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Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
Panders and Their 
 White Slaves 
 
 By 
 CLIFFORD G. ROE 
 
 New York Chicago Toronto 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 
 London and Edinburgh 
 
Copyright, 1910, by 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
 Chicago: 125 No. Wabash Avenue 
 Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. 
 London: 21 Paternoster Square 
 Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street 
 
 &U, \i-?5 
 
To 
 
 My Mother 
 
Preface 
 
 IN the past those engaged in the girl slave 
 traffic have managed to cast a veil of mystery 
 about that business by keeping their opera- 
 tions secret. In their attempt at concealment they 
 have been unconsciously aided by the public at 
 large, by ministers, reformers and' social workers, 
 since the latter too often have been unwilling to 
 talk about the details of a subject so revolting. 
 Yet, this very secrecy has been the chief cause of 
 the success of the nefarious system, for it has 
 hidden from the young girls, who are in the 
 greatest danger, all the methods and devices by 
 which they may be entrapped. 
 
 Since this, the aiding of the evil elements in their 
 worst phases, has been the effect of our scrupulous 
 nicety and dislike for discussing ugly things, it is 
 evident that we must pursue a different course. 
 In order to save hundreds from a life, horrible be- 
 yond words, we must cast aside all false notions of 
 modesty. We must bring to light the methods of 
 those engaged in the business, for we can eliminate 
 it only by education, publicity, legislation and law 
 enforcement. 
 
 With the earnest belief that this is the only 
 means of exterminating the panders who procure 
 girls and sell them into slavery, I have tried in the 
 7 
 
8 Preface 
 
 following pages to set forth thoroughly and hon- 
 estly the details of the white slave traffic and to 
 explain the artifices and methods of the panders. 
 
 The facts which appear in these pages were 
 thrust upon me in the court room. There I heard 
 the terrible stories of the victims, and when I learned 
 of the vast proportions of this atrocious business, I 
 felt I would indeed be unmindful of my duty if I 
 did not use every effort within my power to eradi- 
 cate this evil. In mentioning specific immoral 
 houses in the following pages, I have purposely 
 omitted their names and locations in order to pre- 
 vent advertising these places. The surnames of 
 girls who were procured have likewise been omitted 
 for obvious reasons. 
 
Contents 
 
 1. 
 
 A White Slave 
 
 II 
 
 II. 
 
 The Conviction of a Slave Trader 
 
 19 
 
 III. 
 
 Suspicion Aroused . 
 
 26 
 
 IV. 
 
 Beginning the Fight 
 
 . 33 
 
 V. 
 
 The Confession of a Pander . 
 
 51 
 
 VI. 
 
 Secrets Revealed by Other Panderj 
 
 ; 62 
 
 VII. 
 
 How White Slaves Are Won . 
 
 79 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The Way to Slavery 
 
 . 94 
 
 IX. 
 
 Supplying the Demand 
 
 108 
 
 X. 
 
 A New Enemy .... 
 
 122 
 
 XI. 
 
 Need of New Laws . 
 
 144 
 
 XII. 
 
 The Value of Publicity . 
 
 158 
 
 XIII. 
 
 The Police and the Panders . 
 
 i;6 
 
 XIV. 
 
 The Last of the Chicago-St. Louis 
 
 
 
 Gang 
 
 . 194 
 
 XV. 
 
 The Awakening 
 
 207 
 
 XVI. 
 
 The Lessons That White Slavery 
 
 
 
 Teaches 
 
 216 
 
Panders and Their White 
 Slaves 
 
 'T^ 
 
 A WHITE SLAVE 
 
 HE court room that morning was crowded. 
 I " The next case," called the judge. 
 
 J. A thin, frail young woman, aided by a 
 physician, walked slowly into the court room and 
 took her place on the witness stand. Her face 
 seemed care worn, and her languid expression sug- 
 gested that she had passed through some terrible 
 crisis. 
 
 It does not matter what this girl's name was. 
 Suffice it to say that her first name was Agnes. 
 She said that she lived with her parents on the 
 north side of Chicago ; that she was twenty years 
 old and was a high school graduate. 
 
 "Do you remember meeting a certain young man 
 about a month ago ? " I asked her. 
 
 " Yes," she answered. " I was then employed in 
 an office down-town and one of the girls working 
 in the same building with me suggested that we at- 
 tend a dance on Saturday night. "We went unac- 
 companied, my friend saying that she knew a great 
 many of the boys who would be there. This dance 
 11 
 
12 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 was held at a dance hall, I believe, near the corner 
 of Thirty-first Street and Indiana Avenue. It was 
 there I met this young man, whose first name was 
 John." 
 
 " Will you please go on and state what occurred 
 after you met this young man ? " 
 
 " "We were dancing waltzes and two-steps, and 
 after one of the dances this young man asked me if 
 I wouldn't have some soda water or lemonade to 
 drink, to cool me off. I asked him if there was any 
 place near by where we could get some, and he 
 said, ' Yes, we can get something down-stairs.' 
 
 "We went down-stairs. A great many other 
 young men and young women were going up and 
 down at the same time, and when we got to the 
 bottom of the stairs he took me into a sort of cafe. 
 There were several couples seated at the tables and 
 I noticed some were drinking beer and wine. 
 
 " I asked him where we were, and he said, ' Oh, 
 this is just a cafe.' Looking about me, I saw that 
 this cafe was in the rear of a saloon. 
 
 " He asked me what I would have, and I told him 
 that I would have some soda water. 
 
 " ' They don't keep soda water here, but you can 
 get a lemonade.' Then he ordered two claret 
 lemonades, and we drank them, through straws, 
 after they were served. 
 
 " The music for the next dance had started and 
 we hastened up the stairs. While we were danc- 
 ing, John jollied me and told me that I was very 
 good looking. I thought he was just fine and began 
 
A White Slave 13 
 
 to get sort of ' mashed ' on him. After another 
 dance or so he asked me if I wouldn't like another 
 lemonade, and we went down to the same cafe and 
 had two more claret lemonades. 
 
 " When I began to drink the lemonade I noticed 
 a peculiar taste about it this time and asked John 
 if it were intoxicating, and he said that it was not, 
 but was just like the red lemonade you get at the 
 circus. After drinking it I felt dizzy. It seemed 
 as though my head was whirling round and round. 
 I was sick, and in a few moments I entirely forgot 
 where I was. 
 
 "When I came to, I felt weak and tired. It 
 seemed all darkness about me. My head was sore 
 and I put up my arm to feel for something and my 
 hand clutched bedclothing. For a moment I was 
 startled. I couldn't remember anything ; where I 
 had been or how I got to this room. I tried to 
 raise myself up and look about me, but sank back. 
 I knew I was in bed but everything seemed strange. 
 
 " In a moment a door opened and a bright light 
 shone into the room and a person passed through 
 the door towards me. She turned something on 
 the wall and the room became brilliantly lighted. 
 I gazed at her steadily, trying to recognize who it 
 was. She was dressed like a servant and she was a 
 dark negress. She came over and put her hand 
 upon my head and soothingly said, ' Dearie, how 
 are you ? ' I tried to answer, but my voice failed 
 me. I lay still for a while, and finally I gasped 
 out, ' Where am I ? ' 
 
14 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 " ' You are all right,' said the negress, ' and you 
 will like it here.' 
 
 " She then went out and came back in a short 
 time with a glass of wine, which she put to my lips, 
 and I drank it and fell into a sleep. 
 
 " A day or so later I became stronger and it was 
 then that I first learned where I was. 
 
 " ' Where is my father and mother ? Am I in a 
 hospital or where am I ? ' I asked. 
 
 " The negress, who was at my side, smiled and 
 said, ' I haven't seen your father nor mother, dearie.' 
 
 " I asked her for my clothes that I might go 
 home and she told me that the madam had them 
 locked up. 
 
 " ' Madam,' I said, ' who is the madam ? ' 
 
 " ' Why,' answered the negress, ' she is the lady 
 that runs this place.' 
 
 " * Please, may I see the madam ? ' I cried out, 
 for I was becoming terribly frightened. The 
 negress disappeared and came back with a stout, 
 blond woman, wearing a kimono and a great many 
 diamonds and other jewels. 
 
 " ' I don't know where I am,' I said, ' or how I 
 got here or how long I have been away from home, 
 but I wish to go home right away, because I know 
 that my father and mother will be awfully worried 
 about me if they don't know where I am. I have 
 never been away from home over night in my 
 life.' 
 
 " The woman came up to me and took me by the 
 hand and said, ' Why, you know where you are ; 
 
A White Slave 15 
 
 you can't go home now. You owe me a debt and 
 imtil that debt is paid you cannot leave this house.' 
 
 " ' I owe you a debt,' I cried, ' and for what ? ' 
 
 "'Wby, don't you think you owe me anything 
 for taking care of you here and for the clothes I 
 have bought for you and for the money I have paid 
 the young man who brought you here for his 
 trouble and expense ? Of course you do.' 
 
 " Then she told me to get up and dress and when 
 she handed me a little short red satin dress and 
 some silk stockings, the idea dawned upon me that 
 something awful had happened and that I was in 
 some horrible place. 
 
 " The negress assisted me into my clothes and 
 there I was, gaudily dressed, in a little short skirt 
 that scarcely came to my knees. For what pur- 
 pose, I knew not." 
 
 " Well, what did you do then ? " I inquired. 
 
 The girl seated upon the witness stand flushed 
 and turned from me to the judge in a most appeal- 
 ing manner. She seemed almost exhausted from 
 relating her story and appeared about to faint, as 
 she recalled the memory of those terrible days 
 which followed after she put on her first "house 
 dress " and before she was liberated. 
 
 The bailiff brought her a glass of water and, 
 thus refreshed, she continued to tell her story. 
 
 " I really don't like to tell the terrible things that 
 happened to me there." 
 
 Then, as though lost in thought, the girl sat 
 motionless for several minutes, her face resting on 
 
i6 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 her hand. The muscles in her face began to 
 twitch with emotion, her lips quivered and her 
 hands trembled. She was struggling to keep back 
 the tears that rolled down her cheeks. Finally, in 
 a faltering voice she said : 
 
 " For days and days I pleaded with the madam 
 to let me go home. I was sick. I could not endure 
 the drinking and the awful life any longer." 
 
 Again she hesitated for a moment. " Must I tell 
 how she refused to allow me to write letters to my 
 family at home or to any of my friends ? " she 
 asked. " How she refused to let me use the tele- 
 phone ? Oh ! It is too awful." 
 
 " Were you ill treated there ? " I asked. 
 
 " Yes. They knocked me about and even whipped 
 me. They watched me as a cat does a mouse for 
 fear that I would say something or tell something 
 which I had been forbidden to tell. 
 
 " At first they sent a man to me, whom I thought 
 from his manner I could trust, and I told him of my 
 trouble, and he sjrmpathized with me in my terrible 
 plight and said he would help me escape and tell 
 my family where I was. It was for this that I 
 was whipped, for I found that he was what they 
 called ' a ringer,' and had been sent to me pur- 
 posely to see whether or not I would tell that I was 
 being kept in this place against my will. I found 
 out that they do that with all the new girls, so that 
 they can find out whether or not the girls are dis- 
 obeying orders to keep still about how they got 
 there. 
 
A White Slave 17 
 
 *' The girls are cowed into submission in this way 
 and are afraid and suspicious of every man they 
 meet, because they do not know whether or not he 
 is ' a ringer,' and they have been whipped and have 
 seen others whipped until they become overpowered 
 and their spirits broken, because they find that they 
 are forced into a life from which they cannot 
 escape. 
 
 "I heard other girls in the house tell of how 
 closely they were watched until time had elapsed 
 sufficiently to convince the keeper that they were 
 willing to stay without compulsion. 
 
 " Do you recall where this place is located ? " 
 
 " Yes, it is located at No. Armour Avenue." 
 
 "Do you remember when your father and 
 mother came out to this house on Armour 
 Avenue ? " 
 
 " It was one afternoon. I had finally got a letter 
 slipped out, addressed to my father. When he re- 
 ceived it, he and my mother must have come out 
 immediately, for it was the next afternoon. They 
 wouldn't let them see me, but I heard them talking 
 to the madam down-stairs. They demanded that I 
 be turned over to them. 
 
 " The madam said that she did not know of any 
 such person there. 
 
 " I was going to call out, but I was afraid, both 
 for them and for me because they do such terrible 
 things there. After a while they went away, but 
 were not gone long, and when they came back they 
 had a police officer with them. When I saw the 
 
i8 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 officer, I mustered up courage and ran down-stairs 
 to where they were all standing, and my father 
 threw his arms around my neck and said, ' Oh ! 
 My daughter ! My daughter ! ' I could not speak 
 for fear and shame. 
 
 " The police officer asked the meaning of all this 
 and the madam told him that I was in debt to the 
 house and could not leave until the indebted- 
 ness was paid. She dared any one to take me 
 away from the house as long as I was in debt to 
 her. 
 
 "I was so weak that my knees trembled and 
 shook. 
 
 "The officer looked kind of puzzled and didn't 
 say anything for a little while. Then he told me 
 to go up-stairs and get my clothes. 
 
 " ' I don't know where my clothes are,' I said. 
 
 " Then he turned to the madam and told her to 
 get my clothes quick and to get dressed herself and 
 come to the station with him. 
 
 " I was so overjoyed that I fell sobbing and 
 fainting in my father's arms. I dimly remember 
 a ride in a carriage to the Beulah Home, where I 
 have been ever since my escape from this house, 
 until I was brought into the court this morning." 
 
 " Do you recognize the madam here in the court 
 room ? " she was asked. 
 
 "Yes, I do." And then Agnes pointed her 
 finger at Panzy Williams, who sat in the front of 
 the room, and said calmly, " That is she." 
 
n 
 
 THE CONVICTION OF A SLAVE TRADER 
 
 WITH groans of sorrow and sobs of joy, 
 the mother of the girl, who had lost 
 her daughter and had found her, told 
 how she had gone to the house on Armour Avenue 
 with her husband, and was rebuffed and insulted 
 by Panzy "Williams, the madam, who refused to 
 liberate Agnes, because she owed a debt to the 
 house. 
 
 I glanced from the tear-stained face of the mother 
 to the defendant. She, the dealer in misery, sat 
 there, bland and cold, shameless and unmoved by 
 the mother's appeal made to protect other girls 
 from her own daughter's suffering. 
 
 After other witnesses had testified against the 
 defendant, and the prosecuting attorney had pre- 
 sented all of his evidence, the defendant went upon 
 the witness stand and made a full denial of most 
 of the facts testified to by Agnes. 
 
 She said that Agnes had come to her house of 
 her own free will, and that the girl did not seem 
 to be dazed or unconscious, or even drunk. The 
 defendant said that she had kept Agnes just as she 
 would have kept any other girl. She admitted 
 that Agnes was indebted to the house, this fact 
 having been testified to previously by other wit- 
 19 
 
20 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 She said it had been customary for years 
 for the houses to protect themselves against the 
 girls' running away and not paying the debts they 
 owed, by holding their street clothing or something 
 of that sort. 
 
 After the defendant had concluded her testimony 
 and had been cross-examined, the lawyers for the 
 defendant rested their case. 
 
 As usual in criminal cases, the attorney repre- 
 senting the people made an opening argument, out- 
 lining the evidence introduced, and was followed 
 by the la\A^er for the defendant, who summed up 
 his case as follows : 
 
 " From all the evidence in the case it seems, Your 
 Honour, that this defendant has done nothing that 
 has not been sanctioned by years of custom. If 
 she is to be arrested and prosecuted, why single her 
 out ? "Why not arrest and prosecute the scores of 
 others, who are doing the same thing ? The sys- 
 tem of indebtedness has been recognized for years. 
 Although I know that under the law the landladies 
 of these places cannot hold the clothes of the in- 
 mates, their action is sanctioned by a precedent and 
 custom. It is a matter of self-protection. They 
 do it in order to prevent being cheated out of hun- 
 dreds of dollars every year. 
 
 " In order to get out of pa3dng a just debt, this 
 girl has drummed up a charge that she is being 
 held against her will. The whole case is a farce. 
 The story of Agnes is a myth. It is ludicrous from 
 start to finish. 
 
The Conviction of a Slave Trader 21 
 
 " Is it not more reasonable to believe that this girl, 
 anxious to see the glitter and tinsel of one of these 
 houses, desiring to taste the forbidden fruit, went 
 there at her own request, and then, when found by 
 her parents, in order to make them think she was 
 innocent, in order to gloss over her o-vvn shame, and 
 right herself with her family and friends, told this 
 story of being drugged and taken to the house on 
 Armour Avenue unconscious and against her mil ? 
 Could that be done without attracting attention in 
 a large city like Chicago, where people are passing 
 to and fro almost every minute ? I say, it could 
 not. She is either trying to square herself for her 
 own misdeeds, or she is a notoriety seeker, telling 
 a horrible tale in order that she may be the central 
 figure of sympathy and the head-liner in the news- 
 papers. This, Your Honour, is my theory of this 
 case, and I believe Your Honour, looking at it in 
 the same light, will find the defendant not guilty." 
 
 As the lawyer for the defendant sat down, a 
 murmur ran through the court room, and I could 
 hear those in the audience making remarks in 
 favour of the counsel's argument. Some whis- 
 pered, " She must be a notoriety seeker." Others, 
 " She is trying to square herself -wdth her folks." 
 
 I admit that as I sat there listening to the able 
 argument of the defendant's counsel, I was puzzled 
 to know how to answer him. It seemed to me al- 
 most impossible that such a story as the girl had 
 told could be true, that in this great city a person 
 could be held practically as a slave. 
 
22 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 But I remembered that a month and a half 
 previous to this time, I had heard Henrietta 
 
 B of Duluth, Minnesota., tell how she had been 
 
 lured to a life of vice by Morris Goldstein. I re- 
 called also the simple, sincere, convincing way in 
 which Agnes had told her story in this case. 
 
 Then as the attorney concluded and I sat at the 
 counsellor's table, vaguely conscious of the stir in 
 the court room, and of the defendant's attorney 
 gathering his notes in his hands and again taking 
 his place at the table, I saw certain points in his 
 argument, things which he had nonchalantly as- 
 sumed and which hinted at a great iniquitous busi- 
 ness. Then the firm conviction came over me that 
 this case touched upon a terrible wrong in our 
 social life. As I rose to make my closing argu- 
 ment, I knew by the demeanour of the judge and 
 the murmurings in the court room that I had the 
 labouring oar and that I must convince the judge be- 
 yond a reasonable doubt that the girl's story was true. 
 
 " In conclusion, may it please the court, let me 
 say that I conceive it to be the duty of a State's 
 Attorney to aid the court in arriving at a just and 
 honest verdict. If the evidence did not convince 
 me beyond a doubt that this defendant is guilty, I 
 believe in all fairness that I should have the courage 
 of my convictions and so state to the court. Many 
 times in this court room when some defendant has 
 unwittingly committed a crime, through mistake, 
 or perhaps by compulsion of adverse circumstances, 
 I have asked for leniency in his behalf, but never 
 
The Conviction of a Slave Trader 23 
 
 as long as I can raise my voice will I ask for any- 
 thing but the full penalty of the law for a defend- 
 ant who has committed such a heinous crime as 
 has been committed by this defendant. If the de- 
 fendant did not mean to hold Agnes in captivity, 
 why did she deny the presence of the girl in her 
 house, when the father, the mother and Mr. Rich- 
 ards came there after her ? To me there can be 
 no greater crime in the world than the selling of a 
 girl's soul for so many paltry dollars. 
 
 " If a custom has grown up in this or any other 
 community, such as counsel for the defendant ad- 
 mits to be the fact, shall the owners and mistresses 
 of these houses of shame set up their own laws and 
 their own interpretation of the laws ? Why, as a 
 class, shall they not be subservient to the same 
 laws that all other classes are ? Why have they a 
 right to hold girls' clothing for an indebtedness, 
 except it be for the sole and only purpose of hold- 
 ing over the girl a club to make her become indeed 
 a slave ? They have the same rights to go into 
 courts and collect their debts as any other person, 
 but it is larceny for them to take the girls' clothes 
 and keep them without their consent in order to 
 protect themselves from a self-imposed loan. 
 
 " The defendant, of course, is interested in her 
 own behalf. She is interested in becoming free 
 and she admits only so much as has been shown 
 conclusively by corroboration of other witnesses. 
 But on the other hand, what motive has the girl 
 to lie and to misinform the court ? 
 
Z4 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 " Nothing is sweeter to womanhood than honour. 
 Nothing is grander than the virtue of our Ameri- 
 can women. Has it come to such a pass that they 
 revel in parading their shame before the public ? 
 Ko one can believe that this girl has come into 
 court and told the truth about this nefarious busi- 
 ness for any other reason than that it is the truth 
 and that she may help the others whom she has 
 told about and who have been forced into this ter- 
 rible life. 
 
 "She tells us that the girls' spirits are soon 
 broken down and that they soon become ashamed 
 to face parents and friends, and give up the struggle 
 to better their condition and therefore slave away 
 to pay the indebtedness that has been incurred by 
 kheir sale. Would a girl tell such a story as this to 
 right herself with her family and her friends ? 
 Would she not rather avoid publicity ? Is that not 
 the true instinct of womanhood ? 
 
 " As Your Honour knows, we must watch the 
 demeanour of the witnesses upon the stand, and 
 you yourself have seen how frankly and straight- 
 forwardly this fragile girl has told her story. 
 
 " Counsel has said that this defendant should be 
 a free woman. 
 
 " I say, yes, let her go free when she can returh 
 to this little girl her virtue ; when she can turn the 
 clock back and make this little girl as pure in mind 
 and body as she was before she was taken to this 
 resort. 
 
 "But this she cannot do. A wrong has been 
 
The Conviction of a Slave Trader 25 
 
 committed. She has taken from this giii that 
 which can never be restored, her chastity, her 
 honour and purity. 
 
 " If this girl be a notoriety seeker, as counsel has 
 said, if she is merely trying to right herself for her 
 own misdeeds, I am going to find it out. If, as coun- 
 sel has intimated, other women are doing the same 
 thing, as this defendant has done, if they are di-ag- 
 ging gu'ls into houses through a systematic slavery, 
 if a system of indebtedness holds girls in all these 
 houses, then as an officer of this court, I pledge 
 myself here and now to investigate this matter to 
 the very end, to ferret out the inner recesses of this 
 underground world. If girls are sold as this girl 
 has been, it is slavery, and I shall pursue it to the 
 very end, and if it be a system of slavery, I shall 
 drag it from its hiding place to the light of the 
 day." 
 
 The case was concluded, and on the thirty-first 
 day of January, 1907, the judge rendered a verdict 
 of guilty against Panzy Williams. 
 
 The defendant, after being convicted, was taken 
 to the bureau of identification, popularly known as 
 the "Rogue's Gallery," to contribute her photo- 
 graph, finger prints and measurements to the col- 
 lection there. The woman who had been so calm 
 and suave during all the ordeal of the trial now 
 broke do^vn completely and wept bitterly. She 
 promised then and there to abandon the loathsome 
 business in vice, and is to this day living a decent 
 and upright life. 
 
m 
 
 SUSPICION AROUSED 
 
 FEOM the murmurings just outside the court 
 door in the large outer room where police- 
 men, professional bondsmen, court room 
 visitors and the denizens of the underworld mix in 
 one babbling throng every day, it was evident that 
 the decision of the judge was unpopular. Many of 
 these people said that the judge had made a mis- 
 take in believing the story of this girl and finding 
 the owner of the resort guilty. 
 
 It was probably not generally believed that 
 Agnes' story of her own experiences was true, and 
 certainly few believed her charges that a systematic 
 traffic and sale of girls for immoral resorts existed 
 in Chicago. Although for a long time there had 
 been perhaps a suspicion among the people that 
 something was wrong, to the vast majority the 
 story of procuring slaves for immoral houses 
 seemed to belong to the realm of romance rather 
 than to that of actuality. 
 
 During my argument in this case, I pledged the 
 court to investigate the charges which Agnes had 
 made, and if there was a systematic sale of girls I 
 proposed if possible to expose it. 
 
 It seemed to me that this was a just decision be- 
 cause I recalled that it corroborated two similar 
 26 
 
Suspicion Aroused 27 
 
 cases that had come into my experience, one De- 
 cember 15, 1906, and the other a year or so before, 
 when I was not in the State's Attorney's office, but 
 was engaged in the private practice of law in 
 Chicago. 
 
 At the time when these earlier cases came to my 
 attention, I thought they were isolated cases, but, 
 as I heard the corresponding and parallel testimony 
 of Agnes, I began to suspect that girls actually 
 were being imprisoned in immoral houses under our 
 very eyes. 
 
 As the junior member of a law firm in the year 
 1905 I had to try most of the criminal cases that 
 came to our office. One day a barber, who was 
 employed in a shop near the corner of Wabash 
 Avenue and Twelfth Street, retained our firm to 
 defend a girl named Stella R , who was im- 
 prisoned in the county jail, charged with larceny. 
 During an inter^dew with this girl regarding her 
 case, I learned that she had been an inmate of a dis- 
 reputable house and had been kept there against 
 her will. She said that the keeper of this house 
 had placed a large debt against her and would not 
 permit her to go in the streets without a guard 
 from the house as long as she was in debt. 
 
 A frequent visitor to the house was the barber, 
 who had retained us, and he was well acquainted 
 with the " Madam " of the place. One night, the 
 girl said, she had confided to the barber the fact 
 that because she owed a debt to the owners of the 
 house, she was detained and not allowed her lib- 
 
28 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 erty. He had heard stories of this sort before 
 without paying much attention to them; but on 
 this occasion he was moved by the sincerity and 
 the apparent misery of the girl. That very night 
 he promised that he would aid her in making her 
 escape from the place. They talked over various 
 plans and finally decided that he would ask permis- 
 sion to take the gui to a theatre the next evening, 
 and that, after they were out of the house, neither 
 of them would ever return there again. 
 
