The Girl That Disappears: The real facts about the white slave traffic

Front matter

BY GEN. THEODORE A. BINGHAM Former Police Commissioner for Greater New York

BOSTON RICHARD G. BADGER THE GORHAM PRESS 1911

Copyright, 1911, by Richard G. Badger.

Chapter 1: Nameless and Unknown

I

NAMELESS AND UNKNOWN

DURING my three and a half years as Commissioner of Police of Greater New York, no experience affected me more than an incident which in itself was considered worth no more than a paragraph in the newspapers. Identically the same incident has happened in a dozen cities, allowing, of course, for variation in details.

It was at the hour when the city was on its way home from work. Crowds of men and girls filled the sidewalks and overflowed the streets. The trolley cars clanged their way slowly, drivers of drays and wagons kept up a chorus of warning shouts as they threaded their horses in and out the procession. Even with all the care that drivers and motormen can exert, accidents happen. On this particular day a girl darted in front of a trolley car. She was ground under the wheels. Muscular arms lifted the heavy trucks. Some one sent in a call for an ambulance, but before its gong was heard in the distance the girl was dead.

As a rule it is not impossible to identify almost at once, even an obscure girl thus suddenly cut off, but in this case search of the girl's body revealed not one single clue to her identity. She was literally nameless and unknown.

The body was removed to the morgue and an appeal sent to the newspapers in the hope of identification. And the most terribly sad feature of the tragedy was the number of men and women who flocked to the morgue—fathers and mothers and relatives of girls who had "disappeared." They had read in the newspapers of the accident, and despite disparities in the printed description and the appearance of their own lost one, they came to the morgue in the fearful hope of finding her.

Chapter 2: Where Do the "Lost" Girls Go?

II

WHERE DO THE "LOST" GIRLS GO?

THIS story is one of many that could be told to illustrate the sinister fact that every year thousands of young girls disappear from their homes in the cities or go from the small towns to the cities and drop out forever from all knowledge of their families. What becomes of them? Where do they go? Why do they go? Into whose hands do they fall?

Some of them go down to nameless graves, but more go to a fate infinitely worse. What that fate is we all know, in a vague way at least; but, unfortunately, few of us are willing to realize that the thing is of any real concern to us personally. Not because we are heartless or cold or selfish do we Americans ignore the fact that we have a terrible social problem at our doors. No; our unwillingness to look the facts squarely in the face is due solely to inherited Puritanism. We have allowed ourselves to become convinced that we are morally superior to the people of Europe. Our belief in our superior purity is founded on ignorance or hypocrisy. We have made laws saying that the social evil shall not exist. Then we thoroughly blindfold ourselves and raise our hands in horror at any mention of the subject.

The plain, shocking facts are that this American attitude encourages the growth and spread of vice. It makes it possible for a girl to disappear from your town, from your own neighborhood, and be drawn into the net of the underworld. And until we overcome our timidity—and hypocrisy—and go after the situation frankly, vigorously, and openly, the social evil will continue to grow. It thrives on secrecy and hypocrisy.

It is time to discuss the whole question of our social demoralization without sensationalism or prejudice. It is time to take stock of the situation. We should get all the available data on the subject, consider it dispassionately, just as we would any other problem that affects our national life, see just what can be done in the way of a remedy, and then set about putting this remedy into effect.

I am willing to do my part by showing you the under-world as it is revealed to a chief of a police department in a great city. You must do your part by resolving to abandon timidity and hypocrisy. Do not hesitate to talk openly and frankly of the social evil in your town. Drive the facts out into the open, where every one must see them. If any considerable proportion of our citizens would do this for a year or two we would soon have this horrible problem under control at least.

So far as "white slavery" is concerned, if our people could know the facts, and could become convinced that such a thing exists they would rise up in fearful indignation and wipe it clean away from civilization.

