Part 2

Some years ago, a gentleman, a man of brains and sterling merit, who had risen slowly to fortune feeling himself in every way fitted for social distinction, resolved to enter society, and to signalize his entree by a grand entertainment. At that time he lived in a not very fashionable street, but he did not regard this as a drawback. He issued his invitations and prepared his entertainment upon a scale of unusual magnificence, and at the appointed time his mansion was ablaze with light, and ready for the guests. Great was his mortification, not one of those invited set foot within his doors. In his anger he swore a mighty oath that he would yet compel Chicago society to humble itself to him. He kept his word, became one of the wealthiest men in the city, indeed one of the merchant princes of the land, and in the course of a few years, society, which had scorned his first invitations, was begging for admission to his sumptuous fetes. He became a leader of society, and his mandates were humbly obeyed by those who had presumed to look down upon him. It was a characteristic triumph; his millions did the work.

Poverty is always a misfortune. Chicago brands it as a crime; consequently no poor man, or even one of moderate means, can hold a place in Chicago society. Indeed it would be impossible for any one not possessed of great wealth to maintain a position in what is termed “high-toned” society here. To do this it requires an almost fabulous outlay of money. As money opens the doors of the charmed circle, so money must keep one within it. Thus Chicago (as in most large cities) has become the most extravagant in the world. In few cities on the globe are such immense sums spent.

Extravagance is the besetting sin of metropolitan social life. Immense sums are expended annually in furnishing the aristocratic mansions, in dress, in entertainments, and all sorts of folly and dissipation. It is no uncommon thing for a house and its contents to be heavily mortgaged to provide the means of keeping its occupants in proper style. The pawnbrokers drive a thriving trade with the ladies of position who pledge jewels, costly dresses, and other articles of feminine luxury, to raise the money for some functional folly. Each member of society strives to outshine or outdress, his or her acquaintances, and to do so requires a continual struggle and a continual drain upon the bank account. Men have been led to madness and even suicide and women to sin and shame, by this constant race for social distinction, but the mad round of extravagances and folly goes on and on, the new comers failing to profit by the sad experiences of those who have gone before them.

The love of dress is a characteristic of the Chicago woman of fashion. To be the best dressed woman at a ball, the opera, a dinner, or on the street, is the height of her ambition. To outshine all other women in the splendor of her attire or her jewels, is to render her supremely happy. Dresses are ordered without regard to cost, and other articles of luxury are purchased in proportion.

Now this is well enough for those who can afford it, but the majority of the Chicago fashionables cannot stand the strain long. As we have said, their great wealth melts steadily under such demands upon it, until there is nothing left but bankruptcy and ruin and of the eternal grind. From time to time the business community is startled by the failure, perhaps the suicide of some normally well-to-do merchant or banker. The affair creates a brief sensation and is soon forgotten. The cause is well-known, “living beyond his means,” or “ruined by his family’s extravagance.” Men suffer the tortures of the damned in their efforts to maintain their commercial standing, and at the same time to provide their families with the means of keeping their place in society. They are driven to forgery, defalcation, and other crimes, yet they do not achieve their object. Ruin lays its heavy hand upon them and the game is played out.

As for Madame, she must have money. The husband may not be able to furnish it, and there may be a limit even to the pawnbroker’s generosity; but money she must have. Fashionable life affords her the means. She sells her honor for filthy lucre; she finds a lover with a free purse, and willing to pay for the favors. She acts with her eyes open, and sins deliberately, and from the basest of motives. She wants money and she gets it. Sometimes the intrigue runs on without detection and Madame shifts from lover to lover, according to her needs. Again there is an unexpected discovery; an explosion follows. Madame’s fine reputation goes to the winds, and there is a gap in society.

No wonder so many fashionable women look jaded, have an anxious, half-startled expression, and seem weary. They are living in a state of dread lest their secrets be discovered and the inevitable ruin overtake them.

Some strange things happen at these fashionable gatherings. Let your memories run back to the early eighties and you will recall an incident of a robbery in the very midst of festivities. In most instances the articles taken are of value that can be easily secreted, the criminal as a rule, is no vulgar thief, but is one of society’s privileged and envied members. The papers of that date recorded the following:

“In the dingy back room of a renowned detective was the scene of an impressive spectacle several weeks ago. In the presence of the gentlemen, one a well-known detective, the other a prominent merchant—knelt a fashionably dressed man of middle age, confessing a shameful story of crime, and imploring mercy.

“I admit all,” he cried. “I stole the property, but I cannot restore it, I was driven to the deed in order to maintain my position in society. My means had largely left me, and I could not resist temptation.”