 After some discussion between the barber and 
 the madam, the desired permission Avas granted 
 upon the promise of the barber to guard the girl 
 carefully from any one who might speak to her and 
 to return her to the house again after the theatre. 
 The girl was not allowed to wear her own street 
 clothes but was forced to wear the clothes of one 
 of the other girls in the resort. This of course was 
 a means of preventing her escape and making it 
 necessary for her to return with the other gui's 
 clothes. 
 
 Once outside the house the barber secreted 
 Stella in a hotel and she did not return to 
 the disreputable house again. The madam of the 
 house sought the aid of the police department 
 and obtained a warrant for the arrest of the girl 
 for larceny by bailee, that is, for the taking of 
 the clothes that belonged to some one else which 
 had been given to her to wear and to be returned. 
 Thus although her own clothes were locked up and 
 she was not allowed to wear them, she was charged 
 
Suspicion Aroused 29 
 
 with stealing the clothes of another inmate of the 
 house, which she had been inveigled into wearing. 
 The madam knew where the barber was employed 
 and gave his address to the police, who by follow- 
 ing him ascertained the hiding place of the girl, 
 and arrested her. 
 
 After Stella had told this astounding experience, 
 Hon. Judge John Gibbons of the Circuit Court 
 of Cook County was petitioned for a writ of habeas 
 corpus. The petition was granted and the case 
 came up for trial upon this writ. The madam 
 and the inmates of the house were summoned into 
 court, and the judge, after hearing the facts, 
 censured the madam for such a vicious practice, 
 saying that it was a misuse of the courts of justice 
 to have a girl arrested under the circumstances in 
 this case, and he then ordered the madam to turn 
 the girl's clothes and belongings over to her and 
 advised the girl to return the borrowed clothes to 
 the girl who owned them. The writ of habeas 
 corpus was thus sustained and granted and the girl 
 was released from custody. 
 
 The case of the girl from Duluth, Minnesota, 
 which I recalled during the trial of Panzy Williams, 
 came to the notice of the courts December 15, 1906, 
 just ten days subsequent to the opening of the 
 Municipal Courts. 
 
 Morris Goldstein, alias Leroy Devoe, in the 
 
 latter part of 1906, met Henrietta B in front 
 
 of the St. James Hotel in Duluth, Minnesota. 
 Goldstein approached the girl and said : 
 
30 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 " Good-evening. "Where are you going ? " 
 
 The girl told him that she was going home. He 
 answered : 
 
 " Well, can't I talk to you a little ? " 
 
 The girl said, " I don't know you." 
 
 He then explained that he was the manager of 
 a play and would like to get some more girls for 
 his company. Henrietta asked him if there was 
 much money in it, and Goldstein answered : 
 
 " Yes, we pay good prices." 
 
 He then gave the girl a card and told her he 
 wanted to talk with her some other night. He 
 made an appointment to meet her on the second 
 night after that at Second Avenue and Superior 
 Street, near the EoUer Rink. 
 
 The rest of the story I quote in the girl's own 
 words. 
 
 " I met him that night at the appointed place 
 and he walked home with me. On the Avay home 
 he talked about the play and asked me if I had 
 ever had any experience. He said nothing out 
 of the way that night and I then made an appoint- 
 ment to meet him the next Saturday night at the 
 Minnesota Candy Kitchen at six-thirty P. M. I 
 had told my folks that I was to meet the manager 
 of a play before I left home Saturday. He never 
 talked to my folks but sent letters and contracts to 
 them ; some of them he sent by me and some he 
 mailed to them. I wanted him to go out and talk 
 to my folks but he said he was too busy. 
 
 "I left Duluth one week later with Goldstein 
 
Suspicion Aroused 31 
 
 at night on tlae day coach, sitting up all night. 
 We left Duluth about seven o'clock, p. m., — Gold- 
 stein paid the fare, — and we arrived at the l^orth- 
 western Depot in Chicago in the morning about 
 nine o'clock. He then took me to the Teco Hotel 
 on West Madison Street. We then went out and 
 had lunch and went to the Haymarket Theatre in 
 the afternoon ; then we had dinner at the Empire 
 Restaurant. We then went down-town and looked 
 at different buildings and things, and then took an 
 elevated train, arriving at the hotel shortly after 
 eleven o'clock. 
 
 " He told me that he was out of money and I 
 would have to support him by sporting. I told 
 him I wouldn't be a sport and ruin my life for 
 any one, and he said sports didn't have their lives 
 ruined. He said he was going to put me in one of 
 the swell sporting houses, and he named a couple 
 of them, but I don't remember the names. He 
 said, ' I brought you here to earn my living, and 
 I have not done any work for five years and have 
 been a cadet for that time.' I asked him what a 
 cadet meant, and he said it was a man whom a 
 woman supported by sporting. He said he would 
 be my cadet, and that I was to give him what I 
 made and he would put it in the bank, and while 
 he had time nights he would go out and gamble 
 and that we would soon have eight hundred 
 dollars. 
 
 " Goldstein brought a woman up to my room 
 who was a sport named Porter. She came up 
 
32 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 with an Italian who seemed to be a friend of Gold- 
 stein's. The Italian and Goldstein left the room 
 and left the woman in the room with me and she 
 asked me if I wanted to go to sporting. She said 
 there was a lot of money in it and she wanted me 
 to go down to her house. This woman remained 
 with me all night. The next morning Goldstein 
 awakened us and as the woman was leaving the 
 room she tried to get me to go with her. He said 
 I had a yellow streak and threatened to kill me. 
 My reason for remaining after he brought me here 
 for sporting purposes is that he threatened me if I 
 left and I was afraid to leave. I am at present 
 nineteen years old. I will be twenty years old the 
 thirteenth day of May." 
 
 The record of Morris Goldstein, who lived on 
 Milwaukee Avenue, Chicago, shows that he was ar- 
 rested on December 15, 1906, for attempting to 
 pass in a Chicago store a check which he had forged. 
 It was after his arrest that the Duluth girl was 
 discovered. Goldstein was found guilty, and the 
 girl was sent home. 
 
 Were these isolated cases, or were they specific 
 instances of a well defined trafiic? They had 
 aroused in me the suspicion that a slave traffic in 
 girls had been secretly developed and was being 
 carried on, hidden from the public notice. 
 
BEGINNING THE FIGHT 
 
 WE started an investigation, which was the 
 beginning of the fight against the 
 panders, immediately after the experi- 
 ences of Agnes had been related in the court. This 
 investigation was greatly aided by the fact that on 
 the fifth day of December, 1906, the old Justice 
 and Police court system had been abolished in 
 Chicago. In place of the old courts, seething with 
 obnoxious practices and customs, was created the 
 Municipal Court with wider latitude and more 
 power than the former Justice and Police Courts 
 had. 
 
 The comfortable salaries paid, and the excellent 
 standing of the court, invited lawyers, high in the 
 profession, to become aspirants to the Municipal 
 Court bench and consequently skilled lawyers were 
 elected to serve as judges in the new court. These 
 judges originated various reforms and gave their as- 
 sistance to the investigation. 
 
 In the latter part of January and also in the 
 months of February and March, we quietly inquired 
 into the methods of the underworld. 
 
 Fu-st we turned to those good mission workers, 
 who had been labouring in the brothels and slum 
 regions. With all the good people of this type 
 
34 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 whom I could find I held many extended interviews 
 in my office. The tales they told me of the under- 
 world were terrible and at first I was inclined to be- 
 lieve that they were somewhat coloured by prej- 
 udice. The Keverend Ernest A. Bell, who aided in 
 the trial of Panzy Williams, and Deaconess Lucy M. 
 Hall, known as the " Mother of outcast girls and 
 women," in particular, told me of their experiences 
 in the districts. 
 
 Deaconess Hall had worked in the red light dis- 
 trict for over ten years, personally visiting houses 
 of ill repute and talking with the inmates wherever 
 she was allowed to do so, and in these years she 
 had gathered a great fund of information which 
 now she submitted to me. In her quiet way she 
 had gone about unmolested. She had come to be 
 regarded almost as an angel by the victims of the 
 vice system and many of them had confided in her 
 when they would not and could not have confided 
 in any one else. Her protests in the past against 
 this unspeakable slavery in gu^ls had been un- 
 heeded. She had laboured almost alone and was 
 powerless to do much more than sympathize and 
 console. 
 
 The Eeverend Mr. Bell had established a Mid- 
 night Mission in the heart of the underworld dis- 
 trict. With a little band of co-workers he had 
 preached on the corners and prayed at the front 
 doors of the dens of shame. From the outside he 
 had heard the cries of the inmates when they were 
 whipped. He had watched those who would escape 
 
Beginning the Fight 35 
 
 as they were caught in the meshes of the law upon 
 the complaint of the resort proprietors, who con- 
 trived to prevent these girls from wriggling out of 
 their clutches. He had followed them down to the 
 jail and watched the proceedings in the court room. 
 He had seen them fined and the fines paid by the 
 bondsmen who were in league with the resort 
 o^vners, or their paid managers or hirelings. He 
 had seen these same girls led back to the same 
 resorts, free from the entanglements of the law but 
 again captives and slaves of the disorderly house 
 landlords. 
 
 I supplemented these interviews by talks with the 
 hangers-on about the court rooms, men who had 
 known the districts for years and had grown up and 
 become a part of them. As I gathered this informa- 
 tion I discovered that I was entering upon a fight, 
 practically single handed, against some of the most 
 skillful and shifty men that the oifice of the State's 
 Attorney had ever dealt with. 
 
 There were no funds at the disposal of this office 
 with which to employ detectives, and the only 
 detective force the State's Attorney's office had 
 was four men from the police department of the 
 city. These men were always kept busy in going 
 out of town and bringing back prisoners who had 
 been arrested in other cities. 
 
 Because of this lack of funds and lack of detect- 
 ives, I often found it necessary, as had other As- 
 sistant State's Attorneys in other matters, to act in 
 the role of detective. The information which I 
 
36 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 personally gathered served me well, because I re- 
 fused to be misled by misrepresentations of existing 
 conditions. 
 
 The Citizen's Association and the Chicago Law 
 and Order League, to which I appealed, frequently 
 loaned me their detectives to work on special cases. 
 Neither association, however, felt that it had suffi- 
 cient financial backing to make a thorough investi- 
 gation of the slave traffic problem. 
 
 From time to time I called upon some of the in- 
 fluential men of Chicago with the idea of interest- 
 ing them in a fight against the panders ; but these 
 men were too busy to go through the evidence 
 which I had collected, and instead of gaining their 
 support I generally received rebuffs and jests at 
 the expense of m}'- attitude towards the white 
 slave traffickers. 
 
 Men, who as well by their active as their moral 
 support, failed us at that time, should have been the 
 first to rise and stril^e down white slavery. 
 
 Mr. Robert Catherwood, however, studied the 
 question thoroughly and became convinced of the 
 existence of a traffic and sale of women for im- 
 moral purposes. Together we discussed many plans 
 for the elimination of this slavery. "While neither 
 of us realized at that time that it would be a war- 
 fare of years and not a battle of days, we were 
 agreed that the public must be awakened to the 
 seriousness of the situation. 
 
 In attempting to arouse the public I appealed to 
 different ministerial associations and conferences 
 
Beginning the Fight 37 
 
 and I addressed a great many of them, calling their 
 attention to this insidious slave traffic. At each of 
 these meetings the good men gathered there seemed 
 astonished and horrified by the facts which were 
 brought to their knowledge concerning the panders. 
 Often the ministers passed resolutions condemning 
 this social evil and gave them to the newspapers to 
 be published, but few of them ever made any public 
 denunciation of the slavery in girls. Apparently 
 they considered it a subject too unclean to touch. 
 
 These momentary denunciations on the part of 
 the ministers, while they served well in the growth 
 of public opinion against the traffic in girls, were 
 also detrimental in a way. They gave to the slave 
 traders more confidence in themselves, because the 
 latter began to realize that they were strong enough 
 to weather these little squalls, which blew up and 
 soon died away. 
 
 An early white slave case, which succeeded in 
 making the public begin to think about this evil, 
 came to light in May of 1907. This case brought 
 much information which aided me in beginning the 
 fight against panders. This is the story of the 
 case : 
 
 One afternoon in the latter part of March, Mona 
 
 M , who was working in one of Chicago's 
 
 large department stores, had just finished selling a 
 bolt of ribbon and the purchaser had turned away 
 from the counter when a tall, blond young man 
 stepped forward. 
 
 " I would like to see some ribbon, please." 
 
38 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 " What kind of ribbon do you wish to see ? " in- 
 quired Mona. 
 
 " Oh, any kind, just so you sell it to me," he said. 
 Mona smiled and looked inquiringly at this well- 
 dressed, handsome fellow. 
 
 The conversation which followed at the store that 
 day is not recorded,but we do know that on that very 
 evening Mona was sitting beside this young man at 
 one of the leading theatres, enjoying a play. The 
 
 young man was Harry Balding, to Mona M 
 
 a lover, to the underworld a well-known agent of 
 houses of ill repute. To this trusting and confiding 
 girl he told of his wealth and bachelor apartments, 
 and of the elegant life she could lead if she would 
 but marry him. 
 
 "When the theatre was over and they had arrived 
 at her home on Elmwood Avenue, she gladly ac- 
 cepted his invitation to go driving the next evening. 
 'No improper suggestion was made by Balding, and 
 
 to Miss M he seemed the " best and dearest 
 
 fellow in the world." 
 
 The next evening they went driving and Balding 
 continued to shower her with his protestations of 
 love. Before the evening was over Mona was al- 
 most won. On the evening following they attended 
 
 a dance at the Dance Hall and Mona, being 
 
 then completely won over, placing her entire confi- 
 dence in Balding, drank with him. She asserted 
 later that the wine she drank was bitter, and that 
 she became unconscious. 
 
 Whether or not Mona was drugged that evening 
 
Beginning the Fight 39 
 
 may be a matter of controversy. Balding asserted 
 that she was so completely in love with him that 
 she went to his apartments on Wabash Avenue 
 without making any objections, and voluntarily 
 at his request. However that may be, the fact 
 remains that she was with Harry Balding at this 
 dance hall and that she was in his bachelor apart- 
 ments after the dance. She said that her down- 
 fall and ruin had been complete when she regamed 
 consciousness and that she awakened to find her- 
 self in a flat, which was occupied by Baldmg and 
 several of his " pals." 
 
 After she had been away from home all night, she 
 was afraid to return and because she cried and 
 felt so badly Harry promised to take her to a min- 
 ister and get married right away. 
 
 After they had started, as she thought to the 
 minister's, Harry suggested stopping on the way 
 and getting " a friend " to accompany them. She 
 did not know that the place to which he took her 
 to see this friend was a house of ill fame, but soon 
 she found that she had become a captive. 
 
 She told that she was ordered to remove her 
 clothing, and in protesting against this, she was 
 struck by Balding, who advised her not to make an 
 outcry or try to escape, if she knew what was best 
 for her. 
 
 As in nearly every case when girls are procured, 
 her street clothes were locked up, and she was not 
 allowed to communicate with the outside world. 
 In this statement Harry Balding disagreed with 
 
40 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 her and asserted that she was allowed to communi- 
 cate with her mother, and that in his company she 
 was permitted to go to and from the house of ill 
 repute to which she had been taken and his apart- 
 ments, but only in his company and under his 
 guard and surveillance. However that may be, 
 like the piteous moan of Agnes from the under- 
 world, she sobbed out the story of indebtedness and 
 told of the system of holding girls against then* will. 
 
 During the weeks she had been in this house, 
 Balding visited her at regular intervals, often 
 threatening her with dire punishment if she at- 
 tempted to escape. On the twenty-fifth of May, 
 however, she did succeed in escaping and made her 
 way, thinly clad, to the police station. 
 
 On the same evening as I sat reading law books 
 and making notations of my cases in my library, 
 the telephone rang imperatively. I hurried to the 
 receiver. 
 
 " This is Captain McCann. There is a girl down 
 here who claims she has been sold as a white slave. 
 I have sent out officers to pull the flats, which she 
 says are the nests of procurers. Can you come 
 down the first thing in the morning and investigate 
 the matter ? " 
 
 " All right," I said, " I shall be there." 
 
 The next morning I went down, and after hear- 
 ing the girl's story I called in Harry Stephens, 
 "William McN"amara, J. C. Baxter, Edward Daily, 
 
 R. R. Leonard, Harry Balding and Henry , 
 
 who were occupants of the two flats that had been 
 
Beginning the Fight 41 
 
 raided in the hope of obtaining from them state- 
 ments that would corroborate the girl's story ; but 
 these young men were very reticent and uncom- 
 municative. 
 
 Warrants were taken out for the arrest of the 
 proprietor of the disorderly resort and his manager. 
 The next morning the gui faced these men, who 
 were charged with being responsible for her down- 
 fall. 
 
 This girl of medium height, with full, round, 
 pretty face and light brown hair, was accompanied 
 by her mother as she came into the larger of the 
 two court rooms located in the old, time-worn 
 building which houses the Harrison Street Police 
 Station. 
 
 The walls of this musty old room, if they could 
 speak, would tell many stories of how for years 
 more criminals have been tried there than perhaps 
 in any other place in the United States. It is the 
 most dismal place imaginable, with scarcely any 
 light except the artificial light, and teeming with 
 more odours than could possibly be concocted by the 
 ingenuity of man. Each day it is filled with the 
 garlic and tube-rose of the Italians ; the mysterious 
 opium scent of the Chinaman ; the highly perfumed 
 sport is there, and the lodging-house bum, reeking 
 with tobacco and whiskey ; all this is mixed with 
 the gases from the open sewerage in the under- 
 ground ceUs, which are worse than any of those of 
 the dark ages. Then there are the fumes from the 
 stables next door and adjacent, and stifling smoke 
 
42 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 from the ever-present puffing engines across the 
 narrow street which separates it from the La Salle 
 Street Station. To top it all off comes the steam 
 from the corned beef and cabbage and the frying 
 of the odoriferous onion, which the cook in the cel- 
 lar below is going to dish up to the prisoners for 
 their noonday meal. 
 
 In all this odour and the misty gloom of the court 
 room, the judge was sitting, listening to the con- 
 stant grind of cases which the State was prosecut- 
 ing, when Mona M and her mother came 
 
 into the section reserved for witnesses. Finally 
 Mona was called to the witness stand, and she told 
 in vivid language of her sale into an immoral life 
 for fifty dollars, which she said was charged 
 against her by the owner of the house to which she 
 was sold. She said furthermore, that the mistress 
 of the house also put a debt of one hundred dollars 
 against her for parlour clothes, and that to fasten 
 the chain of debt around her more securely. Bald- 
 ing had come around every week and borrowed 
 money from the proj^rietor which was charged up 
 against her. 
 
 She told of the sale of many other girls into vice 
 slavery for prices ranging from twenty-five to one 
 hundred dollars. She detailed to the court how 
 she had attempted to escape and how she at last 
 had succeeded. She charged all these men who 
 were arraigned as defendants before the court with 
 being engaged in the business of bringing about the 
 downfall of girls. 
 
Beginning the Fight 43 
 
 " How long were you in that place ? " I asked 
 her. 
 
 "I was there from March twentieth until last 
 Saturday. Harry kept telling me that he would 
 get me out and that we would go to St. Louis and 
 get married. He didn't do it, however, and kept 
 on taking my money from me. I had no street 
 clothes and could not get out." 
 
 " What did the people at the house say to you ? " 
 she was asked. 
 
 " They told me I would have to stay unless Harry 
 said otherwise." 
 
 " Did they keep you in the house all the time 
 from March twentieth to May twenty-fifth ? " 
 
 " ;N'o, they took me out one night and took me 
 to the flat on Wabash Avenue near Twenty-third 
 Street again. This is Willie McNamara's place 
 where they take all the girls. I found some more 
 young girls there. One of them, who was named 
 Dolly, has since escaped." 
 
 " Did you know any of the other girls there ? " 
 
 " Not well. There was one named Gillette, who 
 was later sold to a place. Another, named Burns, 
 was sold to the same place I was iu, for twenty-five 
 doUars, and she is there now. There was another 
 one. Hazel Daily, whose husband put her in this 
 house also. Then there is another Httle girl, named 
 Gladys, out there still." 
 
 " Did you have any jewelry ? " asked the court. 
 
 " Yes, I did, and they took it away from me and 
 pawned it." 
 
44 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 One of the surprises of the trial was occasioned 
 when Mrs. Wm. H. Johns, wife of " Lefty " Johns, 
 one of the confederates of Harry Balding, went on 
 the stand as a witness for the State. She stated 
 that she was a bookkeeper and was now living with 
 her mother. 
 
 " My husband married me to sell me into one of 
 those places," she testified. " I know that he and 
 Harry Balding work together in this business, and 
 that he sells girls, as has been told here, and as he 
 tried to sell me. I do not believe that he ever did 
 anything else." 
 
 " Do you know any girl he sold ? " she was asked. 
 
 "A girl named Lilly was caught by him and 
 Balding and put in a house in St. Paul, where she 
 is to-day. She was a good girl too," was the start- 
 ling response. 
 
 Several of the defendants took the stand in their 
 own behalf, among them "William McNamara, a 
 former prize-fighter and reputed leader of one of 
 the gangs of procurers. Under cross-examination 
 he was compelled to admit that he had furnished 
 the bachelor apartments on "Wabash Avenue near 
 Twenty-third Street and that he and liis associates 
 in the procuring business took their victims there 
 before delivering them to the houses. Pressed and 
 plied with questions, he told a most cold-blooded 
 and daring story, and without hesitating admitted 
 the part he played in securing a certain consign- 
 ment of fourteen girls, presumably to go on the 
 stage with a Southern road compan}'", when he 
 
Beginning the Fight 45 
 
 knew their ultimate destination was a questionable 
 resort in Beaumont, Texas. At the conclusion of 
 his testimony, Judge John K. Newcomer, turning 
 fiercely towards McNamara, said : 
 
 " Don't you think you ought to be taken out and 
 shot dead for this ? " 
 
 McE"amara cowered in his chair. He was still 
 on the witness stand and seemed terribly fright- 
 ened. This big, burly man, seemingly seized with 
 abject fear, finally whimpered : 
 
 " Yes, sir. Since the reverend gentleman," point- 
 ing to the Reverend Ernest A. Bell, " talked to me 
 about my sins last evening, I feel that I should be 
 punished." 
 
 After he left the witness stand, all the cases were 
 continued until June first. When the case was 
 called again, they were compelled under the evi- 
 dence in the possession of the State to admit that 
 they had been trafficking in innocent young women. 
 And when they had all drawled out their morbid 
 tales concerning this awful traffic, each was found 
 guilty by the court, Harry Balding receiving the 
 longest sentence, one year in the house of correc- 
 tion and a fine of one hundred dollars. 
 
 These admissions from the defendants, who had 
 
 been impHcated in the downfall of Mona M , 
 
 furnished the most astounding feature of the case. 
 If this case did nothing else, it served to bring to 
 the notice of public officials the fact that the pro- 
 curing of girls for immoral houses was done sys- 
 tematically, and also to give the names of other 
 
46 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 slaves, who could be rescued and their captors 
 avenged by the might of the law. 
 
 Thus ended the case of Mona M , with its 
 
 story of gaining a girl's confidence by pretended 
 love at first sight, the easy deception of a girl, and 
 the hazardous results. The case is ended, but its 
 effect upon the public mind will live for many 
 years. 
 
 On Friday morning, the thirty-first of May, a 
 young girl, a striking blonde, was led, weeping, into 
 the court room by detectives Considine and Thomas. 
 I turned in my seat and saw the officers bringing 
 the girl towards me. 
 
 " Here is another white slave case, which is go- 
 ing to be on trial this morning in Judge Fake's 
 com't," said one of the officers. 
 
 Since we frequently do not have much time to 
 prepare our cases in the State's Attorney's office, I 
 was ready at once to go over the evidence with the 
 officers and had just finished when Judge New- 
 comer stepped to the bench. 
 
 " Let me know when the case is called," I said, 
 " and I will come in." 
 
 It was perhaps an hour later and I had just fin- 
 ished trying a case, when the bailiff touched me on 
 the shoulder and said : 
 
 " They want you in the next court room to try 
 that white slave case." 
 
 A young man who answered the call of the name 
 of Jeager stepped out of the doorway and was 
 led in front of the court. The pretty blond girl, 
 
Beginning the Fight 47 
 
 whom I had talked with earlier in the morning, was 
 seated in the witness chair. After the preliminary 
 formalities of signing the jury waiver had been dis- 
 posed of, she was asked to state her name and age 
 to the court. 
 
 "My real name," she answered, "is Adelaide 
 
 McD . I was so ashamed last night when Mr. 
 
 Bell, the missionary, found me in that horrible 
 house, that I didn't give my right name. I gave 
 the name of Wilson. I am twenty years old." 
 
 " Will you teU the court where you are from and 
 about your experiences with this defendant ? " 
 
 " My home is in , Illinois, where I live with 
 
 my parents. My father is a contractor. He is 
 wealthy. I have never been away from home be- 
 fore. I was induced by this man I met two weeks 
 ago to go with him to Eockf ord. He said he loved 
 me and I thought I loved him. 
 
 " We had dinner in Eockf ord, and at dinner he 
 persuaded me to drink wine. It made me ill and I 
 could not sit up. He took me to a hotel. I cried 
 and he told me his father owned a bank in Zitka, 
 that he was heir to five hundred thousand dol- 
 lars, and that while he knew he had done wrong 
 in taking me away from home, he would marry me 
 and make it all right. He brought me to Chicago, 
 where he said he would furnish a fine home for 
 me. 
 