Chapter 3: "White Slavery" is Only a Part

III

"WHITE SLAVERY" IS ONLY A PART

WITHIN the last two years the world has heard a great deal of of what is called the white slave traffic, so much, indeed that the average reader probably believes that the white slave traffic is all there is to our social problem. As a matter of fact, it is only a part of it. The trouble is the public does not know the facts. What it has been given is a mass of unrelated and, for the most part, misunderstood or misinterpreted statements.

On the one hand the public has been told that there exists a regularly organized and incorporated body of men who live by enslaving women, that this body exists on an international scale, and that women are shipped like cattle from one side of the ocean to the other. On the other hand the public is assured that no such organization is in existence.

In the minds of one part of the public every woman of the under-world is a "white slave." Another half of the population scouts the idea that any woman is a white slave, and there we are.

The fact is that the social problem is a great deal wider and deeper than the published statements about the white slave traffic give any indication. But first let us take up and dispose of this particular phase of the social evil.

There is absolutely no question of the existence to an appalling extent of women who are veritable white slaves. At least 2,000 of them are brought into the country every year; brought in like cattle, used far worse than cattle, and disposed of for money like cattle. They are enticed from their homes by deceit, by promises of big pay for easy work in the United States, the land of gold. Generally the picture of what they are to find in this country is painted by one of their own countrymen, a man who has been in the United States and has returned for the fixed purpose of finding girls to take back with him. They do not know his real purpose until they are far from home. My observation and the police records convince me that fully ninety-five per cent. of all the so-called white slaves are foreigners, principally girls from France, Italy, Germany and Hungary. Very few of them understand English at all. This is necessarily so. It is part of the system to keep them ignorant of the language, ignorant of American customs, ignorant of their rights under American law. Otherwise, their masters would have difficulty in keeping them under subjection.

This does not mean, by any means, that girls from our own country—especially girls from small towns—are not drawn into the underworld by processes of deception practically identical to those used in Europe. Far from it. Time after time I have found where some scoundrel has lured a girl from home by promises or even by mock marriage and sold her or left her to the underworld. But she does not become a white slave. This distinction is rather difficult to grasp, but there is a distinction. The white slave, as we use the term in the police business, is a woman whose earnings are collected by a man. Why, you ask, would any woman permit that; why would not she appeal to the nearest policeman rather than live the life she lives and get in return the pittance her master allows her? A girl used to the ways of the United States will not submit for long; but a girl in a strange land, among strange people, can be cowed into doing so. Appeal to the police? Why, she has been terrorized into believing they would send her to prison if it were not for her mas- ter. That is why it is easier for a white slaver, when his victim dies—and the average life of a woman in the underworld scarcely exceeds five years—to go to Europe and bring a new victim from there. Easier and cheaper, he figures, in the long run.

As far back as 1902 the governments of Europe were well aware that there was such a thing as an international traffic in women. In July, 1902, delegates from various powers met in Paris and completed a project of arrangement for the suppression of white slave traffic. Within two years the stipulations of this project were signed by the governments of every European state. The Government of the United States was the last to sign, and was the last to bring itself to take any action. By an act of Congress of the United States in February, 1907, there was created a Congressional Immigration Commission to inquire into the traffic. Unfortunately the appropriation made was not large enough to enable the work of the commission to be especially valuable.

The white slave agitation reached a high point in 1908 and 1909. Various organizations and individuals became interested in investigations; newspapers and magazines took up the subject, and during the New York municipal campaign in the fall of 1909, one of the chief arguments used against Tammany Hall was the charge that white slavery had flourished in New York City under Tammany administrations.

Tammany, consequently, suffered severely in the 1909 election. The white slave charges got beneath the skin of the men who rule this powerful political organization. Before long the newspapers announced that a special grand jury would be appointed to investigate white slavery. It was obvious that something had to be done to "cleanse the fair name of our city," and incidentally to put Tammany back into some kind of dignity. The powers, which had persistently and consistently fought every moment, every piece of legislation which looked to the protection of women and girls, now announced, through a Tammany judge, a special grand jury to make a thorough inquiry into the white slave traffic in New York City.

