a measure accounts
for the new sense of compunction which fills the
community.
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