 " When we got to Chicago, Mr. Jeager said he was 
 going to show me the town, and we went to several 
 places, but I had never been in such a part of the 
 
48 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 world before, and I did not know what sort of peo- 
 ple they were. "When we reached the place on 
 Dearborn Street, Jeager began asking me if I did 
 not like the crowd, and whether they weren't a jolly 
 lot of people. He said if I would like to live in that 
 house with the gay crowd he'd fix it so that I could. 
 I told him I would not like to be with such people. 
 Then he got me to take some drinks, and as I wasn't 
 used to it, I didn't know what I was doing." 
 
 At this moment Jeager spoke up from where he 
 stood before the court and in an excited voice cried : 
 
 " Your Honour, this was a slumming tour ; the girl 
 knew where she was going. This is not her first 
 experience." 
 
 " He lies, Your Honour," interrupted Detective 
 Considine. " When he was arrested he told me that 
 this young lady was a perfectly innocent girl when 
 he met her and he made this statement several 
 times since." 
 
 The judge, usually so calm, hit the desk with his 
 fist and said in sharp tones : 
 
 " Don't interrupt the witness again, Mr. Jeager, 
 while she is testifying." 
 
 The pretty complainant, flushing with rage, 
 pointed her finger at Jeager and said : 
 
 " You know I was an innocent girl when you met 
 me. You told such glowing stories of your father's 
 wealth, and told me you had fallen in love with me 
 on sight and that you would elope with me. That's 
 the way you deceived me." 
 
 " Just be calm and don't get excited," said the 
 
Beginning the Fight 49 
 
 court. " I'll listen carefully to what you have to 
 say." 
 
 The girl, half crying, stopping now and then to 
 wipe her eyes, completed her story of how she had 
 been a victim of the white slave traffic. Then 
 the trembling girl stepped from the witness stand 
 and sat down by the police officers. 
 
 The Keverend Mr. Bell, Avho was next called to 
 the stand, told how he had found this girl in a cer- 
 tain disorderly resort on Dearborn Street, and that 
 upon learning that she had been lured there by 
 Jeager, furnished the police the information upon 
 which they acted in making the arrest. The 
 police officers also testified as to what Jeager had 
 told them and what the girl had said in the pres- 
 ence of the defendant. 
 
 Finally the defendant, being called to the witness 
 stand, told the court that he did not know that he 
 was committing any offense against the law and 
 promised never to do it again. Then the witness 
 stepped down and Judge Fake rendered his deci- 
 sion. 
 
 " I believe the girl is telling the truth," said the 
 judge. " This is a flagrant illustration of an atro- 
 cious traffic in girls that has come to my notice. In 
 the face of this the prisoner asks the court to let him 
 go free. He assures the court that he will not re- 
 peat the offense. This court will see that he does 
 not repeat the offense. A crime of this sort should 
 place a man where he could never so offend again. 
 In this case the court finds the defendant, Keil 
 
50 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 Jeager, guilty, and assesses the fine at the maximum, 
 two hundred dollars and costs. I realize that this 
 fine is inadequate to the crime, and I tell you now 
 that the punishment would be heavier if the law 
 would allow me to make it so." 
 
 The court ordered telegrams sent to the father of 
 the girl and he came to Chicago and took his 
 daughter home. 
 
 Probably no one who reads of these cases of which 
 I have just told will doubt that there is a traffic in 
 girls and women for the purpose of supplying the 
 markets of vice, but many who read the daily 
 papers at that time, who professed an interest in the 
 public welfare, who saw accounts of the trials from 
 day to day, and kept closely in touch with current 
 affairs, were not convinced or perhaps did not care 
 to be. 
 
V 
 
 THE CONFESSION OF A PANDER 
 
 TWO weeks after the Mona M cases 
 had been disposed of, as I sat in my dingy- 
 little office between the larger and smaller 
 courts of the Harrison Street Station, a short, fairly 
 stocky man probably about fifty years old, entered 
 the room. 
 
 I did not know him. I asked him to be seated ; 
 and as he sat down I noticed that his face was 
 anxious and sorrowful. It was etched with lines of 
 trouble covering a frank, honest, open countenance. 
 
 " What can I do for you ? " I said, as he nervously 
 twisted his short gray mustache. 
 
 "I have come to beg for mercy for my boy. 
 Like a good many other boys, my boy has been 
 wayward, but at heart he is a good boy. I have 
 just come up from the cells ; they let me go down 
 to see Hemy and he has promised to tell all about 
 this affair." 
 
 " Is your son Henry , who was mixed up 
 
 in the Mona M case ? " I asked him. 
 
 " Yes, that's my son, and to think of that boy 
 being down there in a cell, and for such an awful 
 crime, after the splendid education and oppor- 
 tunities I have given him ! Why, do you know he 
 attended one of the high schools in Chicago and 
 51 
 
52 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 was getting along fine until lie got in bad company 
 and ran away from home. He went West some 
 place and I hadn't heard from him for months 
 until I got a letter from him to come down here to 
 the jail to see him. I had no idea where he was or 
 what he was doing. He says he has not been very 
 well, and if you will let me take my boy home, 
 and give him another start, I will try to make a 
 man out of him." 
 
 " I am afraid, my friend, that will be impossible. 
 I cannot let your boy off, because the offense he 
 has committed is too grave." 
 
 " But it will kill him to stay in jail," interjected 
 the father. " Just let him go this time, for the 
 sake of his old mother at home, if not for my sake." 
 
 " His mother and you have my deepest sympathy, 
 
 Mr. , as have all mothers and fathers whose 
 
 boys have gone wrong, because it is the parents 
 who always have to suffer. The relatives and 
 those dear to the defendants must bear the burden 
 of crime, as well as those who have offended against 
 the law." 
 
 The old father looked downcast and dejected for 
 a few minutes; then suddenly his face seemed 
 radiant, as he said : 
 
 " "Well, if he has done wrong, perhaps it will do 
 him good to suffer some for it, but I am going to 
 make him tell the truth about this whole business 
 just the same." 
 
 " Yes, it will do his conscience good and be of 
 great service to the public," I said. 
 
The Confession of a Pander 53 
 
 " Will you send for him," he asked, " and have 
 him here with me in the room so that I can listen 
 to what he says ? " 
 
 I told him that I should be glad to send for him, 
 and told him to come back that night after supper 
 and I would have the boy there in the office. 
 After the visitor had departed I took up the 
 telephone and called up Mr. Shelby Singleton, the 
 secretary of the Citizen's Association, and asked 
 him if he would stay down-town that evening as I 
 wanted him to be present at a conference, which I 
 was going to have with some men. He said he 
 would do so. I then called in a police officer and 
 
 asked him to bring Henry up from the jail 
 
 and have him in my office that evening at seven 
 o'clock. 
 
 At the appointed time, the officer was there with 
 the young man, and there was also present with me 
 the boy's father and Mr. Singleton. 
 
 I asked the boy's father and the police officer to 
 step into the court room for a few minutes while 
 Mr. Singleton and I talked with the boy. I did 
 this because I thought the boy would probably 
 hesitate to make a full statement in the presence 
 of his father. In this case it was a wise precaution 
 because the young man told me a great many 
 things, which he said he did not want his father to 
 know about. I made notes of all the statements 
 he made. 
 
 Most startling was the confession made by 
 Henry that night. I purposely omit this 
 
54 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 young man's surname because his father informs 
 me that his son has since reformed and is living an 
 honest, wholesome life. It was the evening of 
 June 13, 1907, that I began the examination of 
 this young man by saying : 
 
 " You have been brought here at your father's 
 request ; as I understand, you want to make a full 
 statement in regard to the system used by the 
 agents of vice resorts in securing girls. If you do 
 so, you make this statement without any promise 
 of immunity, of your own free will, and without 
 intimidation, threats, or force, and with no con- 
 sideration of reward whatsoever." 
 
 " That is what I want to do, make a clean breast 
 of the whole business," he answered. 
 
 " I have worked in this business for about a year 
 with several different fellows, lately mostly with 
 Billy McNamara and Harry Balding." 
 
 " Name all the fellows that you can think of that 
 are procuring girls," I interjected. 
 
 " I know I am going to get in wrong by telling 
 the names of these fellows," he replied, " and the 
 names of the houses sending them out and buying 
 the girls from them. They never will let up on 
 me, and when I get out of tliis trouble I surely will 
 have to leave Chicago. I know one fellow who 
 gave away some of their secrets and they had him 
 followed all through the West until they got him." 
 
 (Here followed a list of twenty-six names of 
 agents who were actively engaged in this business ; 
 also the names of the girl slave traders who were 
 
The Confession of a Pander ^^ 
 
 sending out the procurers and the names of a great 
 many girls who had been procured.) 
 
 "Will you tell me of the girls that you have 
 procured yourself ? " I asked. 
 
 " Well," he said, " not long ago Billy McKamara 
 and myself got several girls and shipped them out 
 of the city. 
 
 " Billy came around to see me one day and said 
 
 there was a woman staying at the Hotel, 
 
 whom he met when he was down South, and who 
 was up here to get some girls to take back \\ath 
 her. He said he would divide up with me if I 
 would help him get some. Between us we got 
 fourteen girls in about a week and delivered them 
 
 to her at the depot here in the city. I did 
 
 not go to the depot but Billy Mcl^amara was there 
 to take care of that end of it. We told the girls 
 that this woman was the leading lady with a 
 musical show which was to travel through the 
 South, and that she was to take them to the place 
 where they were to start from, and that they were 
 to be chorus girls in the show. That is the way 
 we got the girls, because they were ' stage-struck,' 
 
 "McKamara said that this woman was from 
 Beaumont, Texas, and was going to take them down 
 
 there. Her name was Myrtle and she runs 
 
 a ' house ' down there." 
 
 " Well, tell how you got the girls," I asked. 
 
 " The ones 1 got I met in dance halls and by 
 hanging around nickel theatres. At the dance 
 halls I would size up a girl and get a dance with 
 
56 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 her and see whether or not she was stage-struck 
 and, if she was, I would tell her about the chance 
 there was to go out with this road company- 
 through the South. There are always a lot of girls 
 hanging around the nickel theatres who are stage- 
 struck and it is dead easy to get them. 
 
 " They didn't know who I was for I gave them 
 a fake name ; so I never heard from any of them 
 after they went South. They may be there yet 
 for all I know." 
 
 " Will you explain the various methods used 
 by all these fellows you have named in securing 
 gu'ls ? " I inquired. 
 
 "Yes," he replied; "they all have about the 
 same system ; only they change it to suit the gu'l. 
 In the summer time they go out to the amusement 
 parks and summer gardens around here. They 
 also work the country towns and near-by cities. 
 In winter time they roam about the large stores, 
 attend nickel shows and dance halls, and get the 
 girls in these places. Different methods are used 
 according to the girl they are trying to get. Some- 
 times they invite the girls to the theatre or out for 
 a drive, or something like that, and 'con' them 
 along by telling them that they are the sons of 
 wealthy men or that they are representing some 
 theatrical management, or something, — any way 
 to get them. If the girl is one of the ' love sick ' 
 kind, they pretend they are in love with her, and 
 in most cases they promise to marry her. If the 
 girl is looking for a job, they are always ' Johnny 
 
The Confession of a Pander 57 
 
 on the spot ' with an offer of a good position. The 
 fellows offer the girls employment to their liking, 
 which of course is a trick, which they never intend 
 to carry out. The whole idea is to get the girl's 
 confidence and the fellow will say anything in 
 order to do this. I know fellows who have gone 
 across the Lake to some of the summer resorts and 
 got girls to come back with them, the guis think- 
 ing that they Avere going to go upon the stage, and 
 in one case I know of, they took the girl out to 
 measure her for a theatrical dress and put a ' house 
 dress' upon her and in that way got her street 
 clothes away. 
 
 " After they have handed out a line of talk and 
 once got them started, if the girls are hard to land, 
 they use ' knock out ' drops. Sometimes they tell 
 the girls they are going to take them out to meet 
 a ' lady friend,' and if the girls are flighty and 
 wayward, the boys argue Avith them, telling them 
 of the big money they can make. After they get 
 them to their flats (clearing houses) they get the 
 woman who runs a house to come over, and she 
 shows the girl her diamonds and fine dress, and 
 teUs how easily the girl can get some lil^e them 
 without any work, and the girl is induced to go 
 with her. But of course they could only do that 
 when the girl has a sort of leaning that way and 
 wants to see what the inside of one of those houses 
 looks like. 
 
 "When the fellows make the girls think they 
 are in love with them, they take them out to 
 
58 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 dances, dinners and the theatres several times, 
 until they get the girls' confidence and then they 
 finally get them to their flats, and later sell them 
 into the houses. 
 
 " Sometimes they really marry the girl too, be- 
 cause they say they cannot arrest a fellow for 
 putting a married girl into a house. One, for 
 example, is Jack Daily. He married a gui by 
 the name of Hazel. He took her to Indiana some 
 place and married her, because they thought she 
 was too young to keep in the house and he got paid 
 for marrying her. Harry Balding knows all about 
 it. There are lots of other fellows who have 
 married girls, but I can't remember what their 
 names are now." 
 
 (Then he gave a list of flats and hotels where 
 these men might be found.) 
 
 " Well," I said to him, " how do they keep the 
 girls in these houses ? " 
 
 " You see, the girls are in debt. From the time 
 they first get into the house they are in debt, and they 
 generally keep them in as long as they are in debt. 
 
 " They don't let them out until they are sure 
 they won't run away. If they do let them out the 
 pimp, or the felloAV who put them there, goes with 
 them to see that they come back all right. They 
 can't tell any one when they are out with them how 
 they are being kept. You see, most tunes they are 
 afraid to, and, if they did, people wouldn't believe 
 them anyway. After they have been there for a 
 while they don't care to leave, either because they 
 
The Confession of a Pander 59 
 
 learn to like it or because they are ashamed to go 
 among respectable people again." 
 
 " What are they in debt for when they go 
 there ? " I asked. 
 
 " First they are in debt for the money the pro- 
 prietor of the house pays the fellow who brings 
 them there," was his reply. 
 
 " Do they make the girls pay for being brought 
 into the houses ? " I continued. 
 
 " Sure. The girl has to pay the amount that it 
 costs the house for getting her. Then, after that 
 she has to pay for all the parlour clothes that she 
 wears, and she always has to buy them from the 
 house. They charge them about five or ten times 
 more than they are worth and that makes the 
 amount run up pretty high right at first. Then, the 
 pimp that puts her there and keeps her there, keeps 
 borrowing money from the house on her and that is 
 charged against her. I guess the house allows the 
 pimp to borrow money on her for two reasons. 
 One is, that the house wants to keep her in debt ; 
 and the other is that they like to have a pimp look 
 after her so that if she gets unruly or anything like 
 that he can make her behave. It is up to him to 
 keep her from running away until she gets so that 
 she doesn't want to." 
 
 " Are the fellows cruel to the girls ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes," he drawled. " They often have to 
 beat them to make them obey. In this way the 
 girls are afraid to try to get away, and besides they 
 have the only clothes that they could wear out on 
 
6o Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 the street locked up and they won't give the 
 clothes to them. I have seen them beat the girls 
 and kick them too, when they got too fresh and 
 wanted to go home." 
 
 " Are there any women as well as men securing 
 girls ? " I inquired. 
 
 " Yes, a good many of them," was the way he 
 answered. (He then gave the names of two 
 women, the only names he could recall, who were 
 procuring girls.) 
 
 " How many fellows were up in the flat when 
 you were arrested ? " I asked at last. 
 
 " We were not all m one flat when we got caught. 
 They raided two places after Mona got away from 
 that house and told the police. They caught seven 
 of us in two flats. When the boys in the first flat 
 got arrested, one of them called up on the tele- 
 phone and ' tipped it off ' that we were about to get 
 ' pinched.' But we thought they were ' kidding us,' 
 or otherwise we might have got away. 
 
 " I know Mona M well. She was Balding's 
 
 ' brod ' and he had her in a house, but I did not 
 know that she had got out of there until we all got 
 arrested." 
 
 In order to protect this young man, I did not 
 allow this confession to become kno\ATi to the public, 
 but used the information which I received from him 
 to great advantage. It was the first real, detailed 
 information that I had received from a procurer 
 for vice dens that an enormous system in the 
 traffic in girls existed. 
 
The Confession of a Pander 61 
 
 It is now over two years and a half since Hemy 
 made this confession, and I feel certain that the 
 fear which he evidently felt so keenly at that time 
 has been cast aside. 
 
 For some weeks afterwards I was busy working 
 on the " tips " which I gleaned from his statements, 
 and in checking them up I found his confession to 
 be absolutely true and trustworthy. 
 
 That evening for the first time, perhaps, Mr. 
 Singleton's eyes were opened to this great problem, 
 which society must sooner or later face in the 
 most bitter fight, not with arms and musketry, 
 but a fight against the shrewd and cunning men 
 that would make degenerates of our young men 
 and boys and prostitutes of our women and girls. 
 
 As the boy was returned to his cell that night, 
 his father put his arms around him and kissing him, 
 said : 
 
 " I hope you have told all you know about this 
 affair." 
 
 I took the old father by the hand and told him I 
 would do all I could, taking into consideration my 
 duty to the people of the state, to help his boy be- 
 come a better man. 
 
 As we closed the door of my office and walked out 
 into the court room that night, Mr. Singleton said : 
 
 " I beUeve that you have unearthed the greatest 
 curse to society that civilization has ever known, and 
 I hope you will stick to it to the finish." 
 
VI 
 
 SECRETS REVEALED BY OTHER PANDERS 
 
 THE next morning an excellent opportunity 
 afforded itself of checking up the truth of 
 the statements made to me by Henry. 
 
 Making my way through the little groups that 
 gather every morning in front of the Harrison 
 Street Police Station to watch the patrol wagon 
 back up to the sidewalk and unload the prisoners 
 who are brought from various parts of the city, I 
 had turned to the steps which lead to the court 
 room, when a tall lady dressed in black touched my 
 coat sleeve. She said she wished to speak with me. 
 I told her to come into my office. 
 
 Turning on the lights I noticed that there were 
 tears in her eyes, which she struggled to keep back. 
 Her lips were quivering with suppressed emotion, 
 and her refined face bore the expression of deep 
 grief. She seemed at a loss for words. 
 
 " What can I do for you, madam ? " I inquired. 
 
 She then told me that she had come there in be- 
 half of her son, who was Harr}'- Balding. She said 
 that she had advised him to make a complete con- 
 fession in order that young men might be saved 
 from becoming the cat's-paw of the denizens of 
 vice, and that other mothers might be spared the 
 shame and disgrace that she was enduring. She 
 62 
 
Secrets Revealed by Other Panders 63 
 
 did not ask for leniency, nor did she ask for mercy 
 for the boy, for she realized that that was hopeless. 
 Her mission was that of bringing out the facts con- 
 cerning the custom of servitude in the red light dis- 
 trict, which her son had confided to her. I told 
 her that I would talk with her son that afternoon. 
 
 Then I heard the sound of the gavel, and the cry 
 of the court bailiff : 
 
 " Hear ye ! Hear ye ! This honourable court is 
 now in session." 
 
 I hurried to the court room as the first case was 
 called. 
 
 The same afternoon, at about four o'clock, in the 
 presence of Mr. LaBree, a court reporter connected 
 with the State's Attorney's office, I took the con- 
 fession of Harry Balding. 
 
 Balding was then confined in the county jail, 
 waiting to be sent to the house of correction to 
 serve his sentence for his connection with the Mona 
 
 M case. He had been convicted June first 
 
 and we had held him in the county jail for two 
 weeks pending the investigation of more serious 
 charges, involving imprisonment in the penitentiary, 
 but we failed to get the additional information upon 
 which to predicate another charge against him. 
 
 As he was led into the office by a deputy sheriff 
 from the county jail, I looked at hun steadily and 
 wondered how such a fine-looking fellow could 
 have been led into the business of girl slave traffick- 
 ing. He was rather tall and well dressed, and had 
 light hair and clean, even features. His complexion 
 
64 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 was clear and rosy, and he had the bearing of a 
 young man who had come from a good home and 
 had been well brought up. 
 
 I excused the deputy sheriff and asked Baldmg to 
 sit do"WTi. I then told him that his mother had re- 
 quested me to have him brought up to my office 
 and that he must understand that any statement 
 that he might make could not in the least lessen the 
 sentence that had been imposed on him and that it 
 must also be understood that he was making the 
 confession of his own free will and accord. 
 
 He said that he understood all that and for his 
 mother's sake he wished to clear his conscience as 
 much as possible and " tell the whole business." 
 
 I had been fortified by the facts given me the 
 
 night before by Henry , and I had in my 
 
 possession the names of several girls who had been 
 procured and the names of a great many of the 
 traffickers and their haunts. Having these, I was 
 able to interrogate Balding better, and to get from 
 him facts which I wished to know. He did not 
 know that I had the confession which the young 
 man made the night before, and I was interested to 
 know whether or not he might verify the state- 
 ments that Henry made. I knew that they had not 
 had a chance to talk with each other, as they had 
 been separated and neither had seen the other since 
 the trial. 
 
 As the full confession comprises many type-, 
 written pages, it seems best not to reproduce it here 
 in full. The confession in part is given exactly as 
 
Secrets Revealed by Other Panders 65 
 
 Balding told it, no attempt being made to correct 
 grammatical phrases : 
 
 " All the fellows around there (meaning the red 
 light district) were doing that. "We did nothing 
 else but just go out and look around town and see 
 if we could get a girl and take her out there. 
 Whenever we got a girl out there, they would give 
 us so much money and promise all the police pro- 
 tection in Chicago and tell us that if we got arrested 
 they would go down there and get us out, and 
 everything like that, fix it up for us. That is what 
 they would keep telling us all the time, if we got 
 into trouble, but when I did get into trouble they 
 tried to make a ' fall guy ' out of me." 
 
 " How long have you been securing girls ? " I 
 asked. 
 
 " About a year." 
 
 Then he continued in answer to another question : 
 
 " Yes, I know Hazel Daily ; she was not of age 
 when she went into the house, and of course they 
 cannot keep them when they are not old enough. 
 She was all right ; she was a good-looking girl and 
 she was a good girl for the house, but she was only 
 seventeen years old, and they thought the police 
 some time might suddenly run across her and find 
 out ; so the proprietor got this Jack Daily, Stephens 
 and Billy Mcl^amara, and they took this girl to 
 Hammond, Indiana, and this girl gets married to 
 Jack Daily, and they brought her back there to the 
 house and Jack Daily got ten dollars for marrying 
 her. 
 
66 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 " I know other fellows who brought girls there 
 and the keepers gave them money for bringing 
 them there." (Here he named several of his fel- 
 low procurers, several of them being the same that 
 Henry had told about the night before.) 
 
 " Then there is Jack Pitt, who was found guilty 
 the other morning for procuring girls." (He also 
 told the names of those for whom Pitt has pro- 
 cured.) 
 
 " Then, Billy MclSTamara was up at Cripple Creek 
 last fall and he brought a girl back to Chicago. I 
 can't remember her name ; anyway he brought her 
 back and put her in a house on Armour Avenue. 
 This girl was not of age either. She is now in 
 Buffalo, New York. McNamara sold Kuby Shea 
 
 in the house too. He used to come over and 
 
 he would tell us how he used to get her money. 
 He went down there and got a hundred and fifty 
 dollars on her at one time. Billy McNamara also 
 had a little girl named Babe LaBelle in the same 
 place. I think that was her name ; I know they 
 called her Babe any^vay. I know he had her 
 there ; I don't know whether he put her there or 
 not ; I suppose he did though." 
 
 " Where is she now ? " was asked. 
 
 " I don't know. Her folks found her and she 
 was taken out of the house." 
 
 " Did you ever have any women helping you se- 
 cure girls ? " I asked. 
 
 " Yes, sir," Balding answered, " but I don't know 
 where they are living now. We were in a restau- 
 
Secrets Revealed by Other Panders 67 
 
 rant one night eating supper and a girl was sitting 
 over there, I don't know her name. The woman 
 who was helping me went over to her and got ac- 
 quainted, and made an appointment with the girl 
 to meet her down-town one day and this gu'l came 
 out with her and they came over to my flat and I 
 took her to a sporting house. 
 
 " ' Lefty ' Jones worked with me most of the 
 time, and we got from ten to fifty dollars for 
 bringing in girls. They used to come to us fellows 
 and say : ' Go around and get some girls.' They 
 would always tell us that and give us boys money to 
 go out and spend and see if we could get any girls." 
 I then asked : 
 
 " Where would you usually get these girls ? " 
 
 He gazed at me a moment and casually remarked, 
 
 " Oh ! The majority of them were gu^ls we met 
 
 on the street. We would go around to these parks, 
 
 penny arcades and nickel theatres and sometimes 
 
 in the stores and if we saw a couple of gu4s that 
 
 looked good to us 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 I took down there I met in the 
 
 stores and on the streets." 
 
 It was evident from the confession of Henry 
 
 and Harry Balding, and from the facts 
 
 which had been brought out on the trial of the 
 
 cases in which Mona M had figured so 
 
 prominently, that the procuring, selling and en- 
 slaving of girls and women had reached enormous 
 
68 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 proportions. Kot only were the cases, which had 
 heretofore been tried, not exceptional instances, but 
 the facts which missionaries and slum workers had 
 found to be true in quite a few cases were probably 
 true in the lives of countless unfortunates. Not 
 only was there a system of holding girls by means 
 of an unjust debt thrust upon them, but there was 
 a system as well of procuring girls. Here were 
 the names and addresses of nearly a hundred men 
 who were engaged in this nefarious system for 
 their livelihood, and all of them working along 
 practically the same lines. Under our loose social 
 system, they had little difficulty in becoming ac- 
 quainted with their proposed victims in all the 
 places where they were to be found unescorted, in 
 public dance halls, nickel theatres, amusement 
 parks, and even in places where they were em- 
 ployed in their honest efforts to make a living. 
 The procurers, knowing human weakness, worked 
 along lines of least resistance to secure the confi- 
 dence of the girls. They appealed to their most 
 evident desires : love, vanity, ambition, " any way 
 to get them." And once started, they stopped at 
 nothing in their efforts to land the girls in houses 
 of ill fame. And further, here were the names of 
 fifty girls who had been procured and sold into 
 lives of shame. 
 