The grand jury began its labors January 3, 1910. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., at first reluctant to assume the duties of foreman of the jury, finally accepted his responsibilities with earnestness and sincerity. Learning that the District Attorney's office was short of funds, Mr. Rockefeller offered the sum of $20,000 for purposes of investigation. This offer was declined by the Mayor, and the Board of Estimates made a special appropriation of $20,000 for the use of the District Attorney.

Of course none of these things was accomplished in silence. In fact, had the inquiry been instituted by friends and near relatives of the traffickers in women's shame, these men could not have been more effectually placed upon their guard. They were fairly megaphoned that they were in immediate danger of apprehension. Every edition of the daily papers shouted threats and warnings of what the special grand jury was about to do.

Charles S. Whitman, who had been elected District Attorney on an anti-Tammany ticket, and his assistants manifestly were working under extremely difficult conditions. White slavers carry on their business so quietly and shrewdly that detection and conviction is almost impossible even under the most favorable conditions. With all the newspapers trumpeting the danger, the white slave forces made themselves most inconspicuous and careful.

Chapter 4: Why the Grand Jury's Investigation Was Apparently a Failure

IV

WHY THE GRAND JURY'S INVESTIGATION WAS APPARENTLY A FAILURE

THE work of the Rockefeller grand jury was in charge of Judge T. C. O'Sullivan, of the General Sessions Court. Judge O'Sullivan was elected to his position in 1905 on a Tammany ticket. Before that time he had been in turn counsel for the contracting company of Charles F. Murphy, leader of Tammany Hall, a State Senator, a Tammany Assemblyman and an active Tammany worker for years.

The grand jury's work dragged on through the winter and spring. Throughout Judge O'Sullivan insisted that the only point at issue was whether there existed a formal organized corporate body of men who were associated in the business of traf- ficking in women. It had to be a formal organization, not an informal one; the kind that could be got at with indictments, or Judge O'Sullivan would have none of it.

Eventually an effort was made to offer a presentment of the jury's findings so that the jury might be dismissed. Judge O'Sullivan refused to receive the presentment and relieve the jury of its responsibilities. "I will receive nothing but indictments," was his answer to Mr. Rockefeller.

Some weeks later he did receive the presentment, read it, and dismissed the jury with these words:

"Your answer to the main question submitted to you is a merited rebuke to the slanderers of the cleanest and greatest city in the world."

Grand jury presentments are given to the press only after they have been filed. This particular presentment was not filed until the time for publishing it in the evening papers was past However, rather than disappoint the reporters, Judge O'Sullivan offered to tell them what the presentment contained. And it was the judge's interpretation, or his summary of the contents of the presentment and not the presentment itself, which was published in the newspapers.

The newspapers blazoned forth to the world the statement that the "Rockefeller Jury Reports No White Slavery," and the news articles read thus:

The presentment exonerated the city of being a clearing-house for organized traffic in leading young women into lives of shame and trafficking in them; it exonerated the New York Independent Benevolent Association by name from any share in such enterprise; it found a surprisingly large number of individuals engaged in leading young women astray and disposing of them to keepers of disorderly houses; a number of recommendations were made for the suppression of vice in the city.

What the presentment really said was this:

It appears, from indictments found by us and from the testimony of witnesses, that trafficking in the bodies of women does exist and is carried on by individuals acting for their own individual benefit, and that these persons are known to each other and are more or less informally associated.

We have also found that associations and clubs, composed mainly or wholly of those profiting from vice, have existed, and that one such association still exists. These associations and clubs are analogous to commercial bodies in other fields, which, while not directly engaged in commerce as a body, are all as individuals so engaged.

