Slavery of prostitution : a plea for emancipation

Front matter

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Contents

CHAPTER PAGE PNEEODUCTION. he. Se eat oie eee I. THE SLAVERY OF PROSTITUTION AS SEEN IN THE | NiGi TC OUR Te. he ote itn encase aia met teehee II. WHO ARE THE GIRLS? PERSONAL FACTORS . . 30 III. Soctat Factors LEADING To PROSTITUTION . . 53 EV. WHITE SUAVE TRAPEEO “Nr Eg eee V. LEGISLATION AND LAW ENFORCEMENT . . .. . 125 VI. WAVERLEY HousE AND A MunIcIPAL HOUSE OF DETENTION Aitnjeort inti cles Wet eer ee? VIF. PROBATION WORK: US ROE IL... he A OO) REO VIII. REFORMATORIES AND FARM COLONIES . . . . 223 TX. A CAMPAIGN OF PREVENTION. . . . . . . 250 xX. GIRLS’ PROTECTIVE LEAGUR 60 6: cal i he ee. of 903 Al.. A: PLEA. FOR, EMANCIPATION 16) @ 6 wi 4ejrdirest 44305

Introduction

Young women are not living lives of prostitution simply because they wish to do so, but because of large profits which are being reaped by the commercialization of vice and because of factors which lie deeply rooted in social conditions. This is the crucial fact which during the last decade has revolutionized the public attitude toward prostitution. A new scientific and humanitarian spirit sharply challenges the necessity of this ancient evil. It holds that since nothing that is necessary is evil, nothing that is evil can be necessary. The traditional methods of dealing with vice totter and fall before this new spirit. Open toleration of resorts, and punishment of women offenders by fines and prison sentences, are abhorrent to the sense of justice born of an awakened social conscience.

Loss of confidence in old methods compels us to discover new ways of grappling with this difficult problem. As a basis for this, knowledge of existing conditions is necessary. This book is neither a “‘vice report” nor a philosophical treatise, but an earnest study of what I consider without sensationalism or exaggeration to be the slavery of prostitution. This phrase is the only one which describes the condition of a large number of the girls and women whom I have known in the Night Court in New York City and of many of the three thousand girls whom I have known through the New York Probation and Protective Association. These girls have not been, except in rare instances, physically enslaved; but through loss of freedom of will and of action, they have been bound to prostitution. Their demoralization of character has constituted moral enslavement.

It is possible to free girls from the slavery of prostitution by helping those who have been enmeshed in it and by preventing others from entering it. Experience in dealing with delinquent x INTRODUCTION women in court, on probation, and at Waverley House, has shown me that many of those who have not lost all will-power and whose moral senses are not too dulled can return to normal, useful living. After their misrepresentations about themselves are brushed away by investigations and their real characters are revealed, we find them much like other girls and women. They are not necessarily vicious or depraved. To call them “ruined,” “fallen,” and ‘‘lost,” and to consider them beyond hope of rehabilitation and help, is as cruel and unjust as it is absurd.

As efforts have been made to rebuild and strengthen characters that have been demoralized, the necessity of preventing girls from entering prostitution has become constantly more insistent. The need has been shown of a vigorous campaign of law enforcement, directed especially against exploiters who stimulate the demand for prostitution and the supply of young girls to meet that demand. Protection of difficult and run-. away girls, organization of the Girls’ Protective League, and educational work to lessen demand and supply and to arouse society to the need of safeguarding young women, have been part of a program of prevention. At the same time that protective barriers must be raised by society around feeble-minded, ignorant, untrained, and defenseless girls, educational work must be carried on among boys and girls to strengthen character, to teach self-control and the sanctity of the sex relationship, and to build up, as the ultimate safeguard, the spiritual defense.

It is significant that those who study seriously the problem of lessening the great social evils, whether poverty, disease, or crime, lay greatest emphasis upon prevention. This note of prevention has been sounded clearly by two men who have created much in the field of social work, and to whom I am indebted for valuable suggestions and criticisms in writing this book—Dr. Edward T. Devine, Professor of Social Economy at Columbia University and Director of the New York School of

INTRODUCTION xl

Philanthropy, and Dr. Richard C. Cabot, Chief of Staff of the Massachusetts General Hospital.