 Another confession, that of Dora Douglas, made 
 soon after she had been sent to the Bridewell, in 
 January of 1908, probably throws more light on 
 the true condition of enslaved girls than any 
 
Secrets Revealed by Other Panders 69 
 
 amount of testimony adduced upon the trials of 
 the various cases. Her confession, as here re- 
 printed, was written by this procuress for the 
 National Prohibitionist, and was published in 
 the issue of that journal for January 28, 1909. 
 Previous to this time, however, Dora Douglas had 
 made similar statements to Miss Florence Mabel 
 Dedrick, the rescue worker who has been doing a 
 great deal of work in the district in the last sev- 
 eral months, and to Honourable James P. Harrold, 
 the Assistant State's Attorney who prosecuted the 
 case. 
 
 The particular case in which Dora Douglas had 
 been found guilty was that in which a young girl 
 
 by the name of Kitty S was brought from 
 
 Milwaukee to Chicago and sold into one of the 
 South Side resorts. Dora Douglas was sentenced 
 to one year in the house of correction, where she 
 was when the following confession was made. 
 
 " I am writing this confession to the world from 
 behind the bars in that gloomy pile of buildings 
 alongside the Drainage Canal, where Chicago every 
 year spends some millions of dollars to protect her- 
 self from the criminal classes which she constantly 
 creates and breeds. 
 
 " I am in prison convicted of being what is com- 
 monly kno-vvn as a ' white slave trader,' and I was 
 justly contacted and was guilty of the offenses 
 charged. 
 
 " And having made this confession, let me intro- 
 duce myself. 
 
70 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 " Behold me, a very common sort of a woman, 
 twenty-nine years old, an ex-school-teacher, born 
 and piously brought up in the good state of Ar- 
 kansas, fakly well educated, and, until within the 
 last few months, almost inexperienced in the ways 
 of the wicked world. 
 
 " Six years ago, in my Arkansas home, I married 
 a man whom I believed to be in every way worthy 
 of the respect and love that I gave him, and, bid- 
 ding good-bye to my mother and my childhood 
 friends in the old home, went with him to 
 St. Louis. 
 
 " I wonder if the good men who let the saloons 
 flourish in all our cities and excuse themselves with 
 the assertion that if a man will drink it is his own 
 business, and that if he makes a fool of himself he 
 is the only one that suffers — I wonder if those men 
 really know what they are doing for thousands of 
 women who do not drink but who suffer ? 
 
 " Years ago, somewhere I read an article about 
 the saloons written by some great minister or 
 bishop, whose name I have forgotten, and, indeed, 
 I have forgotten most of what he said, but I re- 
 member he did say that the victims of the saloon 
 are willing victims. 
 
 " Great God ! I have been a victim and God 
 knows I never was willing ! 
 
 " I found that my husband was a drunkard. A 
 railroad man with a good ' job,' able to earn a com- 
 fortable living for himself and me, he never for a 
 day could be depended upon. Many a morning 
 
Secrets Revealed by Other Panders 71 
 
 did he kiss me good-bye, leaving me the unpression 
 that he had gone to his work, when it would be 
 three days, a week, a month, sometimes three 
 months before I saw him again, though I might be 
 in the sorest straits for the necessities of life. 
 Three times he did this when he knew that I was 
 so(jn to become a mother. Once, after three 
 months' absence, I heard from him in a hospital in 
 another city. I went to him, brought him home 
 and when he was able to work, gave him out of 
 my own earnings money to pay his board until pay- 
 day (for his work would oblige him to work in an- 
 other town) and he went away and I never saw 
 hun again for months. 
 
 " Forced to work for a living, I came to Chicago, 
 finding a position in a legitimate business, although, 
 unfortunately it was the sort of a business that 
 brought me into contact with many people of bad 
 morals, and tended to deteriorate my own ideals. 
 
 " Here in Chicago, while I was buying a railroad 
 ticket one day in a ticket broker's office, I was in- 
 troduced by the clerk to a man who appeared to 
 be a gentleman, with the suggestion that he would 
 be willing to do for me a slight service which I 
 needed at the moment, regarding my baggage. A 
 fcAv weeks later, this man, whom I had no reason 
 to suspect of any evil motive, sought me with the 
 offer of a good place to work. He promised me a 
 good salary, and the offer was specially attractive 
 in view of the fact that I was then without work, 
 and I accepted the place in perfect good faith. 
 
72 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 " I want to emphasize what I now say for the 
 benefit of those who may read these Lines who are 
 parents of young girls. 
 
 " I suppose I may claim to be a reasonably in- 
 telligent woman, with a fah' education, some years 
 of observation of the world and a little opportunity 
 to know the world's wickedness, but I was at that 
 time absolutely ignorant of the existence of such a 
 thing as a business in vice. 
 
 " I had never heard that girls were bought and 
 sold. 
 
 " I did not know the character of what are called 
 * disorderly houses.' 
 
 " It seems to me that good people, pious fathers 
 and mothers, who let their girls grow up and go 
 out into the world without a word of real instruc- 
 tion that will protect them in such crises which 
 may come in life to any woman, are not wholly 
 innocent, — I am tempted to say are frightfully 
 guilty of the destruction of their own daughters. 
 
 " Shall I not say, too, that the pious fathers of 
 this great city who allow the enormous slave 
 markets where girls are bought and sold to exist, 
 who allow the city government and the police 
 power to remain in the hands of men who are 
 fattening on the bodies and souls of these girls, — 
 must I not say, and must I not say it so that it will 
 sound like a shriek coming from these dismal old 
 walls, that these fathers are murdering and damn- 
 ing their own daughters ? 
 
 " To make a long story short, and to tell a hid^ 
 
Secrets Revealed by Other Panders 73 
 
 ous tale in a few, plain words, I accepted the 
 proposition and found myself installed in one of 
 the protected vice dens of Chicago as housekeeper 
 and the special personal slave of this man, whom I 
 now found to be a slave trader, the practical owner 
 of other women and girls in various dives, as well 
 as the driver of gangs of procurers. This man al- 
 most owned me. My salary — such small parts of 
 it as I got — went into his pocket upon one excuse 
 or another, while I was subject to his brutal will 
 constantly. 
 
 " I will not shock my readers by telling the de- 
 tails of my horrid life in that place, but I must 
 give them some facts that ought to be in the pos- 
 session of the unsuspecting decent people who sit 
 quietly and virtuously in their own homes, while a 
 slaughter more terrible than Herod ever dreamed 
 of goes on unceasingly. 
 
 "I am asked to say whether the unfortunate 
 girls in these places are slaves in the sense that 
 they cannot get away. My answer to that must 
 depend upon your interpretation of ' cannot.' 
 
 " In my own case there was never a time when I 
 could not have walked out of the building, had I 
 chosen to do so, but my promised salary was 
 always in arrears and I was penniless, with no- 
 where to go and no friends. 
 
 " To walk out on a winter's day into the streets 
 of Chicago with nothing with which to buy a meal 
 and no shelter and no friends under the wide, 
 pitiless sky, is a heroic course to which some res- 
 
74 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 olute Spartan matron might be driven in protec- 
 tion of her virtue, but it's a course which can 
 hardly be expected from a mistreated, deluded, 
 ignorant, disgraced, modern American girl. 
 
 "And it must be understood that my situation 
 was very different from that of the ' girls.' I was 
 in the position of a superintendent. They were 
 under me. What would have been possible for me 
 was practically impossible for them. 
 
 " To begin with : !No inmate of these vice dens 
 is allowed to have clothing with which she could 
 appear on the street. It is taken away from her by 
 fraud or by foroe, as soon as she arrives, and is 
 locked up. She never sees it until she is regarded 
 as thoroughly trustworthy and sure to come back 
 if she gets out. 
 
 " Then, too, she is in debt. As soon as she ar- 
 rives at the house, an account is opened with her, 
 although, perhaps, she never sees the books. She 
 is charged with the railroad fare that has been paid 
 to bring her to the city ; she is charged with the 
 price that has been paid for her to the thief who 
 betrayed and stole her ; she is charged for the al- 
 leged garments that are given her in exchange for 
 her clothing — charged four times the price that 
 they cost. 
 
 " Of course, the police will tell you nowadays 
 that the old debt system has been abolished, and 
 that girls are not allowed to be in debt to the house 
 where they are kept, and it may be that a sort of 
 fiction is maintained, by which, if an investigation 
 
Secrets Revealed by Other Panders i^ 
 
 were forced, the dive keeper would pretend to be an 
 agent for the storekeeper that sells the supplies. 
 But the condition of debt is none the less real, al- 
 though as always it be fraudulent. The dive 
 keeper, the storekeeper, and the police are all in 
 partnership in it. 
 
 " Of course, it is not lawful to keep a girl a 
 prisoner because she happens to be in debt, but she 
 is made to believe that it is. She is told strange 
 stories about laws that are enacted for the govern- 
 ment of her 'class,' and she recognizes, all too 
 plainly, the power of the arm of the police always 
 outstretched in behalf of the dive keeper. 
 
 " Police officers come and go in the dive. They 
 register all ' inmates ' upon arrival and give formal, 
 though, of course, unlawful, sanction to the busi- 
 ness. If a girl becomes refractory and the dive 
 keeper threatens her with the vengeance of the 
 police, she has every reason to believe that the 
 threat is well founded, whether it is or not. 
 
 " If, in spite of all this, a girl should be brave 
 enough or rash enough to try to make her way out 
 of the dive, and escape, almost nude, as she is kept, 
 into the street, perhaps she would be allowed to go. 
 Perhaps, too, the police might not bring her back, 
 but they certainly would not assist her escape ; and 
 if they did not force her back into the den from 
 which she had escaped they would certainly send 
 her to prison. 
 
 " I have seen dozens of girls who wanted to get 
 out from these dives, wanted to leave the life that 
 
76 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 they were living, but who, under the conditions 
 that I have enumerated, did not — I think I may 
 fairly say — could not do it. 
 
 " I had been in my position as housekeeper but a 
 little while when my owner discovered that I could 
 be profitably employed in another line, that is, in 
 importing slaves from other cities. 
 
 " Some months before, the firm for which I was 
 then working had sent me to Milwaukee to sell 
 toilet preparations, and this business had brought 
 me in contact with a considerable number of foolish 
 young women. I knew that some of them were 
 anxious to come to Chicago and I was sent to 
 Milwaukee to induce them to come and bring them 
 with me. 
 
 " I made several such journeys to Milwaukee and 
 other cities, bringing a number of victims for Chi- 
 cago's slave market. I attempt no defense for this 
 infamous work. I ask for no moderation of judg- 
 ment against me, but I feel that I have a right to 
 call the attention of the public to the glaring in- 
 justice of the situation that puts me behind these 
 bars, with long months of imprisonment before me, 
 and leaves others who are equally guilty with me, 
 and who are equally well known in their guilt, to 
 go on with their wicked work. 
 
 " I know that ignorance of the law is no excuse 
 for its violation but I was certainly ignorant that I 
 was breaking any law. I never dreamed of it 
 until, just before my arrest, the proprietress of one 
 of the houses from which a girl whom I had 
 
Secrets Revealed by Other Panders 77 
 
 brought to the city had run away, told me of my 
 danger. I asked her why she was not also in 
 danger, and she replied that it was because she 
 carefully followed the instructions of the police and 
 maintained an ignorance concerning the sources 
 from which the girls were brought who came to 
 her house. 
 
 " I may or may not be believed but I state the 
 truth when I say that I never brought to this 
 slavery a girl whom I believed to be an innocent 
 girl. I brought only girls whom I found in bad 
 surroundings, usually in disorderly saloons, and girls 
 who claimed to be and appeared to be beyond the 
 protection of that extremely virtuous law, which 
 our wise lawmakers have given us, known as the 
 * age of consent ' law. How any sane person must 
 hate such cursed nonsense as such a law ! 
 
 " Now, let me ask why, why, when I was sent as 
 a mere agent of others, when I brought girls from 
 well-known dens, where they had been ruined, 
 brought them into a recognized slave market, where 
 they were used to enrich their owners and the 
 police — why, while the slave market goes on and 
 while the slave owners drive their new gangs, and 
 while the police keep up their system of protection 
 and graft — why am I locked up here alone ? 
 
 "Now, let me make it perfectly clear on just 
 what ground I have been sent to prison. I was con- 
 victed under what is known as the ' pandering act,' 
 which makes it an offense to secure an inmate for a 
 disorderly resort in the State of Illinois. 
 
78 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 " I was guilty and the protest I make is the pro- 
 test of a convict, but I cry out to the good people to 
 know why, if I must be behind prison walls for 
 procuring an inmate for such a place, they walk free 
 and grow rich and hold offices who allow such 
 places to be. 
 
 "If it be a crime worthy of the prison to secure 
 an inmate for a vice resort, is it a sure proof of 
 public and private virtue that vice resorts cover 
 square miles of this city and the city government 
 ' regulates ' them ? 
 
 "Ten long months hence, when, broken, dis- 
 graced, without a cent, without a friend, they turn me 
 out into Chicago's cold, November storms, will jus- 
 tice have been vindicated, will some great and good 
 ends have been attained by the punishment of me — 
 a tool, a cat's-paw, while seven thousand saloons and 
 square miles of houses of prostitution have gone on 
 in their bloody, damning work under sanction of 
 the government run by pious men ? " 
 
YH 
 
 HOW WHITE SLAVES ARE WON 
 
 IN the making of white slaves there are three 
 stages. The procurers must win the girls by 
 becoming acquainted and gaining their con- 
 fidence. Then, they must get them into the im- 
 moral houses. Finally, the girls must be kept in 
 those houses. 
 
 White slaves are won principally by three 
 methods used by the panders. The baits which 
 the procurers flaunt in the faces of their proposed 
 victims are love, vanity and ambition. 
 
 The procurers, by pretending to be in love with 
 the girls whom they meet, gain their confidence 
 and often upon a promise of marriage entice them 
 away from their homes. Mona M and Ade- 
 laide McD were \dctims of the love method. 
 
 Those girls who think it is smart to flirt are won 
 by the procurers who appeal to their vanity by 
 praising and flattering them, and by telling them 
 how good looking they are, how beautiful they 
 would look in elegant clothes, which, they say, can 
 easily be had if the girls will follow their advice. 
 
 This was true in the case of Agnes T , who, 
 
 with her girl friend, went to a dance unaccompanied 
 
 by an escort and after she was there flirted with a 
 
 79 
 
8o Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 young man. She said the young man " jollied " her 
 and told her how pretty she was. The compli- 
 ments thus paid caused her to esteem his friendship, 
 and when he invited her to a cafe in the back of a 
 saloon she went with him willingly, simply because 
 he had pleased her by his artful gratifying of her 
 vanity. 
 
 The panders make no distinction between girls 
 who are innocent, quiet and modest and those who 
 are more wayward, flirtatious and frivolous. The 
 procuring of the former adds zest and sport to the 
 hunt, while the latter are easy prey for them. Girls, 
 who flirt merely for the fun of flirting, who go to 
 dinners with strangers and roam about the streets 
 at night, are those who are most easily won by 
 flattery and the appeal to vanity. 
 
 It is undoubtedly true in many cases that the girls 
 have a leaning towards immoral lives before they 
 are procured by the panders. Oftentimes it requires 
 little effort on the part of the slave traders to in- 
 duce such girls to enter houses of shame, and once 
 in they are held as slaves in the most revolting 
 sense. 
 
 Sometimes the girls are mystified by the glare 
 and light of the large cities after night. They 
 love to be among fashionably dressed and amuse- 
 ment-loving people. It is something new which has 
 come into their lives. They have a feeling of un- 
 rest until they have tasted of the fruit of gaiety, 
 until they have known and become a part of this 
 new, dazzling world, "When the pander meets such 
 
How White Slaves Are Won 81 
 
 girls as these he has little trouble in deceiving them 
 and leading them astray. 
 
 Such a girl was Olga H , who came to 
 
 Chicago just to see the sights. She had gone one 
 evening to the general delivery window in the post- 
 office. Standing in the lobby there was a little 
 woman, who has done much for women who are 
 outcasts of society. This woman was Florence 
 Mabel Dedrick, who was on the lookout for young 
 girls who might be approached by white slave 
 agents. She stepped up to Olga and giving her 
 a card asked the girl where she was staying. 
 The minute that the girl gave the address Miss 
 Dedrick recognized that it was a disreputable place. 
 She asked the girl to go with her and she would 
 get her a better room. The girl, who could speak 
 very little English, immediately consented, showing 
 that she was very easily led. 
 
 Then Miss Dedrick learned the story of how the 
 girl had come from Kacine, Wisconsin, " just to see 
 Chicago." When she arrived here she flirted with 
 a young man, evidently a pander, who took her to 
 this disreputable place to get a room. Miss Dedrick 
 went over to the room, packed up the girl's clothes 
 and communicated with the aunt and uncle of the 
 girl, with whom she had been staying in Racine, 
 Wisconsin. At first these people seemed to be very 
 little concerned about their niece, and it was with 
 difficulty that they were finally interested to send 
 for her. 
 
 The girl was sent back to Racine in charge of the 
 
82 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 conductor on the train and the police of that city- 
 were notified to meet her. On her arrival there she 
 told the police that she didn't like it because she 
 was not allowed to remain in Chicago and that she 
 was fully able to take care of herself. She said she 
 had come to America in the first place, leaving her 
 father and mother back in Denmark, " just to see 
 America." 
 
 Had Olga remained a day or two longer in 
 Chicago at the place she was staying, which was 
 filled with people of unsavoury reputation, there is 
 little doubt but that she would have been procured 
 for a disorderly house and would have gone as easily 
 as she went with Miss Dedrick to the Pacific Gar- 
 den Mission. 
 
 Flirting just for the fun of it, Lydia K became 
 
 acquainted with a street car conductor as she was 
 riding out to her home on the North Side of Chicago. 
 This girl, who was less than eighteen years old, 
 thought it was great fun to carry on a flirtation 
 and so she rode on the car with the same conductor 
 many times. He flattered her vanity and she be- 
 came enamoured with the fellow and finally he took 
 her out one night to a wine supper, got her under 
 the influence of liquor, and then placed her in a dis- 
 orderly resort in the South Side red light district. 
 
 When her daughter did not return home, Lydia's 
 mother became greatly worried and went to Cap- 
 tain Kane of the Sheflield Avenue Police Station and 
 secured his aid in hunting her daughter. Captain 
 Kane suspected that the girl had been caught by a 
 
How White Slaves Are Won 83 
 
 pander and he made inquiries at the police stations 
 located in the red light districts. Finally the girl 
 was found in a house run by Frank Lewis and his 
 wife, Eegina Lewis, who were tried along with the 
 street car conductor at the Harrison Street Court, 
 They were charged with " harbouring a girl under 
 the age of eighteen for immoral purposes," and the 
 conductor was charged with " contributing to her 
 delinquency." The conductor turned State's evi- 
 dence and testified against the Lewises and they were 
 held to the grand jury. The girl was returned to 
 her home where she could be looked after by her 
 mother. 
 
 In February, 1908, one hundred girls, nearly all 
 of them under twenty years of age, were arrested in 
 a series of raids in the tough districts of Pittsburg, 
 Pennsylvania. The police of that city discovered 
 that many of them were employed in restaurants, 
 shops and department stores. 
 
 Promises of good times and fine clothing had 
 been made to them by women engaged in the 
 white slave traffic. 
 
 Chief of Police McQuaide appealed to the city's 
 charitable institutions to care for the girls. He said 
 that most of them were so young that there was still 
 hope for their reformation. 
 
 One of the drill rooms at the Central Station was 
 converted into a dining-room, and there the girls 
 were fed. Another room was turned into a sitting- 
 room and a third into a dormitory. The chief sent 
 the following notice to charitable organizations : 
 
84 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 " Kow is the time for philanthropic institutions 
 and charitably disposed women to come forward 
 and show their sincerity in stamping out vice. A 
 helping hand and respectable shelter will do more 
 towards the moral uplifting of this city than any- 
 thing else. We ask all persons to volunteer their 
 help." 
 
 There are advertisements in the papers almost 
 constantly inquiring for daughters who have disap- 
 peared. Fearing that their daughters, after disap- 
 pearing from Galesburg, Illinois, had been sold into 
 vice slavery, two mothers not only advertised but 
 also journeyed to Chicago, February 11, 1908, to 
 make a personal search for the missing girls. 
 
 The parents of the girls said that their daughters 
 disappeared in January after being seen in the com- 
 pany of a man who was a stranger in Galesburg. 
 One of the women learned that the girls had been 
 brought to Chicago. Upon getting this informa- 
 tion the two women immediately made preparation 
 to follow the girls here. 
 
 "While attending school in Galesburg the daughters 
 were known as the most beautiful girls of the school. 
 It was feared their beauty had attracted the atten- 
 tion of white slave agents who induced them by 
 flattery to come to Chicago and then had sold them 
 into immoral houses. Both of the girls were sixteen 
 years old. 
 
 Search for her daughter that at first promised 
 
 success ended when the mother of Clara F , 
 
 whose daughter had disappeared from Chicago, dis- 
 
How White Slaves Are Won 85 
 
 covered that the body of the girl had been buried 
 in a St. Louis cemetery after death had ended the 
 disgrace into which she had been forced. 
 
 The mother, whose daughter had been a victim of 
 the vanity method employed by the panders, made 
 a vow over her daughter's grave that she would 
 devote her life to avenging the wrongs suffered by 
 her girl and drag to justice those whom she charged 
 were responsible for her fate. She saw her hopes 
 partially realized when the grand jury returned in- 
 dictments against Mary Engelsberg, alias Mary 
 Schwartz, and Israel Zerber, alias Schwartz, on 
 charges of abduction. 
 
 A white slave investigation, following the fif- 
 teen-year-old girl's death, led to the charge against 
 these people. 
 
 When mother and daughter, left penniless and 
 practically starving in a little Kussian village by the 
 death of the husband and father, came to America 
 and found a home in the Chicago ghetto, Clara 
 
 F , then fourteen years old, was large for her 
 
 age and remarkably beautiful. Her beauty was 
 envied by her girl companions and she was much 
 admu'ed by young men. 
 
 Among the latter, according to the story told 
 to the jurors, was Israel Zerber. He whispered 
 words of flattery and adoration to the girl, and 
 won the friendship of the struggling mother. 
 Then it was charged he took the daughter to a 
 St. Louis vice resort. 
 
 For months the heart-broken mother, not know* 
 
86 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 ing where her girl had been taken, travelled about 
 the country in search of her child. Finally she 
 obtained trace of the girl in St. Louis. 
 
 Confident of seeing her daughter again, she 
 went there only to find in the end disappointment. 
 She discovered that her daughter had died. Bit 
 by bit she secured the required evidence, returned 
 to Chicago, and aided by Miss Minnie Lowe and 
 Miss Minnie Jacobs of the Bureau of Personal 
 Service, wove a net about the accused man and 
 woman and caused them to be indicted. 
 
 A story of a flirtation, misplaced confidence, and 
 a dinner with wine and song was told in court by 
 Anna H : 
 
 "I came to Chicago from Pittsburg, expecting 
 to have a position in a department store. On the 
 day of my arrival I met a man who told me that 
 he knew the proprietor of the store where I ex- 
 pected to find work. He invited me to dine with 
 him that evening and I accepted. I drank a glass 
 or two of wine. Later he proposed an automobile 
 ride. The next thing I knew I was in a house on 
 Armour Avenue. They gave me some short dresses 
 and took away my street clothes. When I ap- 
 pealed to the madam to let me go, she said I owed 
 her two hundred and fifty dollars and refused even 
 to let me communicate with my friends. I was 
 forced to stay in this house because they said they 
 would beat me if I tried to get away. I would 
 be in the place yet but for an older girl, who has 
 been there some time, lent me some street clothes 
 
How White Slaves Are Won 87 
 
 and I was able to run away. If I can get back 
 to my family in Pittsburg, I will stay there." 
 
 When this girl escaped from the resort she ap- 
 peared at the police station thinly dressed, in the 
 clothes she had borrowed, and appealed to the 
 police to help her recover her clothing and jewelry 
 from the keeper of the place. An investigation 
 was made immediately and the madam was arrested 
 and convicted. 
 
 Dr. Caroline Hedger of the University of Chicago 
 Settlement once told the story of two girls who were 
 also won by desire for good tunes and wine dinners. 
 
 " I know of a girl now in the school for girls in 
 Geneva, Illinois, who was lured into a disorderly 
 place by a man and sold to the proprietor there for 
 twenty-live dollars," said Dr. Hedger. 
 
 " This man visited the waiting-rooms of big 
 stores and in this way got acquainted with the girl. 
 She went to a ' dinner party ' with the man, in 
 whom she had placed confidence, but she did not 
 escape from the place in which he left her for five 
 days." 
 
 She told another case of how a 'New York 
 woman went to work in a large mail order house 
 and lured several employees to dens of shame. 
 She took a young country girl, who had recently 
 come to the city and had obtained work in the 
 same place, out for a night of revelry with men. 
 The girl, upon finding herself in a resort, escaped, 
 and Dr. Hedger and others protected her until they 
 got her back to her country home. 
 
88 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 The testimony which was given in the trial of 
 John A. Castel and Thomas Harris, who pleaded 
 guilty and were sentenced to a year each in the 
 
 house of correction for luring Mary K , a girl 
 
 of sixteen years, into a life of vice, tells another tale 
 of going to dinner with strangers. 
 
 " They told me they would give me a nice 
 dinner," sobbed the white-faced, big-eyed girl, 
 " and that I could have some good things to eat, 
 but they only gave me a mite to eat and kept me 
 locked up for three months," she said. 
 
 She told also of tortures which had been in- 
 flicted upon her, and when she finished her testi- 
 mony she fell fainting, almost in front of the desk 
 where Judge Himes sat. 
 