“This statement fell like a thunderbolt upon the merchant, who had known the speaker long and favorably. To the detective, however, it was not at all unexpected, as he had already satisfied himself as to the guilt of the man. The stealing which was here confessed was one of those crimes in higher circles of society.”

Only a decade has elapsed since the family of a well-known lawyer living on a prominent Avenue, gave a social entertainment to which persons of high standing in society were invited. The following morning it was discovered that rings, watches and jewelry worth several hundred dollars was missing. The most careful search and close examination of servants forced the conclusion upon the family that the robbery had been committed by some one of the guests, although this seemed incredible, as every name upon the list of those present seemed to forbid the thought of suspicion. The affair was put into the hands of private detectives, who were unable, however, to obtain the slightest clew to the thief of the property.

Yet it is not the professional thieves that those who get up fashionable entertainments chiefly fear. The most dangerous class, because the most numerous, are included among the invited guests and are called, when detected, kleptomaniacs.

The White Slave Traffic

The revelations made by investigators should be given as wide a currency as possible. The extent of the White Slave traffic and the machinery by which it is maintained, should be brought home, not only to the officials sworn to deal with crime, but to parents sworn under higher law to guard their young.

Thousands of girls from the country are entrapped each year, and the pitiful fact is that the parents of a large majority of these unfortunates are unaware of their fate. As a consequence of this state of public ignorance, the traffic proceeds unchecked, save by the efforts of persons willing to give time and money for the procuring of evidence and prosecuting the offenders.

What is greatly needed as a supplement to vigorous prosecution of offenders is a campaign of education. Writers, clergymen and officials should take up this appalling evil and instruct parents as to the reality and extent of the danger. In small towns there is virtually no knowledge of this terribly increasing traffic of buying and selling and securing girls for houses of prostitution.

The problem is enormous, but by educational means it can be largely solved. The responsibility for a broad and systematic campaign of enlightenment rests chiefly with the parents, who should become enlightened upon the subject by reading and inquiry, and then instruct their children upon the educational lines to the end that they may know the sad realities and gravity of the evil and its conditions.

The vampires who deal in human bodies must and will be punished. These wretches, who, for a few dollars, will dig so low down in the quagmire of rottenness must be sent to prison. If fathers and mothers could be brought to a realization that thousands of young and tender girls are being sold to vultures for immoral purposes, they would raise a wave of indignation that would sweep around the world.

It is notable, and a commendable fact that the government, through its agents and courts, is accomplishing results that will, it is hoped, forever crush this awful business, and drive the keepers of these cess-pools of vice and shame into the sea of everlasting ignomy.

The sole aim in writing upon the White Slave subject is to definitely call the attention of the men and women of the United States, and especially those of the larger cities, to the vicious, and thoroughly organized white slave traffic of today, and its attendant, far-reaching, horrible results upon the young man and womanhood of our land. During a constant investigation, covering several years’ time in the central slum districts of Chicago, I have gained much actual knowledge of the questions of poverty, drink and prostitution among the lost men and women of this great city. Have become personally acquainted with very many of them, visiting them, listening to their heart stories and growing to know much of their inside lives and have learned a real tender interest and pity for them in their remorseful, helpless, hopeless condition. Statistical references have been taken from the writings of United States District Attorney Sims, Ernest A. Bell, Judge John R. Newcomer, Clifford G. Roe and others engaged in prosecuting and reform work, all of whom I thank earnestly and wish well in what they are accomplishing for good where it is so desperately needed in this submerged underworld of our city.

After these years of experience, and after having visited in various capacities, disguised, etc., many of the worst haunts of vice and houses of prostitution in Chicago, I personally came to this conclusion: There is small chance for a girl, once having been sold into or entered upon a life of prostitution, to ever escape therefrom. Invariably she is kept in debt to her masters, excessive bills for parlor clothes, board, dentistry, laundry and all conceivable expenses are kept charged up against her. She is under constant threat of personal violence and blackmail in every form (her owners securing, whenever possible, some knowledge of her home and friends and continually holding this knowledge as a dagger over her), and then there are the ever-present whoremasters and madams with drugs and drinks and bolts and bars, guarding every possible avenue of escape with blows and curses and brutality beyond conception. Very few young girls enter a life of prostitution voluntarily, and few, once entering, ever escape.

