Chicago Tribune
Appalling Discoveries by Government Agents Show Chicago To Be Greatest White Slave Market in America.
"Chicago, the greatest market for white slavery on the continent."
Everywhere the Chicagoan has been accused of fondness for superlatives descriptive of his home city. This particular "greatest" may shock him. But it is an authoritative quotation.
"We have only touched the foreign phase of the horror," said United States District Attorney Sims, "but there is enough to indicate that no other city in America holds and harbors the evil of white slavery as does Chicago."
If you are a Chicago doubter, ask the big district attorney. You’ll get the full force of the statement.
Still doubting, you have no need to ask anything of Assistant State’s Attorney Clifford G. Roe. He has court dockets to which he can turn nearly two years back, letting you read for yourself the dozens of trials and convictions of Chicago men and women who have been discovered fattening upon this traffic in white slaves.
"White slavery," however, is a condition. It is a ghastly, reeking, hideous plague that has broken out upon civilization. You may touch elbows with it in the Chicago streets and yet not have your attention taken from a plateglass show window in State street. The young woman, walking smilingly in the open street to the literal auction block itself, may look into your eyes and give you no suggestion of the fate of which she herself has no premonition.
This is the devil’s conniving deviltry which is making white slavery possible. Seeing it may be only unbelieving to the unbeliever.
For the white slaver is more essential to white slavery than anything else other than the white slaver herself.
Don’t confuse terms. Not half the women trailing dare Shame after them like a garment are white slaves — not a third of them, perhaps, unless as slaves to weakness, ignorance, and lack of understanding in its wider sense. But hundreds of them are white slaves in its literal sense; chattel to be bought and sold and chained, robbed, abused, and beaten by the lash of a master.
Banker’s Son Was a White Slaver
The white slaver is not a type. He may be a prize fighter, an army officer, son of a preacher or of a banker. A year ago Chicago was startled when a roundup of these local drivers of white slaves the young Leonard, son of a banker, skilled bank clerk, and idol of his mother, was fined $200 and costs for his crime.
It was a former officer in the Hungarian army who the other day in Chicago showed the hold that this white slavery has upon the slaver. It was the case of Sterk, who received sentence of one year in the house of correction. Sterk, a man of family, placed Tereza Jenney in a resort in Budapest and was living upon her shame. The girl escaped after a year and came to Chicago. Sterk, deserting his family, followed by the next boat. His source of income was gone. To get the woman back was a necessity.
But Sterk made a faux pas. He appealed to the government officers to deport his victim and made arrangements to return with her on the same boat. When under faulty indictment Stern escaped the United States court, Assistant State’s Attorney Roe caught him up on a state charge and caused his conviction and sentence.
To the Chicago trader in general there is a cash bonus from the resort of $25 to $100, and he may have made his hunt for his victim on expense money furnished by the house. There is the confession of the convicted Harry Balding about one year ago. Attorney Roe secured the written confession.
Balding had been a white slaver for about a year. Resort keepers would appeal to him and his fellows to "go out and work up some more girls" for which he said he received $10 to $50 each, though it was discovered that the cash bonus was much more. Money was furnished these young fellows and they went out after victims.
"The majority of them were girls we met on the streets," is Balding’s direct confession. "We would go around to these penny arcades and nickel theaters, and if we saw a couple of girls — we could always tell what they were by looking at them — we would go and talk to them. I will say this much for myself, that I never took any girl away from her home and took her down there. The girls that I took down there I met in the stores or on the streets.’
What a virtuous point of view! But the same confession is the story of his working with a woman accomplice to trap a girl sitting alone in a restaurant. He sent the woman to make the acquaintance of the stranger. The girl, out of work, was spurred by the ambition to get a paying position at work, was introduced to Balding, and met him and his accomplice the next day downtown. Her parents later rescued her from her slave’s life.
When the United States authorities some time ago raided the French resorts on the south side in search of foreign born victims of the slave trade some of the most palpable of slavery tactics were discovered.
"Not one woman in these prominent resorts was found who could speak English," said Assistant United States Attorney Parkin. "But in their own tongue everything said by them showed long drilling as to answers that should be made to inquiries. Ask any one of these women a sudden question in English and her reply to anything would be ‘five years.’ the term of residence in the United States that would prevent deportation.
"The typical story of the women was of having come to New York abut four years ago as companions or servants in the family of well to do French immigrants. After several years the family had returned, leaving the girl, who about three or four months before had come to Chicago from a New York resort.
"But the slavery feature was bulwarked by every fact that we could elicit from these drilled women. Not one of them knew by what steamer she had come to the country; she could not name even the line by which she sailed. She didn’t know what the steamer fares were. She could not name a single street in New York, which would have been a certainty had she even stopped there for a week of liberty.
"We seized trunks in their possession on which were the stamps of customs officials, showing that most of the women had come in the second cabin. In some of these trunks we found sealed letters, written by girls to parents in France, begging them to write, and as completing the slavery chain, we found other letters in possession of the keepers, written long before by these girls to parents and the keepers had received for mailing, but which they had refused to post of the helpless prisoners.
"The girls were 18 to 22 years old and had come through Ellis Island under assumed names. The letters in the trunks revealed the true names of the writers. None of them could tell a date of sailing or a date of landing. One of these girls had $1,500 charged against her for clothing furnished by the house. Another girl said the house owed her $890, which she had been unable to collect. Once a month they were sent to the ‘summer cottage’ of this resort at Blue Island, where under guard
[CONTENT MISSING].
[CONTENT MISSING].