 A similar case which was brought to the at- 
 tention of the courts was that of Andrew Dupa- 
 quer. It was before Judge Torrison, at the Chicago 
 Avenue Court on February 17, 1908, that this man 
 was arraigned on a charge by the parents of 
 
 Johanna S , fourteen years old, and Josie 
 
 S , fifteen years old, for luring these girls into 
 
 lives of shame. 
 
 The e\adence was conclusive that Dupaquer had 
 flirted with girls and invited them to a restaurant 
 for the sole purpose of making them white slaves. 
 The defendant asked for time to prepare a defense 
 and the case was continued until the next day. 
 Dupaquer in the meantime asked permission to go 
 to the scene of his offense, 
 
 " I want to get some clothes in the closet," he said. 
 
[Hovf White Slaves Are Won 89 
 
 Detective Eugene Hezner, who accompanied 
 him, watched his prisoner closely as he opened the 
 door leading off the room where the girls had been 
 held prisoners. 
 
 In a moment there was a convulsive struggle. 
 The man fell to the floor, a stream of blood oozing 
 from his throat. Detective Hezner rushed to the 
 man and lifted him to a sitting posture. His head 
 was all but severed from his body. 
 
 " My picture will never be in the Rogues' Gal- 
 lery," he gasped in defiance as he fell back dead. 
 
 Such was the tragic ending of a slave trafficker 
 who chose death rather than a prison cell. 
 
 This same day three young girls, who were 
 found in a place on West Randolph Street, were 
 rescued from a life which they said was worse than 
 
 death. The girls were Veronica "W , thirteen 
 
 years old ; Rose M , fourteen years old ; and 
 
 Celia Y , sixteen years old. 
 
 Two weeks before this, the latter two girls had 
 disappeared from their homes. Police had searched 
 for them without success. They had become ac- 
 quainted with the young men, who lured them, at 
 a five cent theatre on Milwaukee Avenue and had 
 been persuaded to accompany the men on a trip 
 down-town to get some chop suey at a restaurant. 
 Their journey ended at the West Randolph Street 
 house. 
 
 In a room at the West Chicago Avenue Police 
 Station the youngest girl, while weeping, told her 
 experiences. 
 
90 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 " Oh, it was horrible," she said. " I was enticed 
 into the house by a man named Lawrence. I 
 thought I was going into a nice house. "When I 
 tried to leave they barred the door and threatened 
 me. I met the two other girls there and they told 
 me they also had been fooled into the place. They 
 were afraid. Celia told me she had been there for 
 five days. 
 
 " We were not allowed to get out. We were al- 
 ways accompanied by the woman. I had been 
 there only two nights when I hid in a room in 
 which the telephone was kept. While the others 
 were in front I called up friends of my mother's 
 and told them where I was. Then the police 
 came." 
 
 " A veritable clearing house in the white slave 
 line," said one of the detectives, who descended 
 upon the resort where the girls were found. 
 
 It was ISTew Year's Eve as the year 1908 was 
 dawning when another girl, Elsie N , disap- 
 peared from her home. She had gone down-town 
 for the big celebration. 
 
 " Here's where you get the horns and the rat- 
 tlers," shouted the street fakirs, amid the din and 
 the tumult and the joyous shouts of those who were 
 passing up and down the princii3al thoroughfares 
 of the city. People, carried awa}^ by the enthu- 
 siasm of the occasion, were jamming and crowding 
 their way through the streets. The surging multi- 
 tude was hilariously extending the happy new year 
 tidings at random. Girls and bovs, men and women 
 
How White Slaves Are Won 91 
 
 were hoarsely yelling, "Happy New Year," to 
 every passer-by. The air was filled with confetti, 
 which hoodlums were throwing in the faces of 
 women and stuffing down the necks and under the 
 coat collars of the girls. As the night wore on the 
 merriment became more intense, and as the bells 
 and whistles welcomed the new year, the scream- 
 ing and the shrieking became almost deafening. 
 
 The new year had come and with it drunken 
 boys and girls were reeling their way down the 
 streets, going somewhere, some place. The joyous 
 shouts had turned to curses, and the merry greet- 
 ings into coarse and vulgar epithets. 
 
 Like many other girls that night, Elsie N , 
 
 enchanted by the brilliant lights of the streets, ex- 
 hilarated by the enthusiasm of the hour, was swept 
 along in the great throng, and stopping now and 
 then in some cafe to drink a toast to the new year, 
 she had become dazed and dizzy and almost before 
 she realized it she had become indeed a slave. 
 
 So completely had she vanished from the scenes 
 of her usual haunts that no trace of her could be 
 found by those who had gone out from her home 
 to search for her. 
 
 It was not until Annie Z , who was employed 
 
 in the same factory where Elsie had worked, also 
 disappeared with strangers that Elsie was found 
 hidden in the meshes of the ^ice districts, at 
 
 the same place to which Annie Z had been 
 
 taken. 
 
 In tracing the methods to show how white slaves 
 
92 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 are won by panders it is significant to note the 
 changes in customs as cities grow larger and more 
 complex. 
 
 The cases just mentioned could be supplemented 
 by scores of others to illustrate the intricate prob- 
 lems the girls of to-day have to face. 
 
 I could tell of Lawrence DeMas who on October 
 30, 1909, was sentenced to nine months in the 
 house of correction and fined three hundred dol- 
 lars and costs for luring Lillian B to a house 
 
 of ill repute. 
 
 Further, I could tell of Thomas England, Jr., and 
 John Paul, who were each sentenced by Judge 
 Hugh E. Stewart, E"ovember 16, 1909, to one year, 
 and fined six hundred dollars. 
 
 There were also Eichard Dorsey and Andrew 
 Sietke, alias Andy Eyan, who were each found 
 guilty by Judge Newcomer, January 8, 1910, and 
 given prison sentences and fines. 
 
 These pandering cases, and many more, bring out 
 clearly that the cities are indeed great melting pots 
 where foreign girls are cast in the crucible to be 
 made Americans, and where the country girls are 
 being transformed into city girls. Most of them 
 want to imitate elegantly dressed women whom 
 they see on the streets. Most of them, too, crave 
 companionship, gaiety and pleasure. 
 
 Unfortunate indeed is it that in seeking all 
 these things they flirt to acquire companions, and 
 they go to restaurants M^here there are no scruples 
 about serving liquor to girls of any age. 
 
How White Slaves Are Won 93 
 
 With new customs developing girls are constantly 
 in greater danger. 
 
 Not so very long since girls entertained their 
 young men friends at home dinners. After the 
 theatre a light supper was served in the home. 
 But now the men take the gu-ls to dinner ; after the 
 theatre they adjourn to a restaurant where an 
 orchestra is playing and often singers and vaude- 
 ville artists are entertaining. Customs have changed 
 and it's a gay life we find in the new order of 
 things. 
 
 The girls are not to be blamed either, for many 
 of them toil from early morning until late at night. 
 Tired out, they go home to a little hall room and a 
 meagre meal. Strange indeed would it be if they 
 did not seek something different. They crave 
 amusement, they must have it, and we cannot deny 
 them that right. 
 
 The solution of the problem is found in the 
 public amusement halls, social settlement houses, 
 public club houses, and public amusement parks 
 properly conducted and watched over. In these 
 places, under proper supervision, good, wholesome 
 acquaintances can be made, the desire for pleasure 
 can be appeased, and good meals can be had at a 
 very reasonable price. 
 
 The panders will not dare to go there, and the 
 methods by which they win girls will thereby be 
 frustrated. 
 
vm 
 
 THE WAY TO SLAVERY 
 
 FEOM the foregoing chapters it will be seen 
 that white slavery is the procuring, either 
 with or without their consent, of girls and 
 women for immoral houses and for lives of shame 
 and detaining them against their wills until they 
 become so accustomed and hardened to lives of 
 vice that they do not care to leave, become diseased, 
 or too ashamed to face decent people again. 
 
 The way to this slavery is varied, but perhaps 
 more girls, craving amusement and fun, have 
 travelled to their ruin over the smooth, glistening 
 floors of innocent looking public dance halls, than 
 in any other way. Not that the dances in them- 
 selves are so bad, but the surroundings are bad. 
 The beautiful, graceful dance is not in vogue there, 
 but the bawdy sham, trying in its limp, lame 
 fashion, to mimic society and the good, wholesome, 
 refreshing merrymaking of a refined social evening. 
 
 The dance hall, with the saloon or bar in con- 
 nection or adjacent, is the curse of the present 
 century. Young people, mellowed by liquor, who 
 cannot still the inflamed and overheated passion, 
 go from the brilliantly lighted halls out into the 
 darkness of the night. 
 
 In such places the pander finds every means of 
 94 
 
The Way to Slavery 95 
 
 misleading an unguarded girl. Such a girl was 
 
 Annie W , who was lured to a house on 
 
 Armour Avenue from a dance by John Pitt, whom 
 she had met there. 
 
 On the trial, which was conducted before Judge 
 Fake, this nineteen-year-old girl said that after 
 Pitt inveigled her into a vice resort she was not 
 allowed to leave the place. She told that she was 
 beaten and whipped several times for trying to 
 escape; however, she finally eluded her captors 
 after being kept in servitude three months. 
 
 " In all the time I was a prisoner," she testified, 
 " I received not more than two or three dollars. 
 At one time I was in debt sixty-seven dollars and 
 at another ninety dollars. I know three or four 
 girls, where it was the same way. They were put 
 there in debt and the girls didn't know anything 
 about it. The only explanation was that the fel- 
 lows who put us there had borrowed money in our 
 names." 
 
 In deciding this case Judge Fake said : 
 
 " Pitt, I am going to give you a lesson which I 
 hope you will remember a long time. I cannot say 
 that you are any better or any worse than any 
 other men who are engaged in this same debasing 
 business, but there are not extenuating circum- 
 stances for any of you." 
 
 He was found guilty upon two charges and fined 
 four hundi'ed dollars. 
 
 How many young folk, innocent enough that 
 night, like Annie W , were floating easily 
 
96 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 down the bubbling, laughing stream, perhaps to be 
 engulfed soon in the waves of sin, shame and dis- 
 honour? If those jingling old public dance hall 
 tunes could speak, they would give the answer ; 
 they would tell how many sweet lives they have 
 charmed into misery and trouble. 
 
 In the autumn months another girl, Myrtle 
 
 B , became acquainted with a young man in 
 
 Chicago in a dance hall. He told her of the 
 beautiful clothes and jewels she could have if she 
 would go away with him. She ran away from the 
 city with this young man and for months nothing 
 was heard of her. Her heart-broken mother adver- 
 tised in newspapers, pleading with her to return. 
 Circulars were sent broadcast in the United States 
 to police officials in the hope that Myrtle might be 
 found. After a search of eight months it was as- 
 certained that the young daughter was in a resort 
 
 in Sioux City, Iowa, and Mrs. B , accompanied 
 
 by a Chicago attorney, went there and rescued her 
 daughter. 
 
 Upon going into the house the mother, white 
 with rage, sprang upon Cora , the proprie- 
 tress of the resort, but was caught and held back 
 by the attorney. Then the mother, who had been 
 brave throughout all the months of her search, ex- 
 hausted and worn out, broke down and had to be 
 assisted to a hotel. 
 
 The mother's attorney said after returning to 
 Chicago that the girl had been found after she had 
 written a letter home and in some way managed to 
 
The Way to Slavery 97 
 
 get it mailed. In this letter she stated that she 
 was being held as a prisoner in the resort, that her 
 clothing was locked up and that she was not al- 
 lowed to leave the place without a guard. Pro- 
 ceedings, both civil and criminal, were begun 
 against the resort keeper, but it was too late to catch 
 the pander who had taken her there. 
 
 Like the dance hall, the summer excursion boat 
 attracts many young people, and there, too, min- 
 gling in the crowd, is the pander. 
 
 The most astounding disclosure regarding this 
 way to slavery came with the arrest of Leona 
 Garrity and Bessie Lee. It reveals the story of a 
 woman, " Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde." 
 
 A girl of sixteen, by the name of Belle W , 
 
 was enjoying a trip on an excursion boat one day, 
 when Bessie Lee, who was sitting by her, engaged 
 the girl in conversation. Soon the acquaintance 
 ripened into friendship and Bessie Lee, the wily 
 procuress, told Belle that she would take her to 
 see her beautiful home, but when the girl arrived 
 in the home, she found herself a captive in a clear- 
 ing house of vice, conducted by Leona Garrity. 
 
 Belle W was found after a long search. It 
 
 was then learned that Leona Garrity, of the red 
 light district, was none other than Mrs. Lemuel 
 Schlotter, of Glencoe, a fashionable suburb of Chi- 
 cago, where she lived in luxury. 
 
 This woman presented a pitiable and almost 
 pathetic appearance in the criminal court one 
 morning, not long after Belle W was dis- 
 
98 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 covered in the vice resort. Hers was not a vicious 
 face. Her eyes were large and they looked at one 
 openly and almost frankly. In a public place she 
 would be taken for a quiet matron, with love for 
 her neighbours and scorn for acts that were im- 
 moral. She was dressed in a tailor-made suit of 
 blue; her hat was modestly trimmed. No one 
 would take her for an outcast who buys and sells 
 girls. Bessie Lee, who sat beside her, looked the 
 part of a procuress. She was thin lipped, cold 
 featured, with a complexion the colour of a faded 
 straw hat, and eyes that were black enough to spot 
 the wings of a crow. She flashed them too as she 
 ahnost couched in the big armchair given her by 
 the bailiff. In her countenance was written the 
 story of days spent in sorrow and nights in utter 
 shame. 
 
 During the trial a circumstance occurred which 
 shows the extreme measures that those engaged in 
 the white slave traffic will adopt to prevent 
 their fellow members in this intricate system of 
 crime from being caught in the toils of the law. 
 At noon, during the first day of the trial. Belle 
 
 W went to one of the State Street stores and, 
 
 becoming separated from her companion in the 
 great throng which crowds the stores at noontime, 
 she was caught by the arm and addressed by a 
 young man who said he was from the State's At- 
 torney's office, and that she was wanted over there 
 at once. Knomng that the State's Attorney was 
 prosecuting her captors, she went with him. 
 
The Way to Slavery 99 
 
 Using her own language : 
 
 " He took me by the arm and tried to force me 
 to go with him. Once on the street he attempted 
 to shove me into a saloon just as we were passing 
 it, saying that I looked weary and needed a drink 
 of whiskey. I knew then that he was not from the 
 State's Attorney's office, and broke away from him. 
 I went back to the store and tried to find the lady 
 I was with, and when I could not find her I walked 
 to Forty-first Street, not having car fare. I went 
 to the home of a friend and borrowed money to 
 get home with." 
 
 When the police heard that she was missing, a 
 " hurry up call " was sent to all the police districts, 
 and late in the evening she was found at her home 
 in the arms of her mother. 
 
 This case, like most of the white slave cases 
 that we have had, was bitterly fought with able 
 and experienced lawyers representing the defendant. 
 Like many of the other cases too, it brought forth 
 the story of gaining a girl's confidence by deceit, 
 luring her to a disreputable house by false pretenses, 
 and keeping her there by force. In brief, this is the 
 story of the trial. 
 
 The girl had made her accusations and told of her 
 sad experiences while in captivity, and the defend- 
 ants had made their denial and told the usual story 
 that the girl had come there of her own free will, 
 and the jury, after listening to the testimony, 
 scrutinizing the faces and observing the demeanour 
 of the witnesses, went to the jury room and re* 
 
100 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 turned later with a verdict, finding Leona Garrity, 
 alias Mrs. Lemuel Schlotter, and Bessie Lee, guilty 
 of harbouring a girl under age in a disreputable 
 house. The verdict carried with it from one to five 
 years imprisonment in the penitentiary. 
 
 While the experiences of Belle W illustrate 
 
 that panders procure girls from excursion boats, the 
 story told in the summer of 1909 by two sixteen- 
 year-old girls shows another way to slavery. 
 
 On the fourth day of July, when the people were 
 celebrating the birth of independence and liberty in 
 our country, May, one of the girls, was visiting 
 Forest Park, one of Chicago's amusement places. 
 During the evening she met Jacob Jacobson, a 
 young man who later asked to escort her home. 
 As he left her that night, she invited him to call 
 again. He did so two or three days later, bringing 
 with him another young man, Louis Brodsky. The 
 boys suggested that May get another girl and they 
 would all take a walk in Garfield Park. May 
 called on Adele, a girl of her own age in the 
 neighbourhood, and the four spent the evening in 
 the park. 
 
 The boys, who were panders and adept at the 
 business, soon succeeded in making the girls believe 
 that they were in love with them. The girls were 
 charmed at the thought of love at first sight, and 
 were fairly dazzled by the pictures the boys painted 
 to them of their homes in New York City where 
 they said their parents lived. Before the evening 
 was over they had all planned to elope together, 
 
The Way to Slavery loi 
 
 the boys promising to marry the girls and take 
 them to New York, where they said the girls could 
 live in fine homes and wear elegant clothes. 
 
 The next morning they met, as was agreed, but 
 instead of going to the marriage license oifice, the 
 boys took the girls for a trip to Dunning, one of 
 the suburbs about twelve miles from the centre of 
 the city, where the County Insane Institution and 
 Poor Houses are located. 
 
 The gates to this place being closed to visitors 
 that day, they roamed around until the latter part 
 of the afternoon, when they went to the oiRces of 
 the company where one of the girls had been 
 employed and she drew out the wages that were 
 due her and turned the money over to the boys. 
 They then went to a down-town restaurant, and 
 while there Brodsky excused himself, leaving Jacob- 
 son to guard the girls. Going to a drug store he 
 called up Abe Weinstein in South Chicago on the 
 telephone, and told him that they had the two girls 
 which he had told him about over the telephone the 
 night before. 
 
 "They are good lookers," said Brodsky, "and 
 we'll soon be out with them ; meet us at the depot." 
 
 Weinstein replied, " Bring them out right away 
 and don't let them get away from you." 
 
 The boys then took the girls to the Illinois Cen- 
 tral Station at Randolph Street and went out on the 
 train to South Chicago. On the way out the boys 
 told the girls that they were on their way to New 
 York City, but were going to stop off at South 
 
102 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 Chicago and meet some friends and bid them good* 
 bye. 
 
 According to the arrangement made over the tele- 
 phone, Abe Weinstein and Jennie Sandusky were at 
 the station to meet them, and the girls were told to 
 go with the Sandusky woman and the boys would 
 be around a little later. This they did, and before 
 they knew it they found themselves captives in an im- 
 moral house on The Strand. Two days later, how- 
 ever, the girls were found, rescued and restored to 
 their parents and the slave traders and their agents 
 were arrested. 
 
 The last week in July, Jacob Jacobson was tried 
 in the criminal com't building and found guilty. 
 
 The following week, on August fourth, Abe "Wein- 
 stein was tried in Judge Walker's court. After 
 other witnesses had testified, Louis Brodsky, who 
 had previously made a confession, w^as called on be- 
 half of the people and testified as follows : 
 
 "My name is Louis Brodsky, and I live at 
 
 No. York Street; I have been in jail over 
 
 two weeks ; about two months ago I first met 
 "Weinstein at Yan Buren and State Streets, he being 
 introduced to me by a fellow that I knew. Jacob- 
 son was with me at the time and we went with 
 "Weinstein that same day by the Illinois Central to 
 South Chicago ; Weinstein paid our fares and took 
 
 us to No. The Strand, where we stayed 
 
 three or four hours and had supper with Weinstein. 
 It was at that time that he asked us boys if we 
 wouldn!t like to make some money by getting girls 
 
The Way to Slavery 103 
 
 for him, and he mentioned the fact that there was 
 no particular danger. In fact Weinstein said to us 
 that if we could get him some girls that there 
 would be no chance of us getting into any trouble, 
 and that we would never regret it, because he said, 
 * I have got more influence around here than any 
 one else. I am known all around on the West Side, 
 the South Side and everywhere else.' 
 
 " After that he told us we could walk around the 
 amusement resorts and parks and get acquainted 
 with girls. He said if I got anybody to bring out 
 there everything would be all safe, and he was well 
 protected, and to go ahead and call him up by 
 'phone if I heard anything; he wanted girls and 
 told us he was very short of gMs and that he did 
 not have enough at that time. 
 
 "After this conversation Jacobson left with me 
 and we went back to the city. The next day I 
 spoke with Weinstein over the 'phone, and he says 
 if you get any one, either bring the parties out 
 to me and 'phone from the depot, or let Jacobson 
 bring them out and he would see that somebody 
 was there to meet them. 
 
 "Yes, I know Dolly (Adele) and May 
 
 . I first saw them about three weeks ago. 
 
 Jacob Jacobson was with me and we took a walk 
 around the park and talked to the girls. After we 
 took the girls home I called up Weinstein over the 
 telephone and told him about the girls. He said it 
 was all well and fine and to 'phone him again the 
 next day and he would tell me exactly how to get 
 
104 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 out there with them. The next day we met the 
 girls, and towards evening I telephoned to Wein- 
 stein and told him we were on our way with the 
 girls, and he says, ' I expected you a couple of hours 
 earlier, but it is all right, bring them right out. I, 
 or somebody else, will be at the depot waiting for 
 you.' We took the girls out there on the train and 
 when we got to the depot in South Chicago we sat 
 around about five minutes, when Weinstein and 
 Mrs. Sandusky came in and talked to the girls three 
 or four minutes and then we departed. "We did not 
 go with the girls from the station ; Weinstein told us 
 to come back later. About an hour or so after that 
 we went to Weinstein's place on The Strand and 
 saw the girls at his place. After we had a couple 
 of drinks, he said, ' Don't worry about anything for 
 everything will be all right, at least I hope it will, 
 as I never had no trouble before and there will be 
 no trouble now.' 
 
 " When I met Weinstein first I was looking for a 
 position, but after that I did no work. 
 
 " Nothing has been said to me about my going 
 free for my testimony. I know I am guilty, partly. 
 My lawyer told me to make a clean breast and tell 
 the truth about the whole story ; he told me I am 
 bound to get a sentence , but I haven't the least idea 
 what the punishment is. On his advice I have 
 taken the witness stand." 
 
 Following Brodsky the next witness called to the 
 stand was Adele. 
 
 " I am sixteen years old," she said. " May, Brod- 
 
The Way to Slavery 105 
 
 sky, Jacobson and myself went on the Illinois Cen- 
 tral train and the boys took us off the train at South 
 Chicago. About five minutes after we got off the 
 car I saw "Weinstein for the first time at the station, 
 and Louis Brodsky introduced him. May and I 
 
 went to No. The Strand with Miss Jennie. 
 
 I don't know where Weinstein went. However, 1 
 saw him later the same day at this place on The 
 Strand. "Weinstein asked me where I was from and 
 what my name was. He bought me some under- 
 wear, some face powder, some soap and other things. 
 They kept me there until the police came and took 
 me away. 
 
 " Louis Brodsky was the first one to speak to me 
 about leaving my home and told me that he would 
 take me to New York and I would have fine 
 clothes. When they took May some place else she 
 and Brodsky got arrested, and she told them where 
 I was, and then the police came and got me out." 
 
 May was the next witness. She told about meet- 
 ing Jacob Jacobson at Forest Park and about his 
 coming out to her home several days later when 
 Brodsky was with him, and about the walk in the 
 park, and about the promises that Avere then made. 
 
 She said that they had kept her at this house on 
 The Strand only one day and then had taken her 
 down-to"\vn to another house. 
 
 "Weinstein wanted to take me down-town to 
 some house," she said, " and I would not go. I told 
 him I wanted to go home, but they took me just 
 the same." 
 
lo6 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 Abe "Weinstein was found guilty and Louis 
 Brodsky entered a plea of guilty. 
 
 It may seem strange that girls can be led astray 
 so easily ; that they will fall in love at first sight 
 and go so unhesitatingly and confidingly with 
 almost utter strangers, but truth is stranger than 
 fiction. And while we may not sympathize alto- 
 gether with these girls, believing that they were 
 perhaps partly responsible for their own down- 
 fall, we cannot help but realize the terrible 
 traffic which the stories of these cases reveal. 
 They reveal the systematic intrigues of the pro- 
 curers to make good ghls bad and bad girls 
 worse. 
 
 It seems that this system is about as vicious and 
 dangerous to society, when men and women plot 
 and plan to make bad girls or wayward girls more 
 degraded, as it is to procure innocent girls for lives 
 of shame. 
 
 It is undoubtedly true that in many cases the 
 girls have a restless desire to pull aside the curtain 
 and peep into the labjainths of sin before they are 
 led into them by the panders. It is equaUj^ true, 
 however, that many good and innocent girls seek- 
 ing legitimate amusement and fun become victims 
 of procurers. 
 
 It has been interesting to watch girls who have 
 been procured and rescued and to learn that they 
 lead honest and wholesome lives. This is evidenced 
 by this note which I received last Christmas, ac- 
 companving a holiday gift : 
 
The Way to Slavery 107 
 
 " Mr. Eoe : 
 
 " Only this token can express my gratitude, 
 a letter never would, as words are expressionless. 
 I am working and doing only as I should. There- 
 fore feel as though I am worthy of only kindly 
 thoughts, and entertain only such for you. 
 " Sincerely, 
 
 " Adele." 
 
 This and many other tokens and letters of grati- 
 tude which have been received by me show that 
 the work which has been done for more than three 
 years in rescuing the helpless is indeed appreciated. 
 
IX 
 SUPPLYING THE DEMAND 
 
 ALL inmates of disorderly houses are not 
 slaves and all of them are not procured by 
 panders. The question is naturally asked, 
 How many voluntarily go into such houses ? The 
 answer to this question gives the very reason why 
 a traffic in girls exists. The proportion of those 
 who lead lives of shame voluntarily, differs in 
 various communities, but it is safe to say that in 
 no American city are all the inmates in houses of 
 vice there of their own volition. Figures and esti- 
 mates regarding this phase of the vice question are 
 as a rule illusive and conjectural. 
 