This is how the grand jury "exonerated" The New York Independent Benevolent Association:

After an exhausted investigation into the activities of the association and of its members, we find no evidence that the association, as such, does now or has never trafficked in women, but that such traffic is being, or has been, carried on by various members as individuals.

This much was allowed to get into the papers, but the rest of the paragraph was discreetly omitted. Here it is:

We find that the members of this association are scattered in many cities throughout the United States. From the testimony adduced it appears probable that the social relation of the members and the opportunity thereby afforded of communicating with one another in various cities have facilitated the conduct of their individual business.

After citing a trenchant example of the closeness of relationship between the members of this exonerated band of worthies, the presentment goes on to state that by their own confession practically every member of the association is now, or has been in the not remote past, engaged in the operation of dis- orderly houses or in living upon the proceeds of women's shame. The document continues:

They claim, however, that all members who have been convicted of a crime are expelled from the organization when the proof of that fact has been submitted, the offense apparently being not the commission of a crime, but conviction. It would appear that this procedure is for the purpose of protecting the individual if possible, and failing in that, of freeing the association from criticism.

In reading the newspaper's reports of the Rockefeller findings, and comparing them with the original document, I am reminded of the old patent medicine man's system of preparing testimonials. He would receive a letter:

For years I have suffered from rheumatism, stomach troubles, and near-sightedness. I have used four bottles of your Elixir of Life. I followed directions carefully and the stuff is no good. I want my money back.

John Jones.

P. S. I poured half of the last bottle down a wood chuck's hole. It worked a perfect cure. The wood chuck never came back.

When the letter appeared among his testimonials it read as follows:

For years I have suffered from rheumatism, stomach trouble, and near-sightedness. I have used four bottles of your Elixir of Life. … It worked a perfect cure.

John Jones.

Chapter 5: Girls at $60 and $75 Each

V

GIRLS AT $60 AND $75 EACH

ALTHOUGH the grand jury conscientiously admitted that they could not find the organized and incorporated traffic insisted upon by Judge O'Sullivan as the only game they were pursuing, the presentment recorded fifty-four indictments as a part of the work of the District Attorney's office. It also reported five self-declared dealers in women who had agreed to supply human flesh and blood to the grand jury's agents, but because of the fear aroused by the newspaper accounts of the grand jury's activities only two of these sales actually were effected. Two of these girls in one sale brought $75 a piece, the other two in the other sale, $60 each.

All of these dealers boasted to the investigators of the extensive local and inter-state operations they had been able to carry on without fear of interference before the convening of the grand jury. They specifically named cities to which they had forwarded women regularly, and described their operations in the recent past as free from danger.

Of course the white slave dealers have no international formal or incorporated business organization. There could be none in the very nature of things; but, as the grand jury said, there is international traffic carried on by individuals. This was established beyond a reasonable doubt by the investigation started by the congressional commission. This congressional investigation showed that there was a connected chain of men and women trafficking in girls brought into this country to be used and sold as prostitutes. The chain has it largest center in New York and in Chicago, and branch connections in many other cities. It operates most freely in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Nome, Alaska, Omaha, Denver and New Orleans.

Chapter 6: How White Slave Traffic is Carried on

VI

HOW WHITE SLAVE TRAFFIC IS CARRIED ON

FAIRLY well established prices are maintained for women, and they are referred to in letters that have been found as "stock." Few of these women are ruined or clubbed into submission after they reach the United States. London is known throughout the under-world as "the great breaking-in ground" for white slaves.

The majority of the men engaged in the traffic also are foreigners. One of the principal members was a Frenchman, Alphonse Dufaur, living in Chicago. His books of account showed that his earnings as an importer exceeded $100,000 a year. After he and his wife were arrested they fled and forfeited bonds in the sum of $25,000.

Another man, high in the ranks of the chain was Henry Lair, who ran a flourishing establishment in Chicago and San Francisco. One of the chief New York members was Louis Paint, both of these men were apprehended and are now serving penitentiary sentences.