The recent examination of more than two hundred “white slaves” by the office of the United States District Attorney of Chicago has brought to light the fact that literally thousands of innocent girls from the country districts are every year entrapped into a life of hopeless slavery and degredation because parents in the country do not understand conditions as they exist and how to protect their daughters from the “white slave” traders who have reduced the art of ruining young girls to a national and international system. I sincerely believe that nine-tenths of the parents of these thousands of girls who are every year snatched from lives of decency and comparative peace and dragged under the slime of an existence in the “white slave” world have no idea that there is really a trade in the ruin of girls as much as there is trade in cattle or sheep or the other products of the farm. If these parents had known the real conditions, had believed that there is actually a syndicate which does as regular, as steady and persistent a “business” in the ruination of girls as the great packing houses do in the sale of meats, it is wholly probable that their daughters would not now be in dens of vice and almost utterly without hope of release excepting by the hand of death.

It is only necessary to say that the legal evidence thus far collected establishes with complete moral certainty these awful facts: That the white slave traffic is a system—a syndicate which has its ramifications from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific ocean, with “clearing houses” or “distributing centers” in nearly all the larger cities; that in this ghastly traffic the buying price of a young girl is $15.00 and that the selling price is generally about $200.00—if the girl is especially attractive, the white slave dealer may be able to sell her for $400.00 or $600.00; that this syndicate did not make less than $200,000 last year in this almost unthinkable commerce; that it is a definite organization sending its hunters regularly to scour France, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Canada for victims; that the man at the head of this unthinkable enterprise is known among his hunters as “The Big Chief.”

Judge John R. Newcomer of Chicago, said before the National Purity Congress at Battle Creek, Michigan:

“Within one week I had seven different letters from fathers, from Madison, Wisconsin, on the north, to Peoria, Illinois, on the south, asking me in God’s name to do something to help them find their daughters, because they had come to Chicago and they had never heard from them afterward.

“If you mean by the 'white slave’ traffic the placing of young girls in a brothel for a price, it is undoubtedly a real fact, based upon statements that have been made in my court during the past three months by defendants, both men and women, who have pleaded guilty to that crime, and in a sense it is both interstate and international.

“Not one, but many shipments, of which I have personal knowledge, based upon testimony of people who have pleaded guilty, many shipments come from Paris and other European cities to New York; and from New York to Chicago and other western points; and from Chicago as a distributing point to the West and Southwest; and on the western coast coming into San Francisco and other ports there. No, it is a real fact; and it is something that we have got to take notice of, and something that, while it may have been developed largely during the past ten years, the national government itself has recently taken notice of its existence.”

Mr. Clifford G. Roe, formerly Assistant State’s Attorney, who has prosecuted very many cases against the traffickers in women, said before the union meeting of ministers called to consider the white slave traffic, at the auditorium of the Young Men’s Christian Association, February 10, 1908:

“A great many persons are yet skeptical of the existence of an organized traffic in girls. They seem to think that those advocating the abolition of this trade are either fanatics or notoriety seekers. They doubt the truth of the impossibility of escape and content themselves with the thought that girls use the plea of slavery to right themselves with their parents and friends when their cases are made public.

“However, if these same people could have been in the courts of Chicago during the past year their minds would be disabused of the idea that slavery does not exist in Chicago.

“The startling disclosures made in nearly a hundred cases ought to arouse not only the citizens of Chicago, but the whole country to the highest pitch of indignation.”

Chicago’s Soul Market.

“O, he keeps a bunch of 'fillies’ in the shanty down near the corner of Monroe and Peoria streets, and they’re not foreigners, either. They’re your nice American girls. No wonder he can make a bet like that on a mere chance, from a roll of yellow-backs.” The speaker was a madam of a Peoria street resort, the listeners a motley crowd of women gathered in the rear room of a popular saloon and gambling house not far from the corner of Green and Madison streets on the seething, congested west side of Chicago. These women assembled in that screened back room to risk their hard-earned or evil-gotten money on the horses of the Louisville race track.

There sat the little eighteen-year-old, brown-eyed milliner, her dissipated face hollow and drawn from worry and lack of sleep and an insufficient quantity of nourishing food, while near her a white-haired old woman in shabby black was tightly grasping two quarters, her entire worldly possession. Just across sat a well-dressed woman restaurant keeper, a young Eastern Star, and half a hundred others, above all of whom shone the yellow-haired madam of the Peoria street resort, the star patron of that great gambling room for women, each one of whom was eagerly beckoning the well-groomed bookmaker, feverishly anxious to get her pittance on the race track favorite, when a connecting door was pushed suddenly open and in rushed a fashionably-dressed, brutal-faced young Russian Jew, holding loosely an immense roll of money. Tens, twenties, hundreds—he came with them until three hundred dollars had been placed to win upon a “clocker’s tip” in that day’s last race in Louisville.