In pointing the way to improved methods of dealing with delinquent girls and of preventing others from entering prostitution, I owe the greatest debt to the young women I have known at the Night Court and at Waverley House, who have told me their stories freely and helped me to understand their problems. Many of these stories are given in the exact words of the girls; all are true to the facts as verified by investigations. The only change that has been made is to assign fictitious names so that girls may not be recognized. Knowledge that many of these girls have succeeded in their efforts to live honest lives, and have stood the test for seven or eight years, convinces me that the work is worth while and gives faith and courage for greater effort.

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SLAVERY OF PROSTITUTION CHAPTER I

THE SLAVERY-OF PROSTITUTION AS SEEN IN THE | NIGHT COURT

When in 1907 I took up my duties as probation officer in the Night Court, I saw each night passing before the bar of justice a long procession of men and women. The black-gowned magistrate sitting behind the desk in the brilliantly lighted court room looked down at the prisoner before him, listened to the story of complainant and defendant, judged of the guilt or innocence of the accused and often pronounced sentence summarily. sOne after another the prisoners passed in rapid succession.’f There were Russian: push-cart peddlers who had been selling without a license, Greek flower venders with their trays of violets and pansies, Syrian women with baskets of laces on their arms, toil-worn truckmen and well-liveried chauffeurs who had viglated the rules of the road, and men and women who had been found intoxicated upon the public streets. Then as the black hands of the illumined clock on the tall, dark tower outside pointed nearer the hour of midnight, there appeared many women whose bearing and dress betrayed their wretched manner of life. At times between nine o’clock at night and three in the morning, as many as roo or 165 of these unfortunate women of the street and the brothel passed in that long procession. There were girls from the crowded homes in the city, immigrant girls who had been but a short time in America, and country girls who had run away from small towns and villages to hide their disgrace in a big city. Nearly all had been working

I girls and at some time had been employed in factories, stores, kitchens or workshops. They were of all ages and races and of different religious faiths. There were young girls who were just crossing the brink into a life of vice, ignorant girls who had fallen into the clutches of vicious procurers, women who had been a short time on the street, in parlor houses or call flats, and hardened offenders who had given up all hope of escape.

AN OLD OFFENDER

“Rose Schafer,” calls the court attendant, and a few moments later the prisoner, pale and thin, with a very hard, pock-marked face, firmly set lips and defiant manner, stands before the judge. She casts one piercing, threatening glance at the officer on the right, and then looks up at the magistrate.

“T admit I’m a prostitute, yer Honor, but I didn’t speak to no cop. He’s just tryin’ to knock me. I was walkin’ down the Avenue and into an ice cream parlor when he steps up an’ grabs me.”’ It was Rose, well known in this court and on the street as an ‘old timer.”’ Other girls said that the scar on her cheek was where her Italian “lover’’ had slashed her four or five years ago. ‘‘She was han’some then,” one of the girls confided to me, ““wore swell clothes and had di’monds, and was one of the luckiest girls on Broadway. She saved money too, an’ all of us girls knew she had a thousand dollars on the bank. But it was all up with her when she began to sniff the coke.! She’s crazy when the dope is in her. They say she is living now with a colored feller, but I don’t believe it’s true. One thing is sure, she’s not like some of ’em, makin’ her money stealin’. I never knew her to trim a man.”

Meantime, the judge was talking to the officer, and Rose awaited her sentence. She knew she had eighty days “coming” to her in the workhouse, and that was the reason she was fighting hard against it. She used to get only a fine or discharge when an easy judge was sitting, but she knew a “bad” judge was on to-

1 Cocaine.

night, and she expected no mercy. She had heard that he was even sending girls to Bedford for two or three years, but she had given her age as thirty-one and thought she was safe. She would rather have workhouse than Bedford.

‘Give me workhouse or anything,” she finally said, impatient to hear the fateful word whatever it might be. “T’ll take my medicine.”

“Workhouse” was the judge’s decision. After hearing it, Rose walked slowly back to her cell in the prison.

“T tell yer, there ain’t no such thing as justice,”’ she said as I stopped for a moment before her cell. “Send girls to that workhouse to scrub and sit in a cell, as though that didn’t make ’em worse! Put ’em in prison or take their money—that’s all they want of us. I wish I had the money I give to bondsmen an’ lawyers an’ cops an’ courts. Id be rich today. Sure the city gets rich off us girls, an’ fly cops wouldn’t have no jobs if it wasn’t for us! An’ decent women and children wouldn’t be safe to walk on the streets!’’ She justified herself in her profession. Society had decreed prostitution was a necessity and she was only helping to fulfil the decree.