In Chicago, where the most dramatic revelations were made, United States District Attorney Sims appointed one of his assistants, Harry Parkin, to make a detailed report on conditions in the so-called Levee district of the town. In the worst quarters of the town Mr. Parkin found houses where women were kept veritable prisoners. The windows were stoutly barred in these houses, the doors were padlocked, and the miserable inmates of the place were practically without clothing. Parkin found plenty of proof not only of the sale and barter of girls, natives as well as foreign, but he found evidence that the sales were carried on under the protection of the police.

The agitation resulting from this report was so great as to shake up the entire police force and to destroy for the time being at least an organized system of graft which reached pretty high up in police and political circles. The notorious Gingles case was given the widest publicity of all these graft cases.

The Gingles girl was an Irish lace-maker. In Chicago she fell into the hands of a notorious group of women procurers, and, according to her story, was tricked into going to a Wabash Avenue hotel. By her sworn statement she was horribly mistreated by certain politicians. She was found gagged and bound in a bath room of the hotel. After she made her charges against the women and the politicians, one of the women, a dealer in lace, had the girl arrested on a charge of stealing lace from her.

The young lace-maker was warmly defended, and the money for her maintenance and her legal expenses was provided by club- women of Chicago. Perhaps this is the first instance in which a woman of the underworld was defended by an organization of women of high social standing. Members of the Chicago Club and a number of outside club women, led by Mrs. Ellen M. Henrotin, a society woman, raised money for the girl's defense, insisted upon a fair and impartial trial, even attended the hearings, in order to give moral support to the case.

But the case was simply a mass of contradictions of every kind, and one couldn't get head or tail of the thing. Everybody was found "not guilty," including the girl. It was simply hushed up, and the only thing that anybody seemed to want to prove was that no politicians were involved. The girl was sent back to Ireland after it was all over.

I could go on endlessly detailing the breadth of the white slave traffic. I would stake my reputation on my ability to take half a dozen conscientious investigators, and within a year to show five hundred specific cases of women lured from their homes in France, Hungary, or some other European country; taken first to London and there subjected to terrible forms of cruelty; and then brought to this country as slaves in every sense of the world.

Even with all this, white slavery is only a small part of the great social problem. The most important thing about white slavery is that it demonstrates the vast network of energy and skill spent in forcing and artificially stimulating the hideous evil of prostitution.

Chapter 7: Now Man's Business, Not Woman's

VII

NOW MAN'S BUSINESS, NOT WOMAN'S

THIS brings us to a vital, shameful fact, too little known to the general public, but a fact policemen have impressed on them more and more every day; prostitution as it exists as an international traffic and as a part of the life of every one of our big American cities, is no longer a WOMAN'S trade; it is a MAN'S trade. There are women procurers, women importers, and women proprietors, it is true, but taken in the main the business is carried on by men, stimulated far beyond its natural proportions by men, and much of the profits are collected by men.

The girl who disappears lives on somewhere in the under-world for the money profit of men. These men who profit di- rectly from the shame of women fall into two classes—procurers and protectors. The classes overlap one another, and the men are often engaged in both ends of the business. The procurer, or the "cadet" as he is usually known, keeps up the supply of women, which, except for his industrious labors, would fall far below its present volume. For while it is undoubtedly true that women do adopt voluntarily a life of immorality, it is easy to prove that a large proportion of them must be forced or enticed into the life. If women in large numbers were willing to become prostitutes it would not be necessary to have such enormous machinery in order to recruit the ranks. The "cadet" himself would be unnecessary. But so unwilling are women to debase themselves that the "cadet," the dance hall, the Raines Law hotel, false marriages, drink, and even physical force are necessary to keep the hideous thing alive.

Chapter 8: A Typical "Cadet" History

VIII

A TYPICAL "CADET" HISTORY

THE American born cadet, of Irish, Italian, or Jewish extraction, as a rule, is a graduate of the street gang. Usually he is familiar with the whole business of prostitution from his early childhood, and became immoral himself before he was fifteen.