[CONTENT MISSING].
[CONTENT MISSING]
extensive section (2 columns) missing
[CONTENT MISSING].
[CONTENT MISSING].
[CONTENT MISSING].
. . . part of the woman to make an outcry, or a break for liberty.
It was the story of Mona Marshall a little more than a year ago which stirred Chicago to the possibilities of this traffic in white slaves. Her story, told in Judge Newcomer’s court under the examination of Assistant State’s Attorney Roe, may be considered typical.
Good Clothes and Engaging Manner Attract
Mona Marshall was only 16 years old. Se was working in a downtown store when she first met Harry Balding, who has been referred to already in this story. The girl testified that she was attracted to the fellow because of his good clothes, his engaging manners, and his evident wealth. She went about with him frequently and as he became conscious of his conquest he proposed marriage. A bachelor apartment, furnished and maintained by another of the traders, became a place of meeting.
One day the girl awoke to the fact that she was an inmate of a resort, her clothing gone, the jewelry which she had worn taken from her and pawned, while Balding cam occasionally to the house to receive money that was paid her.
"Sometimes Harry was paid this money," testified the girl. "Sometimes it was paid to me and he would knock me down and take it away when I resented his attempts to take it from me.
In these weeks and months, however, Balding held out always the promise of marriage. They were to go to St. Louis, where they would be unknown, be married, and live a new life. But the raid upon the flat at 2552 Wabash avenue shattered any lingering hope of this promised being redeemed, and it was brought out in the Municipal court that Mona Marshal had been lured and sold to one of these resorts for $50.
In the resort her street clothes were hidden. Her house dress was impossible on the streets if she might have found opportunity to escape from the place.
"I couldn’t have got away, possibly," testified the girl, "and if I could have done so I would have been ashamed to go home !
Girl Bookkeeper Married a Slaver
This was only a portion of the horrors developed in this raid. One young woman, a bookkeeper, said that she had been married to a William H. Johns only that she might be sold to a white slavery.
"He married me only that he might sell me to this place," she said, "and I know now that this man had no other source of income than this. He is in the business of selling girls, and I don’t believe he ever has had any other business."
Hard about the heels of this exposure came the evidence of a bunch of young women, probably fifteen of them, shipped to Beaumont, Tex., through the operation of a band of traders, working through the bachelor apartment in Wabash avenue where so much villainy was effected. Heavy fines under the law then existing were imposed by several judges upon these harpies.
Since these exposures of the white slave traffic in Chicago the year that has elapsed had been prolific of instances where under the work of Attorney Roe, with the four detective assigned the state attorney’s office, such slavery had been uncovered.
Until the first day of the present month when the new law went into effect, it has been impossible for judges of the Municipal courts to impose a penalty at all in keeping with some of these offenses.
"Don’t you think you ought to be taken out and shot dead for this?" was an explosive utterance of Judge Newcomer, towering above the cringing form of the man MacNamara, but under the old law $200 fine and costs was the limit within the power of the judge.
New Law More Severe.
But under this new law aimed at the trafficker in women the least culpable, for the first offense may not escape a fine of $1,000, or the minimum of six months in the house of correction, or both the fine and imprisonment. Conviction of a second offense allows the court to sentence the trader to one to five years in the state penitentiary. These penalties, together with the wider latitude allowed the woman as a witness, promises to make the business of the white slavery too dangerous to appeal as it has for years as an occupation.
Under the law, too, event the worst type of women in these resorts is afforded a measure of protection which would make slavery impossible. Any one who in any way persuaded or compels a woman to enter or remain in a resort against he will becomes subject to conviction under the act. In this way this single act against white slavery becomes one of the most drastic laws on the statute books of Illinois.
Supplementing this state statute is the new United States law which imposes a penalty of not more than five years’ imprisonment and a fine of not more than $5,000 if any alien woman be found in a resort until she has been at least three years in the United States.
United States Will Bring Offenders To Justice
United States District Attorney Sims, awake to the recent revelations which he has experienced in Chicago, has pledged his fullest efforts to bring to justice those offenders whom he has reason to suspect of carrying on in Chicago a clearing house for these alien white slavers.
"The evidence points to a systematic traffic in these women from New York to San Francisco," said he, "and Chicago, I think, may be the worst of these offenders. There is no word in my vocabulary which can fit, to my mind, the creature who engages in this white slavery. But the power of this office will be exerted to the limit to clear this city of the infamy."
In the records of the Juvenile court at Ewing street Judge Tuthill recalls only one case that might have suggested a slaver move. The girl was intercepted by telegraph at Abilene, Kas., however, and returned to the jurisdiction of the court.
"Weakness and lack of understanding appeal to me as the opportunity for the work of these human vultures," said Judge Tuthill. "That young woman passing the ages of 15 to 20 years needs more counsel and guidance than many good mothers suspect.
"But there are thousands of these young women who haven’t mothers to guide and counsel. They are new to the life of great city, working for a s little as $3.50 a week. No girl of ambition can live on such a sum. No man who is paying such a salary, knowing it to be the sole support of a decent girl, can hold himself innocent of a part in her downfall if she shall find herself a victim of white slavery in the end. A starving girl of this class, hungering for companionship as she may be for food, subject to the wiles of one of these smooth, well dressed traders in human virtue, needs all the worldly wisdom she can command in self-protection. She may have had the schooling of all the text books in the world, but her lack of knowledge about the world itself may prove her undoing."
White slavery ? In how many guises it is one of the giant "industries" of the second city in the United States !
