War On The White Slave Trade

While we disagree with the tactics of religious fervor against society, at the same time we must commend this Christian group for bringing this crime to public attention. Too often has the state and the church turned a blind eye to this crime of slavery.

Even today this crime is rampant in many major cities in the USA and the girls and boys exported to other nations for slave auctions/sale.

How many innocent people were publicly indicted, falsely, by this religious group, in their goal to eliminate slavery in their community? Too often, such 'religious mobs' blame the symptoms of the crime, while the perpetrators get away. To blame a dance hall, or a bar, without evidence of involvement in slavery, with a wide brush of condemnation, is injustice by vigilante ignorance.

But again, this crime received no attention until this Christian group heard the cries of the enslaved and decided to do something about it.

Excerpt from Preface

"That glory may dwell in our land" is the motive of the writers of this book. With a true patriotism, that rejoices not in the iniquities we expose, that blushes crimson with humiliation over the crimes we record, that glows hot with indignation against the criminals we denounce, we have pursued the painful necessary task of telling the truth to the American people concerning evils that have made us reel with horror.

For the protection of the innocent, for the safeguarding of the weak, for the warning of the tempted and the alarm of the wicked, the truth must be told-the truth that makes us free. Therefore we have used plain words-not coarse or vulgar, but chaste and true. Lawyers of the highest standing have introduced the legal language with which the statutes provide penalties for crimes against the honor and safety of women and girls. Physicians who are professors in medical colleges among the foremost in the world, men in reputation for their skill and beloved for their devotion to the people's welfare, have told here in medical terminology the intolerable consequences, to guilty and innocent, of the odious business of making commerce of girls and promoting the debauchery of young men. We are sure the time has come when millions will thank these lawyers and physicians for breaking the seal of secrecy and giving the people their birth-right-the truth.

It is told that after Dante had written his "Inferno" the women of Florence would turn pale and whisper to each other as he passed, "There goes the man who has been in Hell." Some of us have gone to the abyss and have seen things which are not lawful for a man to utter. Such as could fitly be told, and must be told, we have been telling for years past, knowing that the truth must prevail.

Excerpt

The most conspicuous work of United States Attorney Sims against the white slave traders in Chicago was the arrest and indictment of a notorious French trader and his wife, Alphonse and Eva Dufour. The federal grand jury voted five indictments against each of them. They spent six weeks or so in Cook county jail, when they gained their liberty on bonds of $26,500, which they immediately forfeited and fled to Paris, in August, 1908.

My missionary duties took me occasionally to the clearing house of the Dufours, and we have often held gospel meetings in front of their resort. In this place were about twenty girls, whom the agents of this wicked couple had snared in different parts of Europe and America. One girl was from Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, who had been deceived into entering the house and then held there without her street clothes. She managed to send word out and secured her release. The Dufour woman was arraigned in court but was not punished seriously for this very common crime.

A very young black-eyed, black-haired Spanish girl was among the inmates, and my thoughts inevitably went to some broken-hearted mother in sunny Spain, whose daughter had been hunted for Chicago's white slave market. These murderous traffickers drink the heart's blood of weeping mothers while they eat the flesh of their daughters, by living and fattening themselves on the destruction of the girls. Disease and debauch quickly blast the beauty of these lovely victims. Many of them are dead in two or three years. Cannibals seem almost merciful in comparison with the white slavers, who murder the girls by inches. It is a dark mystery that twentieth century civilization allows these atrocities, even under the flag of the free.

In this glittering den, with its walls and ceiling of mirrors, was a sweet Russian girl, perhaps sixteen years old, whose fate made my heart bleed. She was of the best Russian type, blonde, of medium height, peach-blossom complexion, roundish mouth, and of exceedingly gentle and loving disposition. Some father, perhaps a nobleman, perhaps dead and unable longer to protect the delight of his eyes, comes inevitably to my thoughts as I write. Oh, the pity of it all, and the shame. How can any father of girls escape the nightmare of what might befall his own daughters if his own power to protect them should fail?

I went to Baron Schlippenbach, who was then the consul of the mighty Czar in Chicago, but I never learned that he was able to accomplish anything for this dear Russian girl. The Czar is only "the little father," as the Russian people call him. May the Great Father in heaven help his deeply wronged daughters, in a way that shall break in pieces their oppressors.

The den of the Dufours had an income of $102,720 in the year 1907, and $41,000 in the first five months of 1908. One white slave was made to earn for them in May, 1908, the sum of $723. These figures were taken from their own account books, which were seized by the United States government after the Dufours fled to Paris.

This terrible place was both a receiving and a distributing station, and also a wide open immoral resort, patronized by thousands of young men-who are the ultimate white slavers, as they pay the expenses of the white slave trade. From this central clearing house girls were shipped to Denver, San Francisco and every place where the Dufours had correspondents. All this was revealed by their own documents after the United States had driven this tiger and tigress back to Paris.

Soon after we had initiated the public agitation against the white slave horror in Chicago I received three letters from a victim of the French traders. Such parts of the letters as can be made public are here given. These letters have supplied both information and inspiration to the workers who first brought this infamous traffic to public notice in Chicago.

A White Slave's Own Story.

"I want you to know everything I have witnessed in my three years of slavery. I was first sold in Custom House Place, by a young man working for Mr. --, traveling the city and little towns, or wherever he could find girls.

"Here we were, always from fifteen to eighteen girls, most of us very young. The man who bought me made us work like real slaves and then never gave us our money even if it was shamefully earned. His place was always full of so-called detectives, and if some one came to claim some one of us, quick she was slipped to some other town.

"Pictures of foreign girls would arrive by mail, and if one was pretty enough they would wire to Paris and say, 'Send parcel at once.' They arrive by different ports-New York, Boston, Quebec, San Francisco-and those poor unfortunates are all claimed by some one pretending to be an aunt, or father, or husband.

"Letters are received by the resort keepers from all the states, and I believe from all the prisons of the world. If any one could read all of those men's mail, I think one would learn horrible things.

"Also we never can receive our mail direct, for the keeper opens the letters, and if they are indifferent they are closed and given to us, but if they are any way wrong in his eyes we never see them.

"If we escape and insist on not returning, they will send some one after us to propose that we leave for Denver, San Francisco, China or Panama. Most of those men who make their living off those girls are old thieves and gamblers, and most of them have served terms in prison. There are very few girls who would tell, for those bad men surely would kill them if they found out who gave them away.

"If one girl is a good money-maker, they make her take one of those men to support. They say if she does not do this, she is not respected by their class of people. They take all those poor girls' money every night, and they send them back to work the next day penniless. If they should not make enough for them they are beaten, and sometimes killed.