 The supply for immoral houses, of guis who 
 enter such places of their own free will, by no 
 means equals the demand. But for this difference 
 pandering, procuring white slaves, would never 
 have existed. 
 
 The fact that the average life of fallen women is 
 exceedingly short is a great element in the demand 
 for girls. It is not the purpose here, hoAvever, to 
 detail the horrors and the dread diseases which 
 make their lives short. They go as they come, 
 secretly and without notice. Very seldom the 
 public hears of the deaths of women of the under- 
 108 
 
Supplying the Demand 109 
 
 world, but they are dying by the scores in the 
 hospitals and county wards every day. 
 
 The places of those who are gone must be filled. 
 New girls are wanted ; and the resort owners send 
 out theu" procurers to exploit and recruit girls to 
 meet the demand. 
 
 The demand is steadily increasing, and the cause 
 is economic as well as social. The deferring of 
 marriage, brought about by the increased cost of 
 living and low salaries paid, has made the demand 
 much greater. These economic and social causes 
 operate as well to aid the panders in obtaining the 
 new supply. The desu-e for finer clothes and better 
 living, and the great increase in the number of girls 
 earning a livelihood make many girls easy prey for 
 the panders. Girls are recruited for this supply 
 from factories, stores, offices, and even from homes, 
 because they crave higher social position, which they 
 think money will give them. 
 
 A case which illustrates how a mother sacrificed 
 her daughter upon the altar of gold developed in 
 the court room the day following the Christmas 
 of 1908. 
 
 A young man was arrested for making an attack 
 upon an old man and was charged with an assault 
 with a deadly weapon; I walked into the court 
 room on the twenty-sixth day of December to 
 prosecute him upon this charge. I asked him why 
 he had gone out to the home of this elderly man 
 and made an assault with a revolver. He said : 
 
 " I went out there to get my girl." 
 
110 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 I then asked him what his girl's name was and 
 then he became confused and mumbled some words 
 that no one could understand. 
 
 Seeing at a glance that there was something 
 wrong in this case, I sent for the girl and this 
 story developed. 
 
 In the summer of 1907, a graphophone agent 
 went to the home of Ely S , who was em- 
 ployed by the Pere Marquette Railroad and lived 
 in a humble house in Benton Harbor, Michigan. 
 The agent saw there the pretty little blond 
 daughter, only sixteen years old, whose name was 
 Maggie. 
 
 The next day this gi^aphophone agent went back 
 to the house and this time he brought with him a 
 
 young man, whom he introduced to Ely S 's 
 
 daughter as Frank Kelly. These two men told 
 Maggie and her mother that they could secure a fine 
 position for Maggie in Chicago. They said it was 
 foolish for her to stay there in Benton Harbor 
 when she could make so much more money in a 
 larger city. The mother, thinking that it would 
 perhaps be better for Maggie to have a better home 
 and that their social position would be raised and 
 that they could live better if Maggie went away 
 and sent money home to them, gave her consent 
 and bade her daughter Godspeed and allowed 
 Maggie to be brought to Chicago by Frank Kelly. 
 The girl came presumably to get work, but when 
 she got here instead of getting work she was placed 
 in an Italian resort of the lowest character on 
 
Supplying the Demand in 
 
 South Clark Street, not far from the Harrison 
 Street Police Station. 
 
 She then discovered to her amazement that Frank 
 Kelly's real name was Alphonse Citro and that he 
 was an Italian who had been in America only a 
 few years. She had fallen into the hands of a 
 pander who placed her in this house where the 
 usual entrance was through a back alley. The 
 place was frequented only by Italians, most of 
 them labourers. She found herself surrounded by 
 twelve or fourteen scra-v\Tiy, half-clad, miserable 
 girls, part of them Italians and part Americans. 
 Here Maggie was kept until the following summer, 
 the summer of 1908. Citro, the pander, had sold 
 her there and he came often to collect money from 
 the proprietor of the place, which was charged 
 against her under the old debt system, so long in 
 vogue, and also to see that she did not get away. 
 
 The girl's father in some way obtained informa- 
 tion that she was in this resort. Citro learned that 
 the father had come to Chicago in search of his 
 daughter. He took the girl out of the resort, and 
 in order to circumvent the law then existing in 
 Illinois, which protected only unmarried females, 
 he married her legally, under the name of Frank 
 Kelly, and took her to Gary, Indiana. When the 
 gui's father reached the Chicago resort, he was 
 told that his daughter had just left. After hunt- 
 ing her for several days, he went home heart- 
 broken, giving up the hunt. Citro kept the girl in 
 Gary two months and then brought her back 
 
112 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 and put her into the same Italian house of ill 
 repute. 
 
 Here she was kept until the following winter 
 when she finally escaped from the house on the 
 twenty-first of December, ran to a near-by barber 
 shop and asked for protection. One of the barbers 
 took pity upon her ; invited her out to his own 
 home and put her under the care of his mother and 
 father, until a way could be found to send her to 
 her own home safely. Citro, learning that she had 
 gone to this barber shop and ascertaining that one 
 of the barbers had taken her to his home, went out 
 there after her. He went to the door and knocked 
 and, when the father of the barber opened the 
 door, Citro demanded that the girl be turned over 
 to him, saying in the words of the testimony, " I 
 am losing money every day that she is gone." The 
 old father refused to give her up and then Citro 
 drew a revolver and tried to intimidate and brow- 
 beat him. A daughter in the house called for help 
 and soon several people gathered around and a 
 scufile ensued. Citro got the worst of it, and, be- 
 coming frightened, ran down the street and threw 
 his revolver away as he ran. He was caught by a 
 negro who held him until officer John C. Kaliher 
 arrived on the scene and arrested him ; thus on the 
 day following Christmas he was brought before 
 Judge Going for trial. 
 
 After I had heard this story from the lips of the 
 girl who had been kept as a slave for a year and a 
 half, I changed the charge against Citro to pander- 
 
Supplying the Demand 113 
 
 mg. This was on Saturday and the following week 
 he was tried upon that charge before a jury in 
 Judge Going's court. 
 
 "When a jury was secured, Maggie S told of 
 
 her procurement, captivity and escape. Among 
 the other witnesses who testified was Sam DeJohn, 
 the barber who protected her after her escape. 
 
 Alphonse Citro was found guilty January 6, 1909, 
 but, because the evidence was not considered suffi- 
 ciently strong, he was granted a new trial. The 
 following week he was tried again by another jury. 
 At this trial several more witnesses were brought 
 in to tell what they knew about the case. 
 
 One was Minnie Fox who said she managed a 
 hotel on South State Street where Citro lived. She 
 told that he loitered around the hotel oftentimes 
 all day, and did not seem to be doing any work. 
 
 Another witness was Kobert Leonard, a porter 
 Avho worked in the house into which Maggie was 
 sold. He told the character of the place, and also 
 testified that he had seen Citro around there very 
 often. " There were a lot of other panders hang- 
 ing around there," he said, " and Citro knew them 
 all weU." 
 
 After Leonard had concluded his testimony Mag- 
 gie's mother and father went on the witness stand. 
 
 When all the witnesses had finished giving their 
 testimony and I was addressing the jury, I saw one 
 of the saddest sights I have ever beheld in the 
 court room. I heard some one moaning and I 
 turned from the jury and looked over to where the 
 
114 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 mother and father were sitting. There sat Ely 
 
 S with his arm around the old mother, both 
 
 of them weeping. The mother was clutching a 
 little shawl that was folded across her breast, and 
 sobbing as though her heart would break. Per- 
 haps she was thinking of the day that she had al- 
 lowed Maggie to leave home with a stranger in 
 order that she might have more money. That 
 mother had certainly sacrificed her daughter upon 
 an altar of gold. 
 
 Citro was again found guilty and sentenced un- 
 der the pandering law. 
 
 Battista Pizzi, the owner of the resort for which 
 Maggie was procured, was indicted by the grand 
 jury for harbouring a girl under the age of eighteen 
 in an immoral house, but before he was arrested it 
 was reported that he had fled to Italy. It was 
 learned afterwards, however, that he had gone only 
 to New York where he stayed for a while until he 
 thought that the matter had blown over. He came 
 back, was arrested and finally convicted by a jury 
 in Judge Edwin K. "Walker's court. 
 
 Only recently three more procurers giving the 
 names of Frank Komano, Antonio Colafore and 
 Clara Klein were convicted in Judge Fake's court, 
 and were given the maximum sentence under the 
 amended pandering law of one year in the house 
 of correction and a fine of one thousand dollars 
 and costs each, for selling a little girl by the name 
 
 of Ethel A into the same resort. Since 
 
 then this place has been closed by the police. 
 
Supplying the Demand 115 
 
 A woman by the name of Alice Alva was tried 
 in Judge Fake's court for attempting to procure a 
 young girl, a clerk in one of the large department 
 stores. The woman, who was fine looking and well 
 dressed, discovered that the girl was interested in 
 music ; and pretending to be attracted by her beauty, 
 she told the girl that if she would come " home " 
 with her, she would have an opportunity to hear 
 and learn music. The woman promised her good 
 company and fine clothes while the girl was acquir- 
 ing a musical education, which she promised to give 
 her, and the girl was finally induced to go with the 
 woman. 
 
 The girl obtained permission to go home, and as 
 she was leaving the store in company with this 
 woman, the attention of one of the house detectives 
 was attracted to the elegantly dressed woman, lead- 
 ing towards the entrance a young, poorly clad girl 
 whom he recognized as an employee. He stopped 
 them and engaged them in conversation, and upon 
 learning the unusual story of a fairy godmother and 
 a poor Cinderella, his suspicions were aroused. 
 
 Questioning the girl, he discovered that she knew 
 nothing whatsoever of the woman and the woman 
 finally admitted that she had deceived the girl in 
 promising to give her a musical education. There- 
 upon the detective arrested the woman, Alice Alva, 
 and later investigation showed that she was the 
 agent of a vicious resort o^vner. 
 
 Another case which happened about the same time 
 was that against George Simouese, a Greek candy 
 
Ii6 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 maker, who was caught after attempting to sell 
 
 Daisy H to a resort keeper on The Strand in 
 
 South Chicago. 
 
 The girl testified that she was formerly an in- 
 mate of a resort at Princeton, Illinois, but had left 
 that place and had come to Chicago to earn an 
 honest living. She was employed by Simouese to 
 take charge of his candy store and had been work- 
 ing there about a week, when, she said, the Greek 
 told her he knew a place where she could make 
 more money than she was earning while working 
 for him. He mduced her to accompany hun and 
 the moment she entered the place she recognized 
 that it was an immoral resort. While the Greek 
 was bargaining with the resort owner for her sale 
 she ran out and went up the street until she found 
 an officer, and the officer went back and caught the 
 Greek. 
 
 Judge Petit, in passing sentence upon the man, 
 said that it made no difference whether the girl 
 had been a former inmate of a house or not, as 
 long as she wanted to reform and was willing to work 
 for a living. The man was found guilty under the 
 disorderly conduct act, which was the only charge 
 which could be placed against him in those days, as 
 she was not of previous chaste life and conversation. 
 
 " My only regret," said the judge, " is that the 
 maximum fine is too small in cases which deal with 
 such snakes as you. I fine you two hundred dollars 
 and costs." 
 
 The story of another girl who sought to better 
 
Supplying the Demand 117 
 
 her position in life was that of Marie M . She 
 
 was marked for sale and lured by subterfuge to a 
 resort on Wabash Avenue by alleged procurers. 
 She was only a little girl, fifteen years old, who had 
 been in America but a short tune and could not 
 speak English. Marie worked in a factory on the 
 west side of Chicago and was going home from work 
 one day when she was approached by a woman who 
 spoke her mother tongue and promised her better 
 employment. 
 
 " You work so hard, my dear, and get only a 
 small amount each week," said the stranger. 
 " Come with me. I can give you pleasant employ- 
 ment and pay you twice as much." 
 
 The gu'l refused the offer at first, and went home. 
 The woman, Emma Mosel, alias Marie Smith, 
 brazenly followed her to where she lived and there 
 renewed her importunities. The girl at last yielded. 
 She boarded a car with the woman and, knowing 
 nothing of Chicago, except as it lay between her 
 home and the factory, she walked unsuspectingly 
 into the trap. 
 
 She was taken into a levee resort and when her 
 companion escorted her into a room, where there 
 were five men, rough of aspect and powerful of 
 stature, they leaped at the victim and bore her into 
 an inner room. The girl struggled violently and 
 finally freed one arm. She drew her long hat pin 
 from her hat and with it stabbed two of her captors, 
 who released their hold sufficiently to permit her 
 feet to reach the floor. She sprang towards the door. 
 
Ii8 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 The men followed. Again the girl faced them with 
 the uplifted hat pin, and they stood back and 
 cowered in fear. She sprang for the door and 
 escaped, screaming. 
 
 Upon reaching the street she ran into a poUceman 
 and fell into his arms, but as she could speak no 
 English he could not understand. Finally detect- 
 ives were found who could speak her language and 
 they hunted down the pandress, who was well known 
 to the police, and also caught two of the men. 
 
 The resort where the girl was taken was closed, 
 as it had long been one of the fester spots of Chicago. 
 
 Mrs. Mosel, after a preliminary hearing before 
 Judge McKenzie Cleland, was held to the grand 
 jury. While in the county jail pending action by 
 the grand jury, she was discharged by Judge Kersten 
 upon a writ of habeas corpus because of a flaAv in 
 the commitment papers, growing out of the careless 
 manner in which the papers had been drawn up by 
 a court clerk. 
 
 The error was declared to be fatal to the validity 
 of the papers. The court sustained a contention of 
 her attorney that the papers should specify the of- 
 fense exactly, that no false pretense was alleged and 
 that other important legal terms were omitted. 
 
 The hope of rearresting the Mosel woman sank 
 hopelessly out of sight when it was discovered that 
 the statutes provided a penalty of one thousand dol- 
 lars for rearresting any person discharged on a writ 
 of habeas corpus. The woman whose offense was 
 particularly flagrant thus escaped punishment be- 
 
Supplying the Demand 119 
 
 cause it was impossible to cure the flaw carelessly 
 made by a court clerk. 
 
 Another revolting instance, which revealed the 
 horrors of this slave system, was brought to the at- 
 tention of the court when Mrs. Stella Papa, a twenty- 
 two-year-old white slave, swore that Dominick 
 Papa, after marrying her, sold her to the proprietor 
 of a disorderly house in the so-called " segregated 
 district," compelling her to support him, beating her 
 and taking the money which she earned from her. 
 
 This case was unique in that the woman assisted 
 in the cross-examination of her husband. It was a 
 laugh, meant to be scornful and to discredit the 
 words of the pretty witness, that brought the 
 avalanche of questions upon the head of her hus- 
 band. The young wife was seated upon the wit- 
 ness stand and the question was asked : 
 
 " Why did you have your husband arrested ? " 
 
 " Because he beat me," answered the girl. 
 
 " Why did he beat you ? " queried the judge. 
 
 " Because I asked him for a dollar and a half." 
 
 As she said this, the husband, who was seated in 
 the defendant's chau* before the court, looked up at 
 the court and laughed. 
 
 The woman turned upon him with these words : 
 
 " Where did you get the money you had last 
 night?" 
 
 " From you," came the faltering answer of the 
 defendant. 
 
 " How much did you have in your pocket when 
 I asked you for a dollar and a half ? " cried the wife. 
 
^20 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 " I don't know," stammered the husband, 
 
 " Oh, yes, you do," and the woman looked as if 
 she would like to leap at his throat. " You had 
 fifty dollars. It was my money. You got it when 
 you sent me to that house at Armour Ave- 
 nue. How long have, you worked in the eleven 
 months of our married life ? " 
 
 " But " began the husband. 
 
 " Don't say you couldn't get a job. You haven't 
 done a day's work. You sold me and you lived on 
 me. You promised to support me. Instead I have 
 supported you." 
 
 "Enough," said the judge. "We must have 
 order in the court room." 
 
 When the testimony was finished the judge who 
 tried the case found the defendant guilty, after 
 administering the severest rebuke probably ever 
 heard in a Chicago court room. 
 
 These cases prove that the traffickers in girls have 
 been clever. They have acquired a knowledge of 
 the things which appeal strongly to young and im- 
 pressionable girls. The desire of girls is to better 
 their social condition, a wish which is laudable and 
 honourable, and one which should not be discour- 
 aged for a moment, 
 
 Necessity often causes parents to encourage their 
 daughters to seek employment, but the deplorable 
 feature of this condition is that many girls are en- 
 couraged and even forced to go to work when it is 
 really not necessary. They are allowed to leave 
 home without any safeguard being placed around 
 
Supplying the Demand 121 
 
 them. The parents often do not take the trouble 
 to inquire where the girls are going, or for whom 
 they are going to work, or Avith whom they go 
 away to get this work. 
 
 A careful survey of the situation throughout the 
 United States reveals the same conditions. The 
 number of girls in America who are procured be- 
 cause of these conditions is almost beyond belief. 
 
 When the girls are procured and placed in vice 
 resorts they cannot leave. Their stories are about 
 the same after they are made slaves. The harden- 
 ing process during which they are held as slaves 
 varies. It depends upon the giiis and the circum- 
 stances of their procurement. Sometimes they be- 
 come acclimated to their surroundings in a few 
 weeks, and sometimes many months elapse before 
 the o^vners become convinced that they can trust 
 their victims. 
 
 As we have seen the panders frequent public 
 dance halls, amusement parks, stores, factories, and 
 other places visited by girls or where they are em- 
 ployed. If in their efforts to supply the demand 
 the panders stopped there this traific might be more 
 easily checked, but they go further, and even de- 
 vise various opportunities and schemes to enter our 
 very homes. In fact no matter how, where, or in 
 what manner girls are procured, the question of the 
 traffic in girls goes right to the home, undermining 
 the fairest heritage of life, and the very foundation 
 of all government. 
 
X 
 
 A NEW ENEMY 
 
 ♦» 1^ -TEAR-THEATRES" are those which to 
 I^^J all apparent intents and purposes fur- 
 JL ^ nish only vulgar theatrical perform- 
 ances. They are a menace to society, however, in 
 more ways than by furnishing to men and boys ex- 
 hibitions of lust. There are hundreds of them in 
 this country. Some are known as " concert halls," 
 and others parade under the name of "burlesque 
 houses." 
 
 To the casual observer who might chance to look 
 in upon a performance at a "near-theatre," the 
 place would not present a different appearance from 
 other theatres. If the visitor should chance to go 
 into the balcony, however, he would find there 
 boxes partitioned off, making complete rooms in 
 themselves, where the occupants were quite se- 
 cluded and alone. In each of these boxes would be 
 a table, around which would be arranged half a 
 dozen chairs or more. In the entrance to the 
 boxes curtains would be hung which entirely cut 
 off the view within to any person who might pass 
 up or down the aisle which fianked the walls sur- 
 rounding the entire balcony. 
 
 Upon request the usher would gladly show the 
 122 
 
A New Enemy 123 
 
 visitor to one of these boxes which happened to be 
 vacant, and when the visitor was comfortably 
 seated a waiter would appear and wiping off the 
 table, would look inquiringly at the visitor, sug- 
 gesting the question : 
 
 " What will you have to drink ? " 
 
 The order for the drink having been taken, the 
 waiter and his ever-present tray would disappear 
 from view, and a moment later a much powdered 
 and painted lass, in a theatrical costume, perhaps 
 with abbreviated skirts, would appear on the scene. 
 As a rule she would pull aside the curtains gently 
 and poke her bleached head into the box and pass 
 some commonplace remark. Unless the girl were 
 timid, which would hardly be the case except with 
 a new girl, she would not even wait for an invi- 
 tation, but would walk in boldly and plant herself 
 down in a seat beside the visitor, shove her chair 
 up as close as possible to his and whisper in his ear : 
 
 " I'm awful thirsty ; won't you buy me a drink ? " 
 
 Scarcely would the words be uttered before the 
 non-committal waiter would appear again, with the 
 remark : 
 
 " Shall I bring in the drink, sir ? " 
 
 The order that the visitor had given was placed 
 upon the table. The waiter, suspicious that a 
 stray drop of liquor or a speck of dust had stealth- 
 ily found its way to the top of the table would get 
 busy with his towel again and proceed to polish 
 the table so bright that the visitor might use it 
 for a looking-glass. As the waiter did this, he 
 
124 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 would look inquiringly at the visitor, suggesting 
 the question : 
 
 " What will the ' lady ' have to drink ? " 
 
 The " lady " would order the highest priced 
 drink in the house and the waiter would return 
 with it so quickly that the visitor well might sur- 
 mise that he had only gone out in the hall and 
 taken it from his pocket, or had produced it with a 
 magic wand. 
 
 The visitor now glances for a second at the per- 
 formance. Almost immediately he turns his at- 
 tention once more to the " fair one " at his side. 
 To his astonishment the drink has disappeared, 
 almost as mysteriously as it had been produced ; 
 and again he hears the refrain : 
 
 " Buy me another drink, kid ? " 
 
 If it happens that she had just taken part in one 
 of the Egyptian dances, which are frequently given 
 in this class of houses, she will doubtless be adorned 
 with the thin, flimsy gauze drapery which hangs 
 loosely over the skin-coloured tights, which we are 
 told is indeed the costume that is worn in the part 
 of the world where the desert of Sahara is located. 
 
 After a few more drinks and the girl has prob- 
 ably told the history of her life, which may or may 
 not be fiction, and she has nestled closely to the 
 visitor, she again whispers in his ear, and together 
 they leave the box. 
 
 All concert halls and burlesque theatres are not 
 like this one, but it was to such a place in Spring- 
 field, Illinois, that two girls were sent in December, 
 
A New Enemy 125 
 
 1907, with contracts from a theatrical agent in 
 (Chicago. They reached the former city just at 
 dawn, found the theatre with difficulty, and on 
 account of the earliness of the hour appUed for a 
 room at a rooming-house next door, conducted by 
 a good Scotch lady, Mrs. Stratton. 
 
 She asked them where they had come from and 
 what they intended to do. 
 
 They did not hesitate to tell her that they had 
 come from Chicago, where they had been working 
 in a department store, to go upon the stage. They 
 were jubilant over the very idea of becoming 
 actresses, and seemed to be fairly radiant with joy. 
 They did not understand the Scotch lady's frown 
 and worried expression as they told her with great 
 enthusiasm of their hopes and aspirations for the 
 career into which they thought they were about to 
 be initiated. 
 
 Mrs. Stratton assigned them to a room and said 
 that they had better go to bed and sleep for a 
 while, and that she would awaken them about ten 
 o'clock. The ghls, worn out from their long, 
 sleepless journey on a day coach, gladly acquiesced 
 and went to bed. 
 
 Sad mdeed was the Scotch woman who turned 
 away from the door she had just closed upon those 
 two happy, tired ghls. Slowly she descended the 
 stairs, wrapped in thought. 
 
 It was just two weeks and two days later when 
 this same Scotch lady, Mrs. Stratton, was seated in 
 the box-like witness stand, in the larger of the two 
 
126 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 rooms at the Harrison Street Court in Chicago. 
 Judge Wells, one of the judges of the Municipal 
 Court, was listening to the proceedings. 
 
 As I turned to address her, Mrs. Stratton started 
 to rise from the chair, and I said : 
 
 "Just remain seated, if you please, and state 
 your name to the court." 
 
 " My name is Isabelle Stratton. I live in Spring- 
 field, at East Jefferson Street. I keep a room- 
 ing-house there and this has been my business since 
 my husband was killed. 
 
 "I know the two complaining witnesses, Miss 
 
 Ida P and Miss Evelyn K , for they came 
 
 to my house on the twenty-ninth of December. 
 They came on the morning train and were there 
 until Kew Year's evening, when I sent them home 
 and paid their way. They wanted to go home." 
 
 Then I asked her the question : 
 
 " Do you know what these girls did there in 
 Springfield ? " 
 
 " I am generally in the habit, if any young lady 
 comes to my place, to ask them what their position 
 is, so that I will get the right people in there. So 
 I asked the girls what they were going to work at, 
 which I thought was my duty." 
 
 " I object to her thoughts," shouted the counsel 
 for the defendant. 
 
 " Yes, just tell what was said," I remarked. 
 
 " They said Mr. Henderson sent them down from 
 Chicago to go to McCann's theatre," continued the 
 witness, "the 'Big 0' or the 'Olympic' I said to 
 
A New Enemy 127 
 
 them, ' "Well, you can go, girls, but I advise you not 
 to. You can suit yourselves.' And they reported 
 at the theatre at half -past seven o'clock at night. 
 I know that they went at half-past seven o'clock 
 and they came in " 
 
 " I object," interposed the defendant's counsel. 
 
 " Did you watch them ? " inquired the judge. 
 
 " Yes, sir, I did," was the response. " My house 
 is right adjoining the theatre and I can see right in." 
 
 " Go ahead and state what you saw," I then said 
 to her. 
 
 " Well, the girls went there, but they came back 
 a little after eight and they were crying. They 
 stopped in the hallway and I went out and asked 
 them what was the trouble. They said, ' We have 
 to sell drinks over there,' and they said they had 
 never done that before and were not going to work 
 at that now. They said that Mr. McCann, the 
 owner, the head gazaboo, told them that. 
 
 " I said, ' Girls, don't you go.' They said, ' We 
 have no money ; what can we do ? ' Then I an- 
 swered, ' You've got my room, haven't you, and you 
 have my table, and I will see a way of getting you 
 back to Chicago, but if you go in that theatre, that 
 is the last of you ; you are down and you will never 
 be right again.' After I had advised them not to 
 go, they said they were not going to go there to 
 work and would go home. At quarter to nine they 
 were in bed. At one o'clock in the morning a 
 young man came to the front door and knocked. I 
 went out and asked him what he wanted. He said 
 
128 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 he wanted to see those two girls from Chicago. He 
 said Mr. McCann had sent him over there with a 
 note. I told him to give me the note and I would 
 pass it to the girls, and then he said he didn't have 
 any note. ' Mr. McCann said,' he says, ' for them to 
 come over there at one o'clock in the morning.' I 
 went and told the girls and they said they wouldn't 
 go. They said they didn't want any more." 
 