“There ain’t nothing in the life. An’ yet what else can we do?” continued Rose, her voice softening a bit. “I’ve always worked like a slave, and I never had nothing out of it. Ever since I started in a paper bag factory in Russia when I was eight years old and earned what would be 20 cents a week, I tell you it’s been bad. We was always poor at home and even after we come to America, I sold papers every night after school. I used to stand down there around Brooklyn Bridge with a bunch of papers under my arm till I was shivering through with cold. I never earned more than $3 a week in the box factory here in New York, and what can you do with $3? Besides I had to give every penny of it in at home. When you start in this life you think you’re gettin’ a lot at first because it’s easy money, but you don’t have nothin’ out of it. I tell you there’s no luck in that money.

“No, I’m not givin’ any more to that loafer. I kept him for two or three years, and he got every cent away. I knew I was a fool to stay with him, and every once ina while I left him. But this time it is for good. I can’t explain it myself. I know he had other women, and still I stuck to him. When I’m with hin, it’s like I was in a different world, and I had to do as he said. I forget I can be free and do as I please. I seem to think he’s got a right to my money and I give it to him whether he asks it or not.

“But even if I’m bad myself, I always hate to see the chickens come in, an’ I give them good advices and tell the kids to quit. One night I paid a girl’s carfare to her home in Brooklyn an’ told her I’d have her pinched if she didn’t go back to her mother. She was only a sixteen-year-old.

“Sure all us girls hate the life.”” There was pathos in her tone as she told of it. “Sometimes when them stars peek out in them heavens, my heart falls down in my shoes. I know I’ve got to go out. I’ve got to be out until three or four o’clock the next morning, and you don’t even have a kind word.” Then came again the hopeless question: “But what else can we do? If some one had spoke to me nice when I first got started wrong, instead of sending me off to a reformatory, I might a-listened. I was only fifteen then. But when you’re so long in the life—ten years it is for me—lI tell yer there ain’t no use. That’s all—it’s too late now.”

Rose spoke the truth. She had become enslaved by cocaine, by the drink and by the “‘life.”” She was taking her medicine.

A NEWCOMER TO PROSTITUION

A sweet faced, light-haired girl enters the court room through the prisoners’ door. Her head is lowered as if to hide her face from the spectators in the court. All the time, as she told me later, the words of an older girl in the detention cell rushed through her mind. “Get up yer nerve and quit yer cryin’, Kid; give ’em a phony name an’ address; keep shy of the probation woman; tell ’em yer 22, and pretend yer an old one at the game.”

Kathleen looked up for a moment at the kindly face of the magistrate, as if determined not to let anyone know she had been crying. The judge turned to the complaining officer and said quickly, in a monotone, “‘Swear-to-tell-the-truth-the-wholetruth-and-nothing-but-the-truth,-so-help-you-God.” The officer took the oath. Then he proceeded to give evidence against the girl—how she had solicited him on the street and had offered to take him to a neighboring hotel. As horrible details were being recounted, Kathleen kept her eyes fixed upon the floor. ‘‘Guilty or not guilty?” questioned the magistrate. “What the officer says is true,” Kathleen answered quietly.

The judge looked at the paper which he had in his hand, and read from the complaint. “Twenty-two years old?” he questioned. “Yes,” was the reply. ‘‘How long have you been on the street?”’ “Two years,” was the answer.

I had noted the youthful appearance of the girl, her sensitive face, and her manner so different from the other women. I saw that she had been crying, and judged, in spite of her answers, that she was a newcomer to prostitution. The judge spoke to me for a moment and then turned to Kathleen: “Go inside and tell the truth to this lady.”

I talked earnestly with Kathleen; heard the story that her parents were dead and that she had no relatives in the city; learned the address of the furnished room where she had been living, and the different stores where she had worked as a saleswoman. She said that she had left school three years before and had worked for over two years. ‘‘How then have you been two years on the street?” I questioned. ‘Did you solicit while working?”’ She denied this, and soon admitted that she had been but four months “in the life.” She had been obliged to get her “working papers”’ as soon as she could, and “‘didn’t have much chance for education.”’ ‘‘Then you are seventeen years old,” I said. Kathleen admitted it. ‘They told us girls got off easier if they said they were older and had been a long time out,”’ she explained.

The judge permitted Kathleen to go to Waverley House for the night, while her story was being verified. We found that the name and address were false, but finally learned the truth. “T couldn’t believe that anyone would really help me, but now that I know you mean good for me, I'll tell you all the truth,” she said.