There was a grim, deadly silence, eating, unbearable silence in that gambling room as they waited the ring of the telephone and the name of the winner. Again the yellow-haired madam’s voice screamed shrilly out, for she was indeed ill at ease, her money was on the favorite—“Yes, a bunch of American 'fillies’ peddled out at fifty cents an hour to all comers, black and white, sick or sound. No wonder he can make a play like that on an outside chance.”

Three hundred dollars! My heart stood still almost. The thought flashed through my brain that that wager meant hundreds of hours of shame and slavery and horror to those girls in the shanties down on Peoria Street, some mother’s girl, every one of them. I sat still for a little while and watched the fevered, anxious throng about me. My heart kept going faster and faster until I could bear it no longer. American “fillies” and body and soul under a brutal Russian Jewish whoremonger! I slipped quietly out into the street; night was coming on as I walked down Madison street and south on Peoria. Yes, there were the shanties—poor, wretched hovels, every one of them. Out shone the flickering red lights, out came the discordant, rasping sound of the rented piano, out belched the shrieks of drunken harlots, mingled with the groans and curses of task-masters in a foreign tongue, attracting the attention of the hundreds of laborers, negroes and boys, as they walked home on Peoria street from their day’s work. On I went until I came to the little shed just north of the slum saloon occupied by one S——, and checking my steps I looked around me on the squalid, wretched scene. I was in the midst of prostitution at its lowest—the heart-breaking dregs of Chicago’s twenty-two thousand public women. Yes, there they were—the fair young American girl, the stolid Russian Jewess, the middle-aged, syphilitic harlot, living, prostituting, dying, like so many hurt, broken moths around that great Red Light—Chicago’s west side soul market—their poor, wretched bodies, sold day and night at from twenty-five to fifty cents an hour to all comers who could pay the pitiful price demanded by their brutal, soulless masters; and as I looked the burning fire of intense pity entered my soul for these drug and drink-sodden, diseased, chained slaves—my sisters in Christ in this great free American Republic—and so with a heart full of consuming desire to know more of the real lives of these scarlet women and to help them, if possible, I began at once a thorough personal investigation of Chicago’s public slave market, visiting these people in various capacities whenever occasion offered; talking with them, gaining their much-abused confidence until I gradually learned the inside lines of the saddest story America has ever known since the black mothers of our Southland were torn from their black and white babies and with shrieks of agony and heartstrings bleeding and souls rent with blackened horror were sold to death on the plantations of Louisiana and Mississippi, and I want to tell you who read this and who think there is little truth in the now much agitated question of white slavery in America, that in the dives and dens of our city’s underworld I have heard shrieks and heart cries and groans of agony and remorse that have never been surpassed at any public slave auction America has ever witnessed, as these girls, many of them, oh! so young, realizing their awful fate with scalding tears and moans of horror, shut out from their hearts and lives father or mother, or husband and child and turned their sob-shaken, tortured bodies to face the months or years of final, relentless wretchedness and woe, to be at last thrown out sick and broken to die in some alley or be carted off to Dunning poorhouse to gradual physical decay and a pauper’s burial, and grave and obliteration, while those who sold them just a few years before go out in their diamonds and fine linen and their great automobiles to buy up more girls (it might be your daughter—father, mother—or it might be mine) to fill up the vacancy in the ranks of this vast army of white slaves. A woman said to me the other day, and it was a lofty, sneering tone, too: “I doubt if these women are ever coerced or even imposed upon.” Listen! read, then listen! Sitting in my office one afternoon, I listened, my blood almost freezing, to the following story, vouched for by Mr. C——, an immigration inspector and brother of a well-known Chicago reform-worker, and here it is as he told it to me: “One evening some time ago I was looking up a case down in the Twenty-second street red-light district, and visited and inspected, looking for immigrant girls held illegally at a certain house of the lower class in that neighborhood of prostitution. While in the house I noticed a young woman lying very ill (in the last stages of consumption, if I remember the story exactly) and in a semi-conscious condition, and to my horror upon inquiry I learned that in the rush hours of business this helpless, painracked young woman was open to all comers holding an accredited room check.” My friends, there are true stories heard and known every day around the city’s seething, blood-red soul market that cannot be put in print—stories though, that, were they to become known, would make decent Chicago rise as one man and cry with a voice outspeaking Fort Sumpter, “White Slavery in Chicago and America must cease!”