 " What did they do the next day ? " I then asked 
 her. 
 
 " Well, on the thirtieth they went to the police 
 station and the humane oiScer came to look after 
 them and he came over to my house at eight o'clock 
 at night. Except when the girls went to the police 
 station they were in the house most of the day, and 
 the only time they went out was to go down below 
 to a fruit store to buy some bananas. They were 
 home that evening and went to bed at nine o'clock. 
 
 " The next day they got up at eight o'clock or 
 something like that and just sat in the parlour all 
 day until they left for Chicago on the midnight 
 train. A friend of mine went with them to the 
 depot and saw them away on the train. During 
 the day they left, the humane oiRcer came to my 
 house and said they told him over at the ' dump ' 
 that these girls were dope fiends, and he said to me, 
 ' Mrs. Stratton, come up to the girls' room with 
 me.' I said, ' All right,' and went up. He searched 
 their valises and whatever they had, but there was 
 nothing of the kind there, for I sat and watched 
 him all the time. 
 
A New Enemy 129 
 
 "After tliat Mr. Golden, the chief of police, 
 came to my house. He came up and talked to the 
 girls and asked if the girls had used some kind of 
 dope, and the girls said, ' There has been one man 
 here searching our things, and you can too.' He 
 said, ' No, I want to do what is justice towards you 
 girls and towards Mr. McCann,' and he said, 'if 
 we find that you girls are all right, we are going to 
 pay your way back to Chicago.' Well, he was 
 going to come back, but nobody came, and the girls 
 got to crying, and I said, ' Dry up your tears ; I'll 
 find a way of getting you gu'ls back home. If they 
 don't pay your way back home, I will do it ; ' so I 
 sent the girls home." 
 
 " How near do you live to the ' Big O ' did you 
 say ? " I inquired. 
 
 "There is a thin brick wall between us," she 
 answered. " We can hear them talking and singing 
 and we can see into the top floor, where all the 
 ' monkey shines ' is. In the warm nights they have 
 the windows pulled down and I looked in from my 
 porch. Well, about maybe a quarter to three in 
 the morning, they kept this ' dump ' gomg until 
 three o'clock in the morning that day, but they are 
 getting better now. On that morning I seen young 
 boys not more than eighteen or nineteen years old 
 sitting on seats and all naked, and the girls in their 
 laps, and I think it is a disgrace to humanity. Now, 
 that is the kind of a ' dump ' they run and this was 
 why I was embittered against the girls' going 
 there. 
 
130 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 " They were all drunk," she continued, " and I 
 have seen them do things just as bad as they 
 could." 
 
 " How often have you seen such actions as that ? " 
 I asked. 
 
 " Well, that is once and I never looked to see any 
 more. I got enough. I got my eyes filled for be- 
 ing inquisitive." 
 
 I said to her : 
 
 " Now, was this room that you looked into right 
 in the theatre ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir," she said. " It is above the theatre, 
 just like a big circle all the way back and little 
 tables set, and the girls going around among the 
 men and hugging the men and getting them to buy 
 drinks. I had seen them several times before that, 
 but this is once I have seen what I told you. I 
 guess I have seen them not less than five times any- 
 how." 
 
 " Could you ever hear what they said when the 
 windows were open ? " she was asked. 
 
 " Yes, sir, I could hear the girls coax the men to 
 buy drinks, and that is what I would call 'hus- 
 tling for the drinks.' I have heard them swearing 
 and calling the men pets. The girls were swearing 
 too. One morning between two and three o'clock 
 I woke up and heard a girl screaming. I thought 
 at first somebody was fighting in my house. I 
 couldn't tell where it was. I ran out on the back 
 porch and there she was over in the ' Big O ' and she 
 was screaming, ' For God's sake, leave me go home I 
 
A New Enemy 131 
 
 For God's sake, let me go home ! ' I hollered to 
 them to leave the girl alone. 
 
 " At other tunes I could hear the girls singing, 
 but I couldn't see the stage. I could just see in 
 the part where they hustled drinks. They have 
 rooms right there in the theatre where the girls 
 go to." 
 
 Mr. David Eoss, who had come up from Spring- 
 field in behalf of the Illinois Free Employment 
 Bureau, which is a state institution, took the wit- 
 ness stand after the examination of Mrs. Stratton 
 had been concluded. He was followed first by 
 Mr. Charles Tinlin, of Kiverton, Illinois, seven 
 miles from Springfield, and then by Mr. E. B. 
 Putnam. All of these gentlemen testified in no 
 uncertain terms as to the unsavoury reputation of 
 the Big O. 
 
 The next witnesses were Evelyn K and Ida 
 
 P . As their testimony was so nearly alike, I 
 
 shall let Evelyn K , who was the younger of 
 
 the two girls, for she was only seventeen years old, 
 relate their experiences in the theatrical world. 
 
 Evelyn told that she had been working in the 
 
 store, where she was selling dress linings. The 
 day before Christmas, when the store was crowded, 
 a woman came up to her counter and asked to see 
 some goods. 
 
 "I showed her the goods," Evelyn testified, 
 " and the woman asked if that would be enough 
 for a stage costume. I said, ' I don't know.' She 
 began to talk to me about going on the stage, and 
 
132 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 asked whether I would like to go on the stage. 
 She said I could make a whole lot more than work- 
 ing in the store. She told me I was too good 
 looking to waste my time behind the counter and 
 gave me a card with Mr. Henderson's name on it, 
 with the address, La Salle Street. 
 
 " That night Miss P and I got to talking 
 
 about the stage and I showed her the card and told 
 her what the woman had said to me. "We were 
 both working at the same store. 
 
 " The day after Christmas we made up our minds 
 to go and see Mr. Henderson and we found him at the 
 address given by the woman. When we got there 
 we met some girl standing in the hall and she 
 asked us what we were applying for. We said we 
 wanted to go on the stage, and she says, ' I will 
 tell Mr. Henderson.' I saw her go in and talk to 
 Mr. Henderson and then she came out and said, 
 'Girls, it is just the thing. You can go on the 
 stage.' Mr. Henderson came out then and we 
 talked to him. Mr. Henderson said, ' Sure, you can 
 go on the stage.' He says he would send us to 
 Springfield. He told us to get our clothes ready 
 and go the following Saturday. He said he would 
 pay our way and would get our tickets from the 
 theatre in Springfield and when we got out there 
 he would advance our board and we would get 
 twenty-five dollars a week. 
 
 " I cannot say whether we signed a contract that 
 night or Saturday morning. When we got to 
 Springfield Mr. McCann called our attention to 
 
A New Enemy 133 
 
 the part of the contract where it mentioned twenty 
 per cent." 
 
 " Did you know anything about the twenty per 
 cento before you started ?" I asked. 
 
 " No, sir. That was after we got to Springfield. 
 We hadn't read our contracts carefully. 
 
 "Saturday morning, the morning we were to 
 start, we went to Mr. Henderson's office and he 
 said the tickets had not come up yet. He told us 
 we would have to stay over Sunday and go the 
 following Monday. We said we could not, that 
 our board had run out. He said, ' I have a place m 
 
 the Hotel, where I stay, and you can go 
 
 there.' We did not want to go there. We said, 
 ' No,' we wanted to leave Saturday night. Then he 
 said, ' All right ; ' to go out and spend that after- 
 noon and come back at four o'clock and the tickets 
 would be up there then. 
 
 " We took a train that night, I think it was the 
 11 : 45 train, and got to Springfield at five o'clock 
 the next morning. When we got there we saw 
 Mrs. Stratton's place and went in and asked to 
 rent a room. In the evening we went over to the 
 theatre and Mr. McCann told us that the next day 
 we should come to rehearsal. That was on Monday. 
 We told him we were to have our board advanced 
 us and Mr. McCann told us they had advanced our 
 board there. He says, 'When girls come from 
 Chicago they have to board at the theatre. If you 
 want to work for me you will have to take a room 
 here.' We says we will not room there. Then he 
 
134 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 says to us, we ^Yere to be chorus girls and we were 
 to sell drinks and we were to room over there, and 
 then he explained about the twenty per cent. He 
 says, ' When you girls are not on the stage you will 
 have to hustle drinks and you get twenty per cent, 
 on all the drinks you get the men to buy.' 
 
 "We went back to Mrs. Stratton's and started 
 crying. We told her we did not want to work 
 there and did not like the place. We told her we 
 had to sell drinks over there. She said, 'Girls, 
 don't go there because it's not a nice place.' We 
 did not know how to get back to Chicago, and she 
 said she would help us get back. So the next day 
 she sent us to the chief of police and he came up 
 to the house." 
 
 During the trial, which lasted several days, 
 twenty-one witnesses beside Mr. Henderson were 
 called by the defendant's lawyer in the endeavour 
 to show that the Big O was a regular theatre and 
 not a " near-theatre," or a cross between a theatre 
 and a disreputable house, and also to establish the 
 fact that William F. Henderson was a theatrical 
 agent in good standing. 
 
 Among these witnesses were Cornelius J. Mc- 
 Cann, one of the owners of the Big O. Many of 
 the defendant's witnesses were theatrical people, 
 most of them variety actors and actresses. Every 
 one of them testified that they did not live in the 
 theatre while they were acting there and usually 
 remained only a week, giving some special act dur- 
 ing the performance. But they also reluctantly 
 
A New Enemy 135 
 
 acknoTvledged upon cross-examination that the 
 chorus girls lived at the Big O. 
 
 A typical cross-examination of these witnesses in 
 this regard was that of Lillian Emmett McNeill. 
 
 " My specialty," she said, " is singing and danc- 
 ing and I performed down in the Olympic Theatre 
 in Springfield the third week in September last, and 
 my engagement lasted a week. I lived about six 
 blocks from the theatre." 
 
 The question was then asked by me : 
 
 " "Were you informed by Mr. McCann that the 
 actresses were living in the theatre ? " 
 
 "No, sir." 
 
 "Did you associate or mingle with the chorus 
 girls there ? " 
 
 " No, I just saw them around, and they me." 
 
 " They lived in the theatre there, didn't they ? " 
 I asked. 
 
 " Some of them may, and some of them may 
 not ; I never was back in their rooms. I think 
 they had rooms up-stairs, but I was never back 
 there. I never was asked to go out and drink with 
 the audience." 
 
 " The high class actresses would not live up there, 
 would they ? " she was asked. 
 
 " No, sir," she answered. 
 
 The evidence in this case was concluded on Jan- 
 uary twenty-eighth and William F. Henderson 
 was held to the grand jury upon the charge of at- 
 tempting to entice unmarried females of former 
 chaste life and conversation to enter an immoral 
 
136 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 house for immoral purposes, this being a prelimi- 
 nary hearing by the court. 
 
 Henderson was indicted by the grand jury, but 
 the night before his case was to be tried in the 
 
 criminal court, Ida P and Evelyn K 
 
 mysteriously disappeared. 
 
 The Chicago Law and Order League had gener- 
 ously looked after the girls since their return to 
 Chicago from Springfield. In fact, it was to this 
 organization that the girls had first applied for help, 
 and its oflicers had brought them to me. Mr. 
 Arthur Burrage Farwell, of this organization, 
 and Mr. William H. Cruden, of the Illinois 
 Free Emplojniient Bureau, volunteered to aid the 
 girls until the case was called for trial. They 
 had sent them to the home of Mrs. Lizzie Levy, 
 who lived on Lill Street, to remain during the 
 interval between the preliminary hearing and 
 the trial in the criminal court. Two detectives 
 from the assistant chief's office had been assigned 
 to aid in securing evidence against Henderson and 
 also to the duty of looking after the welfare of the 
 two girls, who were the principal witnesses. These 
 men had called almost daily at the Levy home and 
 were convinced that the girls were comfortable 
 there. 
 
 On the morning that Henderson's case was called 
 for trial in the criminal court the detectives went 
 to the Lill Street house to get the girls and take 
 them to court. Upon arriving there, however, 
 Mrs. Levy evidenced great nervousness and hesi- 
 
A New Enemy 137 
 
 tatingly told them that she thought the girls had 
 been kidnapped. Mrs. Levy said that she had gone 
 to bed as usual and the girls were sitting up, talk- 
 ing, and that to her great surprise in the morning 
 they were nowhere to be found. 
 
 Telegrams were sent broadcast throughout the 
 country and pictui^es of the girls were published in 
 newspapers in many different cities. 
 
 The Henderson case was full enough of sensa- 
 tion, but the mysterious disappearance of these 
 girls added the greatest sensation of all. The fact 
 that the girls had disappeared the very night be- 
 fore the trial naturally caused the suspicion that 
 some one connected with the case had taken them 
 away. The fear was entertained that the girls had 
 been dealt with foully. The newspapers gave such 
 prominence to notices of their disappearance that 
 the affair was discussed in all quarters of the coun- 
 try. 
 
 Mrs. Levy and others in her household were cited 
 into court by the judge and closely questioned as 
 to any knowledge of the girls' sudden departure, 
 but everything had been covered up so well that 
 nothing could be learned. Weeks and Aveeks passed 
 and although detectives of various cities as well as 
 the detectives of the Chicago Law and Order 
 League followed up many clues they were unsuc- 
 cessful in locating the girls. 
 
 One morning I was sitting in my office opening 
 my mail when I came across a letter from Mil- 
 waukee, Wisconsin. The letter was from a woman 
 
138 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 and stated that she had seen articles in the news- 
 papers about the disappearance of two girls who 
 were wanted in Chicago as witnesses, and had seen 
 the girls' pictures also in the papers, and that there 
 were two strange girls in the house next door to 
 where she lived who looked very much like these 
 pictures. She believed they were being kept there. 
 
 I sent for Frank Hultz, one of the detectives for 
 the Chicago Law and Order League, and in com- 
 pany with a representative of the Illinois Free Em- 
 ployment Bureau, he went to Milwaukee that even- 
 ing to follow up the clue. They found the girls 
 there and brought them back to Chicago. 
 
 "When they arrived the next morning, the girls 
 were brought directly to my office. It was ten 
 weeks since they had disappeared. They then told 
 me the story of how they were induced by decep- 
 tion to leave the city. They said that a man by 
 the name of Herman Keller had come to Mrs. 
 Levy's home several times while they were there 
 and he seemed to be a friend of Mrs. Levy. The 
 night that they were taken away the girls over- 
 heard Mrs. Levy and Keller making plans to take 
 them out of to\\Ti. Keller then told the girls that 
 the trial had been put over several weeks, that he 
 had secured an excellent place for them to work in 
 another city and that they could come back any 
 time and appear as witnesses at the trial. Mrs. 
 Levy advised them that it would perhaps be the 
 best thing for them to do, and as they were gettmg 
 tired of living at Mrs. Levy's without working and 
 
A New Enemy 139 
 
 with many restraints upon their liberties, they hesi- 
 tatingly accepted the projffered opportunity of ob- 
 taining employment. 
 
 They said they were suspicious that something 
 was wrong, but they knew that the officers had 
 great confidence in Mrs. Levy and since she had 
 told them that this plan would be a good one for 
 them, they reluctantly went aw^ay with Keller. A 
 carriage was outside the door, waiting, and the half- 
 persuaded and half-forced girls were pushed into 
 the carriage, which took them to the station at two 
 o'clock in the morning. There the girls said they 
 saw Henderson lurking in the background. Keller 
 got on the train with them and took them to 
 Milwaukee. After they arrived in Milwaukee, 
 Keller took them, as he said, to the home of a 
 friend. The girls were kept in this house practically 
 as prisoners. 
 
 Keller remained in Milwaukee a day or two and 
 during this time he told the girls that if his advice was 
 worth anything to them he would recommend that 
 they stay in Milwaukee, because if they came back 
 to Chicago to the trial they would be subjected to 
 all sorts of insults. He gave them each a hundred 
 dollars and told them that he would send them 
 more money and later on would take them to New 
 York City. 
 
 The girls said they were watched every minute 
 so that they could not get word to Chicago. 
 
 It Avas not a surprise to us to learn that the girls 
 implicated Mrs. Levy in the plot to spirit them 
 
140 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 away from Chicago. We had suspected her all the 
 time. We had even sent a woman detective to 
 her house to see whether she could not get some 
 information from her, but she was not to be so 
 easily trajDped. We gathered some other facts 
 which convinced us that several other people were 
 in the ring of conspirators who planned this trick 
 against the courts. Although there are lots of 
 things which we may know, we cannot always 
 prove them, and though we were convinced that 
 certain others were implicated we could not gather 
 direct evidence with which to prove their guilt. 
 
 Mrs. Levy and Herman Keller were both arrested 
 for inducing the two girl witnesses against Hender- 
 son to leave the state and both were found guilty.* 
 
 In the face of all this, while Ida and Evelyn were 
 in the Harrison Street Annex, the dormitory where 
 girl witnesses are often kept while awaiting a trial, 
 the friends of Henderson were bold enough to try 
 to get the- witnesses away from the control of the 
 authorities and to prevent them if possible from 
 testifying in court ; a writ of habeas corpus was ap- 
 plied for, stating that the girls were being kept in 
 the Annex against their will. When the girls were 
 taken before the court they told the judge that 
 they did not want to leave the Annex and were 
 staying there of their own free will and accord. 
 
 * Mrs. Lizzie Levy afterwards obtained a new trial. In March, 
 1910, her case finally came to trial again, and the jiidge, after 
 hearing the testimony of the state's witnesses then available, 
 discharged her. 
 
A New Enemy 141 
 
 The writ was, of course, denied and the girls were 
 returned to the Annex, where they were safe from 
 kidnappers. 
 
 Later on, when McCann and Henderson were 
 tried for conspiracy to commit an act against public 
 morals and to procure these girls for an immoral 
 house, the court decided that it was without jurisdic- 
 tion so far as McCann was concerned, because he 
 had done nothing in Cook County to aid the con- 
 spiracy, and there was not sufficient evidence to 
 show that Henderson knew that this place do^^^l in 
 Springfield, to which he had sent the girls, was an 
 immoral resort, and accordingly both these men 
 escaped punishment. 
 
 The Illinois State Labour Commission, however, 
 was not bound by any legal technicalities, and after 
 a special hearing of the facts, revoked Henderson's 
 license as a theatrical agent. He has never been 
 allowed to conduct an agency since that time. 
 About the fii^st of November, 1909, Henderson 
 made an heroic effort to regain his license and 
 employed at least two attorneys to accomplish this 
 result for him, but his petition was met by a stub- 
 born resistance, and no license was granted. 
 
 This was the first case I had discovered in which 
 a licensed employment agent had used his ad- 
 vantageous position to supply the vice markets 
 with girls unacquainted with these resorts, but I 
 saw that this might be an effective instrumentality 
 for the pander, and knomng his cunning, I kept 
 on the lookout for the new enemy. 
 
142 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 In the following February, Eose DeS and 
 
 Helen F applied to theatrical agent Harding 
 
 for positions, and were sent by him to Bruder's 
 " concert hall " on the west side of Chicago. 
 
 Upon finding this place to be a " near-theatre ," 
 where they were expected to " hustle drinks," they 
 refused to stay. They slipped away, leaving part 
 of their clotliing there, and brought this affair to 
 the attention of the jDroper authorities. 
 
 Two sixteen-year-old girh, Alice LaB and 
 
 Olga K , were a short time after this booked 
 
 by John J, Deering, a licensed theatrical agent, and 
 sent to a resort. It was found that false represen- 
 tations had been made to these young girls. This 
 resulted in the revoking of the agent's license and 
 he was fined fifty dollars and costs. 
 
 An employment agency, conducted by M. G. En- 
 right and Margaret Hoen, an assistant in his office, 
 
 sent Mary S , a German girl, to one of the 
 
 resorts in the underworld, for which they were both 
 arrested. When the case came to trial, the de- 
 fense was made that a young man, whose mother 
 kept a hotel at Fox Lake, IlKnois, had applied to 
 the emplojmient agency for a servant. The em- 
 ployment agent said that he knew the boy's mother 
 and had supplied her with help for a long time, and 
 when the young man, whom he knew, made a re- 
 quest for a servant girl, he did not distrust the mo- 
 tives, and gladly complied with his request. 
 
 Both Enright and the Hoen woman disclaimed any 
 knowledge of the fact that the girl was to be taken 
 
A New Enemy 143 
 
 to an immoral house. The girl was taken by the 
 young man to a resort in the levee district, where 
 she, expecting honest employment, was forced into 
 a life of shame. After the young man had placed 
 her in the house he disappeared and was never 
 heard of again. Because it was not clear as to 
 whether or not the employment agency people had 
 made arrangements with the resort owners directly, 
 Enright was given a fine of only fifty dollars, and 
 the woman employee, Margaret Hoen, who had 
 transacted the business with the young man, was 
 fined one hundred dollars, and sentenced to one 
 day in jail. 
 
 Thus it came to the attention of the people that 
 not only panders like William McNamara were 
 parading in the guise of theatrical agents and 
 managers, but actual agents having a license to 
 supply theatrical companies with help, and licensed 
 employment bureaus, were really a part of the vice 
 traffic system. 
 
XI 
 
 NEED OF NEW LAWS 
 
 BEGINNING early in the year 1907 girl 
 traffic cases streamed constantly into the 
 courts, and it was soon found that the laws 
 of Illinois were inadequate to meet the situation. 
 Under these archaic, moss-covered laws the dealers 
 in girl slaves had grown rich and powerful. The 
 laws were so full of loopholes, through which 
 the slave traders crawled, that it became almost a 
 farce to bring them into court and try them under 
 the law for enticing females into immoral houses. 
 They were even successful in eluding the vagrancy 
 law. To make convictions sure, the only charge to 
 place against them was for corrupting the public 
 morals under the Disorderly Conduct Act, which 
 carried with it a fine of not more than two hundred 
 dollars as the highest penalty. 
 
 In order to supplant the state law, which the 
 traders had ridiculed for so long, with a more mod- 
 ern law, it was necessary to prove to the people 
 and the legislators the defects of the law as it then 
 existed. Under the law as it stood there was a com- 
 bination of facts which had to be perfect in order 
 to secure a conviction. To prosecute the panders 
 144 
 
Need of New Laws 145 
 
 successfully, the girls whom they procured had to 
 be unmarried persons of previous chaste life, and 
 they must have been procured by false pretenses and 
 deception. If they were brought from another state, 
 it was necessary also that the ghis be under the age 
 of eighteen, and if they were harboured in unmoral 
 houses they must be under the age of eighteen. 
 The same conditions had to be met if the panders 
 were charged with abduction or seduction. 
 
 Because married women could not testify against 
 their husbands, and it was a crime to place un- 
 married women only, in houses of prostitution, the 
 slave traders would have their " cadets " marry the 
 girls. We have seen that Jack Daily got ten dol- 
 lars for marrying Hazel, and that " Lefty " Johns 
 married a gu-l in order to place her in a disorderly 
 house. Another man was said to have married six 
 girls, whom he afterwards forced into houses of ill 
 repute. 
 
 Among other victuns of the bigamous marriage 
 system was Alta P , who was rescued by De- 
 tectives Egan and J^orton, just as she was ready to 
 go to Indiana Harbor to be married to a pander. 
 She was returned to her parents who lived at Brad- 
 ley place. 
 
 Three other girls. Pearl C , Eose M and 
 
 Edith McL were not so fortunate. All three 
 
 were married before they discovered their husband's 
 purpose in marrymg them. The last two were 
 from Elgin, Illinois. Eose went home, while Edith 
 was placed in the House of the Good Shepherd, 
 
146 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 and her husband, who eluded the police, continued 
 plying his trade of enticing other girls to a like fate. 
 
 Advantage was thus taken of the fact that under 
 the law as it existed, those who procured or kept 
 a married woman in an immoral resort, no matter 
 what her age might be, could not be prosecuted by 
 the state. Even a girl of fifteen could be married 
 off to some pander for the sole purpose of being sold 
 and kept in one of those places, where she was sub- 
 jected to the most foul and nauseating practices, 
 and no prosecution could be had. 
 
 The panders changed their names so frequently, 
 and assumed so many aliases, and travelled about 
 the country so much, that it was practically impos- 
 sible to hunt them down and prosecute them for 
 bigamy. In order to do this also, it would be nec- 
 essary to have the first wife in court, and it would 
 be like " hunting for a needle in a haystack " to at- 
 tempt to find one of these girls to whom the 
 pander had been married a year or so before. The 
 girls, after they had been in the houses for a few 
 months, were migratory and changed about often. 
 Therefore it would be impossible in most instances 
 to bring into court both the girl and the pander to 
 prove former marriage and establish a case of big- 
 amy. 
 
 Just because a girl had not been of chaste life, it 
 did not necessarily follow that she wanted to sell 
 her honour for money, and certainly was no justifi- 
 cation for her sale by a pander into a disreputable 
 house. One wrong step and she was no longer 
 
Need of New Laws 147 
 
 chaste, and then, according to the law, she must 
 shift for herself, because the law did not protect a 
 girl who had made even one mistake, and the 
 pander, who had taken advantage of this mistake 
 and sold her into vice slavery, could not be prose- 
 cuted. 
 
 This was the main weapon used by the slave 
 owners, who sought to have their agents blacken 
 the character of the girls before they entered im- 
 moral houses so that they would not be of chaste 
 life when they came into their dens and they could 
 therefore evade the law. This was the reason, too, 
 that the panders had " bachelor apartments " and 
 flats to which they took the girls before selling 
 them into immoral lives. 
 
 In order to prosecute the panders it was neces- 
 sary that the words, "previous chaste life," be 
 erased from the law, and all female persons, mar- 
 ried or unmarried, whether under eighteen or over 
 eighteen, could be protected from the slave traders. 
 