‘“‘After my mother died, my father left us and we didn’t have even enough to eat. I had been earning $5 a week in a store, but I couldn’t look after the children and go to work every day too. Someone told me to tell the Gerry Society. Then the officer came and took the children away. I went to court and they made my father pay for the children in homes. I hated to see my little sister and brother get put away.

“After our home broke up, I went as a waitress in a Long Island hotel, and there I met the man who promised to marry me. I know now he never meant it. When I felt sick, he said T shouldn’t work any more, and he brought me to a furnished room to stay till my baby was born. He went out that first day and said he’d come back at night. But he never came, and I didn’t have any money at all. ‘He’ll never come back,’ the girl on the parlor floor told me, when she saw how much I was worrying. ‘Why don’t you go out and get money and nice clothes like the rest of us do?’ she asked me, and she showed me all the fine things she had. I thought she meant for me to go to work and I said, ‘Ill go out tomorrow and look for a job if only I feel better.’ ‘Oh, I mean an easier way,’ she said. Then she told me all about it.

“T was all discouraged and I gave right in to her. She took me on the streets, and the man who lived with her took us to some of those cafés and dancing places. He helped her to break me in. I gave all the money I made to her and she said she’d mind it for me. Sometimes it was as much as $25 on a Saturday night, and once it was $40. But I didn’t have anything from it,—no good clothes or nothing. I said I was going to leave her and go to work, but she wouldn’t give me a penny. She said her fellow had spent it. Finally, I did leave and I intended to look for work, but I was so shabby I knew no one would give me a job. I stayed for three days in a charity home and slept in a room with a lot of old women. Most of them had been drinking, I guess. We had horrid tin plates to eat from and no good place to sleep. My, it was awful there!

“T thought I’d-go out just a few nights more till I could get a few things to wear, and after that I’d stop it all. Then I got arrested. It’s a dreadful thing, I know. At first I used to cry every night to think what wrong I was doing. But it’s different after a while. Oh, I'll come every day to report if only the judge will give me one more chance.” :

An investigation was made, and the next night, when the case was called and the true story told to the judge, Kathleen was placed on probation.

THE, GIRL) OF; THE CALL FLAT

A short, fair-haired girl, Margaret King, was before the judge charged with violation of the tenement house law, living as a prostitute in a tenement house. Annie Clarke, an older and hardened looking woman, stood beside her charged with maintaining a disorderly resort. The magistrate listened attentively to the officer’s story and then turned to the younger defendant. “Mrs. Clarke called me on her ’phone and I went up to her call flat,” said Margaret. ‘‘When I went into the room a man was sitting there and she introduced him to me. He said, ‘Who will I pay?’ and she took a ten dollar bill from him. Then he blew his whistle and this other officer came in.” When Margaret turned toward her companion, she saw the flushed face and the look of anger. ‘I have nothing to say,” said the call-house keeper, in a bitter, stinging tone, as she realized that this girl, who she had supposed would surely “stand by” her, had actually turned against her.

Margaret was twenty years old, pretty and apparently refined, judging from her words and the tone of her voice. She had been told by the judge to tell the truth, and she had no thought of lying to protect her companion. As she stood talking with me after the trial was over, she said, ‘I didn’t think I could ever talk in court, but I had to answer the truth, didn’t I? She was advertising it as a massage parlor in a weekly paper, but it wasn’t a massage parlor at all. If I had known that she advertised like that, I wouldn’t have gone up there. I supposed it was like other call flats ’'d known. I used to go up to those different places whenever I was called by ’phone. Usually I got $10, and I gave $4 to the woman who keeps the place. Oh, there are hundreds of those places! The book the police got last week when they caught the fifteen-year-old girls in a raid, had a list of 400, you know. When you go to a call house, the lady pretends she doesn’t know what you are doing. That is the way she gets out of it. Girls like to go to call houses because they are freer and make a lot more money. I wouldn’t think of going on the streets. I pity the street girls so. The other night I met a nice little girl only seventeen years old. She was crying and she begged me to get her into one of these good houses. She has a Jewish fellow and she’s awfully afraid of him. Perhaps you could do something to get her away. Once he said he was going to put her two eyes out with hat pins. I never mixed up with bad men like that. My people are such that I couldn’t do it. I have always been in the best of places and gone with the finest people. I couldn’t stand anything low. You see my uncle was awiul good to me always, and my grandmother would die if she ever thought I was a bad girl. I alwavs used to live at home with my grandmother.

