New York Times
TO CURB WHITE SLAVERY.
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Taft Consulted on Plan to Reach Traffic Through Inter-State Commerce Law.
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WASHINGTON, Nov. 24. — President Taft took up today with District Attorney E.W. Sims of Chicago and Representative Mann of Illinois, Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign and Inter-State Commerce, the so-called "white slave" question. Mr. Mann, who is to introduce a bill on this subject at the coming session of Congress, believes the Government can prevent this traffic through the exercise of its power to control inter-State and foreign commerce.
In Mr. Mann’s view the Government is the only authority strong enough to cope with this evil, and the bill which he has drafted, and in which the President today expressed his deep interest, provides a heavy penalty for the enticement of a woman or girl from one place to another and thereby causing her to go as a passenger over any transportation line engaged in inter-State or foreign commerce.
"The investigations in Chicago under the direction of District Attorney Sims and others elsewhere," said Mr. Mann today at the close of the conference, "have disclosed a situation startling in its nature as to the extent of the traffic in young girls, both within the United States and from France and other foreign countries. Most of these American girls are enticed away from their homes in the country to large cities. The police power exercised by the State and municipal governments is inadequate to prevent this — particularly when the girls are enticed from one State to another or from a foreign country to the United States."