Consider a typical history, a youth whose childhood was spent in an Irish-American neighborhood in the vicinity of Cherry Hill in New York. As the boy played around the front door of his tenement or climbed the stairs to his home he was often accosted by showily dressed women and girls who paid him liberally, according to his standards, to run errands to grocery or corner saloon. While still pathetically young the boy learned the nature of the trade of these women. He earned many quarters by standing on a saloon corner after school and handing their business cards to men passersby.

At twelve a loyal member of a neighborhood gang, the boy was thoroughly sophisticated, entirely cynical in his moral point of view. He had a social ideal which demanded as many of the material comforts and pleasures of life as came within his knowledge without the necessity of purchasing these things with his own labor.

Chapter 9: Boy and Girl Members of Gangs

IX

BOY AND GIRL MEMBERS OF GANGS

PRACTICALLY always these street gangs sooner or later add girls to their membership. These girls, when they are not too young to be employed, are factory operatives, cash girls or packers in department stores, or workers in other unskilled low-waged trades. To them the gang members are heroes, and they are proud to be taken into the gang's confidence and to share the proceeds of its petty thievery.

Sometimes each member of the gang has his girl, sometimes two or three girls are given the honor of quasi-membership in the gang and are the sweethearts of the gang's leaders. In either case immorality develops. Occasionally seduction is accomplished through the medium of the dance hall and its attendant drink evil, but in cases of this sort that is seldom necessary.

In any event the girl who falls, rarely attempts to reform. To her simple mind the one evil act has completely changed her life and character. She has acted the part of an immoral woman, and she believes that she has thereby joined the ranks of the permanently immoral.

In the history of this particular boy the girl was a sixteen-year-old telephone operator. The boy was seventeen, and he was already acquainted with the ways of vice. Although he professed, not insincerely, a sort of an affection for the girl, he began very soon to use her as a means of profit. He did it only occasionally and at periods of financial distress.

This went on for several months, when one day the young girl, with a girl companion of her own age, were arrested on the street, and taken to the night court. Fright- ened half out of his life the boy and the fellow gangster who was responsible for the second girl's delinquency, fled to Jersey City, where they waited in fear and trembling the result of the girl's examination. They might have spared themselves both the terror and the flight, for with the loyalty which girls of this class often possess, they resisted the questionings of the judge and the persuasion of the women probation officers. No amount of cajolery, reasoning or threats were able to induce them to reveal the names of their seducers.

That settled the matter as far as the boy of the incident was concerned. His career once started continued in consistent fashion. As time went on he graduated from the street gang into a district political club. The politicians in command of the district learned to know him as a faithful henchman, and at election times a conscientious repeater and strong arm man. They paid him for his services by protecting him and his "business interests" with the police.

He was now a full fledged "cadet." In the seven or eight years since he met and ruined the little telephone girl he has acted as a procurer of nearly fifty girls. For in this particular case the "cadet" found it more profitable and more temperamentally congenial to sell his victims to others for a stated price, rather than to hang on to them himself and share their earnings.

Chapter 10: Other Instances of Cadets' Work

X

OTHER INSTANCES OF CADETS' WORK

IT may be a matter of profound mystery how these girls are led into a life so terrible. Policemen and women probation officers of the New York night court often come across unbelievable instances of ruin through innocence and ignorance. Not long ago a woman in probation work had brought to the door of her home a child scarcely sixteen years of age. The girl had been brought from a neighboring state by a male procurer. How he made the acquaintance of the girl, a factory worker, is not clear. It is only certain that he offered her easy work in New York City and that when she left her native town she had no idea of the life in store for her. Before she reached New York, however, she knew, but in such manner had her conductor described the life of the tenderloin to her, and so deep was the girl's ignorance of the physical facts of life, that she readily consented to the man's proposal.