“Twice I worked in the store at holiday-time and earned $3 a week. Then I went off with a show and got eighteen and twenty dollars. When a girl goes on the stage there are all sorts of temptations. If it isn’t the manager, it’s the leading man in the show who is following her around. After the show most every one of the girls goes out to have something to eat and they go on eating and drinking till early in the morning. And that was the way,—it was all because I got drunk. I had been with the show three weeks and we were on one-night stands. I began as a dancer in the pony ballet. The ponies are the smallest, you know. Sooner or later, most all the show girls get kept. When I came to New York, I met the man who kept me for nearly a year. He wasa nice English gentleman and lived in the swellest _ hotel. The first mght I met him he gave me $20,—just for luck, he said,—and he asked me to meet him the next day. I thought it was grand to get so much money. I used to meet him nearly every afternoon and we dined in a Broadway restaurant. Sometimes he’d have dinner alone, and we’d meet in the evening and go to the theatre together. Healways gave me $20anight. He thought I lived with my grandmother and had to get home at twelve o’clock sharp. I wouldn’t have got so much money, if he hadn’t thought I was so good. But I went to live in a hotel where my bedroom, sitting-room and bath cost me $30 a week. In the daytime I went around to theatres and luncheons and to see my friends. I never went with common fellows or girls that go on the street,—only with show girls or kept girls.

“When the old man went back to England, I went back to the show. Then I met a young Wall street man. He didn’t have so much money, but he bought me clothes and gave me ten or twenty dollars whenever I needed it. ”’I'was after that I came to Mrs. Clarke’s house. I know I didn’t have to do it like other girls, because I have a good home; but you don’t always think of those things before. You don’t know how far you're going when you first start going around.”

“Probation for six months,’ was the judge’s word to Margaret when the time for sentence came. ‘And you,” he continued, turning to Mrs. Clarke, ‘‘are held in $1,500 bail for trial in the court of Special Sessions.”

Io SLAVERY OF PROSTITUTION

A RUNAWAY GIRL

“Associating with dissolute and vicious persons in danger of becoming morally depraved,’ was the charge against sixteen-year-old Florence White when frightened, bewildered, and ashamed she stood before the judge. She was resigned to any fate that might befall her, and because of her father’s many threats, she expected the worst.

As the name of her father was called, a tall, gaunt man hurriedly ascended the bridge. “I refuse to give her another chance. I want her put into an institution where she can’t get out till she is twenty-one,” he said to the judge, in an excited, determined tone. “I threatened to bring her here two weeks ago and she ran away. I’ve searched for her night and day ever since and to-night I caught her. She’s been living with a man— she can’t deny it.”

When the judge spoke to Florence about returning to her home, she assumed an obstinate and defiant manner. “I don’t care what you do with me,” she said, “but Ill not go home. My father drove me away and now I'll stay away.” The magistrate sent the girl in to the probation officer for help in solving the problem. Relieved of the tension of the court, Florence’s defiant spirit disappeared. She covered her face with her hands and cried. When she regained composure, she said, ‘‘I’m sorry now for it all. I never thought it would come to this. JI don’t mind so much for myself, but I hate to worry my mother. Id never have left my home if my father hadn’t threatened all the time to put me away. He called me all kinds of names and I knew nothing could be worse than home.

“Fe was always mean to me from a little child up. I always feared him and disliked him. J admit I made one mistake, and he’s never forgiven me for it. He casts it up to me all the time and is always suspecting me of things. That was nearly two years ago, when we lived in New Mexico on a big ranch not far from Santa Fé. Raymond, a doctor’s son, used to ask me to go

AS SEEN IN THE NIGHT COURT II horseback riding and take me to parties. He would meet me every night after school and we would ride home together. One day he told me he loved me better than anyone in all the world and asked me to marry him. We knew my father would never consent, so we planned to go off at night and get married in a little town near by. But we had to cross the prairies past my house, and somehow my mother caught us. That ended our going away. I owned up everything to mother and they made a terrible time of it. Father wouldn’t speak to me for days and wouldn’t let me go off the ranch or even out of the house. I was just like a prisoner there. When my grandfather died, mother had to come right away east, and father was to come in two weeks and bring me with him. I planned to meet Raymond the day before I was to leave, and he begged me not to go. He said he could never live without me and asked me if I still would marry him. I went with him to a house behind a poolroom that night, so that my father wouldn’t find me. Raymond promised to go ahead to Denver and prepare everything and then come back and get me. I waited and waited for him, but he never came. Then a friend of my father’s found me and took me off to a convent. I came east with two Catholic sisters who were going to Boston, and they left me here in New York.