 Without the backing of the public, we were con- 
 vinced that new laws could not be enacted. Public 
 opinion had to be aroused if we expected severe 
 penalties to be imposed or hoped to have more 
 stringent laws passed. It seemed a farce to fine a 
 pander a hundred or so dollars for the crime of 
 selling the body of a human being to be tormented 
 by sin and tortured by disease. And a fine, in 
 most instances up to this time, had been the 
 penalty imposed. 
 
 Beginning the year 1908 an investigation, headed 
 
148 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 by Dean W. T. Sumner, of the Cathedral SS. Peter 
 and Paul, was made of the conditions in the "West 
 Side levee district. There it was found that the 
 panders had been exceedingly busy for some two 
 years in the crowded Jewish district, which 
 bordered on this levee, and that in that time the 
 character of the West Side levee had undergone a 
 great change. Heretofore there had been very few 
 Jewesses in the immoral resorts of Chicago. 
 
 Such eminent jurists as Judge Julian W. Mack, 
 Judge Philip Stein and Honourable Adolph Kraus, 
 who had interested themselves in this matter espe- 
 cially because it had been charged that the men en- 
 gaged in the business of supplying the West Side 
 levee district with new girls were chiefly young 
 Jews, joined in the view that the law must be 
 changed. 
 
 " The only way to reach them (the panders)," 
 said Judge Mack, "is to make their business a 
 crime. The vagrancy law will not touch them. 
 This is an evil which must be stamped out at once." 
 
 A public campaign to get people aroused to the 
 situation was decided upon, and to this end I first 
 turned to the churches for aid. Through the ef- 
 forts of the Keverend M. P. Boynton, of the Wood- 
 lawn Baptist Church, and the Keverend Ernest A. 
 Bell, a convention of ministers from all parts of the 
 state of Illinois was arranged. Careful prepara- 
 tions were made for almost a month to make this 
 meeting a success. Ministers, heads of churches of 
 all faiths and creeds, were invited to be present. 
 
Need of New Laws 149 
 
 February tenth, in the auditorium of the Central 
 Young Men's Christian Association, over five hun- 
 dred ministers were gathered. At this time I en- 
 tertained the conviction that I must impress these 
 good men with their responsibility for what Whit- 
 tier calls the " deeds which well might shame ex- 
 tremest hell." I heaped upon the clergy on this 
 occasion the charge that a traffic in women existed 
 because of their idleness and apparent lack of in- 
 terest. Confessions were read to them and specific 
 instances were cited to illustrate how secretly and 
 smoothly the traffic was carried on. 
 
 The startled ministers took their curtain lecture 
 good-naturedly and when I asked all those to stand 
 who would speak out boldly upon this subject to 
 their congregations, nearly every person present 
 stood up, and I then felt assured that this was the 
 beginning of the great campaign to bring the girl 
 slave traffic to the public notice. 
 
 A resolution was adopted at this meeting to form 
 an organization for the purpose of combating the 
 girl slave traders. Late in the afternoon of the 
 same day this new organization, known as the 
 Illinois Vigilance Association, came into being as 
 the result of this resolution. 
 
 The chaii-raan of the National Vigilance Com- 
 mittee, Dr. O. Edward Janney, was present when 
 the new organization was formed. 
 
 At the first meeting of the Illinois Vigilance 
 Association, held soon after this, a motion was 
 nade to appoint a legislative committee. After 
 
150 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 this motion was carried, I suggested the name of 
 Mr. Robert Catherwood as chairman of this com- 
 mittee. He was made chairman and Mr. Daniel 
 Trude and I composed the other members. 
 
 It was Imown at this time that a bill, called the 
 Juul Bill, designed for the purpose of punishing 
 persons who place girls and women in disorderly 
 resorts or use their influence to keep them there, 
 had been presented to the legislature at Spring- 
 field. Even the people who had been instrumental 
 in drafting this bill, however, were using their 
 influence to have it side-tracked, because they 
 realized that the law, as it had been amended, 
 would be far worse than the old law then upon the 
 statute books. It was for this reason that the 
 Illinois Vigilance Association deemed it expedient 
 at its first meeting to organize a legislative com- 
 mittee. 
 
 Action had to be taken quickly, as the " white 
 slave " bill had been presented at the regular 
 session of the legislature, which had then adjourned, 
 and it was known that a special session of the 
 legislature was to be called some time during the 
 month of May. The legislative committee thus 
 appointed by the Illinois Vigilance Association was 
 expected to have its bill drafted in order that it 
 might be considered at this sj^iecial session. 
 
 The committee met a few days later and formu- 
 lated plans for a campaign to secure new laws upon 
 the subject. At this time it was decided to send 
 out notices to all the large clubs and associations, 
 
Need of New Laws t^l 
 
 which might be interested in this subject, request- 
 ing them to appoint committees of from one to 
 three members to represent their respective clubs 
 upon a " joint club committee for the suppression 
 of the white slave traffic." 
 
 The following responded to our invitation : 
 The Union League Club, The Hamilton Club, City 
 Club, L^oquois Club, Jefferson Club, Press Club, 
 Quadi^angle Club, B'nai B'rith, Chicago Law and 
 Order League, Citizen's Association and the Illinois 
 Vigilance Association. 
 
 At the first meeting of the joint club conmiittee 
 a subcommittee was appointed to draft a law to 
 be submitted for discussion at a later meeting. 
 
 Prof. Ernst Freund of the University of Chicago, 
 who represented the Quadrangle Club on the joint 
 club committee, and Mr. Catherwood joined me 
 in the preparation of the new law. The committee 
 suggested a bill providing for punishment by im- 
 prisonment in the penitentiary for a period of not 
 less than one nor more than ten years. 
 
 When the joint club committee met to discuss 
 this proposed law, the committee representing the 
 B'nai B'rith, who were not present at the first 
 meeting of the joint club committee, informed us 
 that they were responsible for the original of the 
 Juul Bill, which Judge Mack had caused to be 
 drawn up. 
 
 It Avas learned that this bill had passed through 
 the second reading of the House of Kepresentatives 
 and had been referi'ed to the Judiciary Committee. 
 
152 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 Mr. Adolf Kraus explained the provisions of the 
 Jiml Bill, which he said could be called up for the 
 third reading in the House, and while admitting 
 some defects he urged its adoption until further 
 legislation might be secured. 
 
 As the bill as presented had the good will and 
 endorsement of Honourable Edward D. Shurtleff, 
 Speaker of the House, it was decided by the joint 
 committee to use this bill as a foundation for a new- 
 law, eliminating the objectionable amendments, 
 which had been appended, reviving the original 
 bill, with slight changes, and broadening its title. 
 The committee recognized the defects of the bill, 
 but on the principle that half a loaf is better than 
 no bread, they decided to aid in its passage until 
 they could present a substitute bill to the legisla- 
 ture the following year. 
 
 The question of the penalty to be included in the 
 bill was discussed thoroughly by the joint com- 
 mittee. There were arguments in favour of the 
 first conviction carrying with it a penitentiary 
 sentence. Other members of the committee 
 favoured a lighter sentence upon first conviction 
 because they believed that sentences would be 
 more readily obtained. It was also brought out 
 that if the lighter sentence was imposed upon a 
 first conviction the Municipal Courts would have 
 final jurisdiction and a speedy trial would thereby 
 be guaranteed, inasmuch as it would not be neces- 
 sary to go before the grand jury, which met only 
 at certain intervals, and obtain an indictment 
 
Need of New Laws 153 
 
 before the case could be tried. In the Municipal 
 Court the case could be tried upon an information, 
 either by the State's Attorney or any citizen, filed 
 in the court. After a lengthy discussion the joint 
 club committee decided to recommend the lighter 
 sentence upon first conviction. 
 
 It was then decided to send a committee, com- 
 posed of Messrs. Adolf Kraus, Kobert Catherwood, 
 Philip Stein, Benjamin J. Samuels, and the Kev- 
 erend William A. Waterman and the writer to 
 Springfield to be present at the meeting of the 
 special session. 
 
 Mr. Catherwood, who had been made secretary 
 of the joint club committee, was appointed to 
 prepare press notices and to enlist the aid of the 
 newspapers in the passage of the bill. That night 
 the committee left for Springfield and the next 
 morning every Chicago paper appeared with 
 strong editorials and articles supporting the bill. 
 
 The bill passed the House unanimously, one 
 hundred and two members voting. May fifth, and 
 the Senate sent it to the Governor by concurring 
 in the amendments, and thus Illinois became the 
 pioneer state to pass a pandering law, directed at 
 the slave trafiic in girls and women. The law 
 became effective on July first. 
 
 Elated by the success which attended the passage 
 of this bill, the joint club committee met and per- 
 fected a permanent organization. 
 
 Under the new law a great many of the panders 
 refused to be tried by the judges and called for 
 
154 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 jury trials and the cases were sent to the criminal 
 court building. To follow up and try the jury cases 
 I went to the criminal court, and the Honourable 
 James P. Harrold, who had been prosecuting for the 
 state at the East Chicago Avenue Municipal Court, 
 was assigned by the Honourable John J, Healy, 
 the State's Attorney, to the place I had left at the 
 Harrison Street Court, inasmuch as he had prose- 
 cuted several panders and was thoroughly familiar 
 with the work. 
 
 About the first of December the Honourable John 
 E. W. Wayman became State's Attorney and under 
 him I continued my activity against the girl slave 
 procurers in the courts. 
 
 Before the next session of the legislature it was 
 decided by the joint club committee that the bill, 
 which Prof. Ernst Freund, Mr. Catherwood and I 
 had drawn, should be appended to the act then in 
 force, though not adopting the penitentiary sen- 
 tence. As a supplement the Honourable Harry A. 
 Parkin, of the United States District Attorney's 
 office, had drawn up an act to prevent keep- 
 ing girls in immoral houses under the " debt 
 system." 
 
 Mr. Henry P. Heizer, who had been made a 
 member of the joint club committee, and the writer 
 were a^Dpointed to go to Springfield to assist in the 
 passage of these laws, which were introduced by the 
 Honourable Charles Lederer, a member of the House 
 of Eepresentatives. We went before the Judiciary 
 Committee, and the laws were reported out to the 
 
Need of New Laws 155 
 
 House favourably. They were passed by the leg- 
 islature, and went into effect July 1, 1909. 
 
 The Illinois pandering law now reads as follows : 
 (1) " Any person who shall procure a female 
 inmate for a house of prostitution or who, by 
 promises, threats, violence, or by any device or 
 scheme, shall cause, induce, persuade or encourage 
 a female person to become an inmate of a house of 
 prostitution, or shall procure a place as inmate in a 
 house of prostitution for a female person, or any 
 person who shall, by promises, threats, violence, or 
 by any device or scheme, cause, induce, persuade or 
 encourage an inmate of a house of prostitution to 
 remain therein as such inmate, or any person who 
 shall by fraud or artifice, or by duress of person or 
 goods, or by abuse of any position of confidence or 
 authority, procure any female person to become an 
 inmate of a house of ill fame, or to enter any place 
 in which prostitution is encouraged or allowed 
 within this state, or to come into this state or to 
 leave this state for the purpose of prostitution, or 
 Avho shall procure any female person who has not 
 previously practiced prostitution to become an in- 
 mate of a house of ill fame within this state, or to 
 come into this state or to leave this state for the 
 purpose of prostitution, or who shall receive or give, 
 or agree to receive or give, any money or thing of 
 value for procuring, or attempting to procure any 
 female person to become an inmate of a house of 
 ill fame within this state, or to come into this state, 
 or to leave this state for the purpose of prostitution, 
 
156 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 shall be guilty of pandering, and upon a first con- 
 viction for an offense under this act shall be pun- 
 ished by imprisonment in the county jail or house 
 of correction for a period of not less than six months 
 nor more than one year and by a fine of not less 
 than three hundred dollars and not to exceed one 
 thousand dollars, and for conviction for any subse- 
 quent offense under this act shall be punished by 
 imprisonment in the penitentiary for a period 
 of not less than one year nor more than ten 
 years. 
 
 (2) " It shall not be a defense to a prosecution for 
 any of the acts prohibited in the foregoing section 
 that any part of such act or acts shall have been 
 committed outside this state, and the offense shall 
 in such case be deemed and alleged to have been 
 committed and the offender tried and punished in 
 any county in which the prostitution was intended 
 to be practiced or in which the offense was consum- 
 mated, or any overt act in furtherance of the offense 
 shall have been committed. 
 
 (3) " Any such female person referred to in the 
 foregoing section shall be a competent witness in 
 any prosecution under this act to testify for or 
 against the accused as to any transaction or as to 
 any conversation with the accused or by him with 
 another person or persons in her presence, notwith- 
 standing her having married the accused before or 
 after the violation of any of the provisions of this 
 act, whether called as a witness during the exist 
 ence of the marrkge or after its dissolution. 
 
Need of New Laws 157 
 
 (4) " The act or state of marriage shall not be 
 a defense to any violation of this act." 
 
 The law relating to the retention by debt 01 
 otherwise of females in houses of prostitution is aa 
 follows : 
 
 " Whoever shall by any means keep, hold or de^ 
 tain against her will or restrain, any female per- 
 son in a house of prostitution or other place where 
 prostitution is practiced or allowed, or whoever 
 shall, directly or indu-ectly, keep, hold, detain oj 
 restrain, or attempt to keep, hold, detain or restrain, 
 in any house of prostitution or other place where 
 prostitution is practiced or allowed, any female 
 person, by any means, for the purpose of compel- 
 ling such female persons directly or indirectly, to 
 pay, liquidate, or cancel any debt, dues or obliga- 
 tions incurred or said to have been incurred by such 
 female persons shall, upon conviction, for the first 
 offense under this act be punished by imprison- 
 ment in the county jail or house of correction for 
 a period of not less than six months nor more than 
 one year, and by a fine of not less than three hun- 
 dred dollars and not to exceed one thousand dol- 
 lars, and upon a conviction for any subsequent 
 offense under this act shall be punished by impris- 
 onment in the penitentiary for a period of not less 
 than one year nor more than five years." 
 
XII 
 
 THE VALUE OF PUBLICITY 
 
 A COMPLETE plan of publicity and educa- 
 tion was mapped out and for months ad- 
 dresses were made throughout the country 
 with this idea in view. For a long time I was con- 
 vinced that the publication of cases and facts con- 
 cerning the panders, instead of corrupting the 
 morals of young people, would rather put them on 
 their guard, and that when the girls of the land 
 knew of the secret methods of the procurers they 
 could not be so easily entrapped. 
 
 It was to this end that the convention of minis- 
 ters was held, and the formation of the Illinois 
 Vigilance Association was advised. 
 
 The newspapers were exceedingly generous and 
 gave full space to pandering cases, to the things ac- 
 complished by the joint club committee, and all 
 those actively engaged in combating the slave evil, 
 and many editorials were ^vritten to arouse the 
 public. 
 
 After the meeting of the ministers the subject 
 was more publicly discussed than formerly. 
 
 There would have been little ground, however, for 
 the continuation of the publications and the discus- 
 sion of such matters if no results had been obtained, 
 158 
 
The Value of Publicity 159 
 
 aside from the publications and discussion. How 
 many girls read the articles, notices of cases and 
 editorials, or who heard sermons which the ministers 
 had preached, and had been warned of the pitfalls 
 which the panders prepared for unsuspecting girls, 
 could never be known. Perhaps we might have 
 been discouraged in this effort to make it less easy 
 for panders to entrap girls into lives of vice had we 
 not seen, occasionally at least, specific instances of 
 the good results. 
 
 The large stores were infested with both men and 
 women ever on the lookout for girl victims. These 
 panders would sit around in the waiting or rest 
 rooms of the stores, as did George Morton, who 
 was arrested in the rest room of a State Street de- 
 partment store in May of 1908, while engaged in 
 conversation with a well-dressed young girl about 
 seventeen years old. The girl said that she had 
 been shopping, and while going into the rest room, 
 she was addressed by the young man, who had 
 never known her before. He was suspected by the 
 girl, who had read about the panders, of being con- 
 nected with the traflflc, and she had him arrested as 
 he was leaving the store in her company. 
 
 The value of publicity was also clearly shown 
 when a young man was caught in the act of at- 
 tempting to procure a girl. Scarcely had he paid 
 the penalty in one case than he was caught again 
 plying his trade in girls. Eaymond Kessler, fined 
 
 upon the complaint of Mary K , a pretty choir 
 
 singer, a short time later was sentenced to serve two 
 
i6o Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 months in the honse of correction for making an as- 
 sault on Louise S , who said Kessler had sold 
 
 her into a house on Armour Avenue. 
 
 Mary K told Judge Crowe, who tried the 
 
 case, of her experiences, thus : 
 
 " I had never seen the man before. I went to a 
 music store to buy a song I needed. While I was 
 buying the music the young woman waiting on me 
 called my attention to a young man who was try- 
 ing to flirt with me. 
 
 '"I don't know this man,' I said ; ' he must mis- 
 take me for some one else.' 
 
 " When I left the store the man followed me and 
 as I reached the street he took hold of my arm. 
 
 " ' Hello, kid ! ' he said ; ' it's a long time since I 
 met you.' 
 
 " ' You are mistaken,' I replied ; ' you do not 
 know me.' 
 
 " ' Oh, yes, I do,' he insisted. * I used to know 
 you at S3a'acuse. What are you doing for a living 
 now ?' 
 
 " I never had been in Syracuse, so I knew he 
 must have some wrong purpose in talking to me, 
 but I told him I was singing sacred music in 
 churches. 
 
 " ' How much do you get ? ' he asked me. 
 
 " I told him I averaged about twenty dollars a 
 week. 
 
 " ' Why,' he said, ' you can beat that to death. 
 I'll show you how to make fifty dollars a week and 
 not half try.' 
 
The Value of Publicity 161 
 
 " As I walked down the street he kept talking to 
 me. I asked him where he wanted me to go, and 
 he said, ' Oh ! I'll get you a position singing out 
 on the South Side.' 
 
 " I didn't say anything more because I felt sure 
 from the accounts I had read in the papers that he 
 was a white slave procurer. Several times I tried 
 to get away from the man, but he kept hold of my 
 arm so tight that I could not. When we reached 
 Van Buren Street, as we passed a policeman on the 
 crossing, I gave him a poke with my hand, and as 
 he turned quickly around I said, ' I want you to ar- 
 rest this man.' " 
 
 Policeman Freeman placed the man under arrest 
 and when he was brought to the police station he 
 gave the name of Raymond Kessler and said he 
 was twenty-four years old. At the conclusion of 
 the case Kessler was fined two hundred dollars by 
 the court. 
 
 It was only a month or so afterwards, when Louise 
 
 S told Judge Kewcomer of the Municipal Court 
 
 of how she was attacked and beaten by Kessler for 
 trying to get out of a disreputable house, where she 
 said he had placed her and was collecting her earn- 
 ings. Kessler was the renegade son of a good 
 father, who had tried in every way to reform his 
 boy and keep him at home. In the first case his 
 father paid the fine, but in this case no fine could 
 be paid. 
 
 "Your father is a very good man. You are 
 nothing but a two cent bum, and I do not believe 
 
i62 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 you will ever amount to anything," said the judge 
 as he sentenced the young man. " It grieves me a 
 great deal to see you here, for your father has done 
 everything for you. This is the last time you will 
 ever receive clemency in a Chicago court. If you 
 are arraigned again before me you will get the 
 severest punishment I can give." 
 
 The campaign for publicity was beginning to bear 
 fruit. Although large numbers of girls were being 
 procured, the conviction that publicity would prove 
 one of the most efficient means of solving the slave 
 problem was confirmed. 
 
 In another case two traffickers, who had been 
 frequenting the stores in an effort to secure 
 victims, were arrested after they had attempted 
 to lure into slavery a sixteen-year-old girl who was 
 employed in a five and ten cent store. According 
 
 to this girl, who gave her name as Ida M , a 
 
 man and woman came to the part of the store 
 where she was employed several times and engaged 
 her in conversation, telling her that they were able 
 to secure a better position for her. 
 
 " You are very foolish in remaining here," the 
 woman is said to have remarked. " Eobert is able 
 to land you in a good place with lots more money. 
 The position is pleasant, and you will have much 
 time for yourself." 
 
 Although Ida told them that she did not 
 wish to change her position, the man especially 
 called repeatedly. Despite her protests at the 
 frequent calls, the man persisted in talking with 
 
The Value of Publicity 163 
 
 her, and the gii'l, having read in the papers 
 about the slave traffickers, became suspicious of this 
 undue attention, consequently she went to the 
 detective headquarters and told her experiences to 
 Lieutenant Eohan. 
 
 Detectives Flaherty and Nagle, who had been 
 assigned to look out for slave traders operating in 
 stores, went to work upon the case. After talk- 
 ing the matter over with Ida, the detectives 
 advised her to accompany either the man or the 
 woman when they appeared again, and they told the 
 giii not to be afraid as they would be near by, and 
 then Flaherty and Nagle waited around the store 
 for the reappearance of these two people. 
 
 A day or so later the man came to the store 
 again and sought out the girl. This time she 
 told him she would step outside the store and talk 
 with him. The detectives were watching and 
 followed the girl and the man to the street. The 
 man hurriedly walked the girl about the do^vn- 
 town streets until he had succeeded in getting her 
 outside the crowded shopping district, and finally, 
 when he got her several blocks away from where 
 she was employed, he suddenly rushed her across 
 the street into a hotel of an inferior class. The 
 detectives had kept close behind them and an in- 
 stant later a door leading to one of the rooms was 
 slammed and the startled girl was told that " Mrs. 
 Crisman would be in in a minute." 
 
 The detectives pounded on the door and de- 
 manded admittance, fearing that some harm might 
 
164 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 come to the girl before she could be rescued. 
 Later the woman, who said she was the man's 
 wife, entered the room and both the man and the 
 woman were arrested and taken to the Harrison 
 Street Police Station. 
 
 The man gave his name as Kobert Crisman, and 
 the woman said that her name was Thelma Cris- 
 man. Both of them denied that they intended 
 placing the girl in an immoral resort and asserted 
 that they intended getting her a position in one of 
 the big stores. When asked in which store they 
 intended getting a position for her, or by what 
 authority they were employing help for stores, 
 neither of them ventured a reply. 
 
 "I doubted these people from the first," Ida 
 told the police, "but it was not until they 
 pestered me beyond endurance that I reported the 
 matter. I believe that they are not new at the 
 game they thought of playing with me, and I am 
 glad they were arrested." 
 
 The police said that Crisman and his wife an- 
 swered the description of a couple who had been 
 frequenting department stores for several weeks, at- 
 tempting to induce young women to leave for 
 " more lucrative positions." Complaint had been 
 made by managers of various stores, and efforts 
 had been made to arrest these two people. Special 
 details of detectives had even been ordered to 
 roam about the stores in the hope of catching 
 them. 
 
 One afternoon after court had adjourned, I was 
 
The Value of Publicity 165 
 
 busy in my office looking through a stack of legal 
 papers. I heard some one behind me speak in low 
 tones. Turning around I saw a flashily dressed 
 woman standing in the doorway. She looked like 
 a person of the underworld. A large white hat, 
 almost covered by one huge feather which hung 
 down to her shoulder, crowned the fluffy blond 
 head. Her face was round and full and her com- 
 plexion had a pale, chinaware-like appearance. 
 The big brown eyes glistened and the eyebrows 
 w^ere carefully pencilled. 
 
 She seemed timid and afraid to come into the 
 office. 
 
 " Is this the State's Attorney ? " she repeated in 
 the same low tone. 
 
 " Yes, I am one of them," I told her. " Won't 
 you come in and have a chair ? " 
 
 As I said this I started to rise, but she held out 
 her hand, motioning me back in the chair, and said : 
 
 " Oh, please do not mind me, I am only a sport- 
 ing girl. I slipped down here to tell you a secret. 
 I wouldn't for the world have any one out there 
 know that I came down to see you for they would 
 make it very unpleasant for me. 
 
 " Some time ago I read about girls being rescued 
 from houses where they have been sold. Now, I 
 can't reform. I have tried ; it is no use and it is 
 too late, but I want to help others all I dare to. 
 There is a girl out in the house where I stay, who 
 cries constantly and wants to get away. She has 
 touched my heart and I remembered your name 
 
l66 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 from the papers and decided to come down and tell 
 you about her." 
 
 She then told me the name of the girl and where 
 she could be found. As the woman was leaving 1 
 said to her : 
 
 " "Why can't you reform ? " 
 
 " Oh," she said with a sigh, " I tried it once. I 
 too was sold into a house. I left a good home in a 
 small town to come to the city just to see the 
 sights. I fell in love with the gay crowds in the 
 restaurants, all laughing and talking, and it was all 
 new to me. I went often to the theatres and just 
 couldn't leave the rush and bustle of the city. So 
 after being here a while I decided to stay and went 
 to work in a store. 
 
 " One night a young man, whom I had met in 
 the store, invited me out to dine. We went out 
 afterwards, what he called 'hopping.' We went 
 from concert halls to cafes, in saloons and then to 
 sporting houses, just to see what they were like. 
 I became intoxicated and he left me in one of them. 
 I didn't realize it though at the time, for they kept 
 me drunk for over a w^eek. 
 
 " When I really came to my right senses, I found 
 he had sold me to the place. I was in debt and 
 had to stay. Several months later I got away and 
 a man whom I knew secured employment for me 
 in a store. Only a few days after I went to work 
 a hypocrite of a man came in the store and recog- 
 nized me from having seen me in the house out 
 there. He told the floor-wall^er that I had been a 
 
The Value of Publicity 167 
 
 sporting woman and that it would hurt the reputa- 
 tion of the store to have me around. I was dis- 
 charged. From one thing to another I finally 
 drifted back. "When one has once been down, it is 
 hard to get up again, for even the men who helped 
 keep you there, by spending their money in such 
 places, help kick you down if you do try to get up 
 and try to live right. 
 
 " So I gave up trying, and there I am still. But 
 you help that little girl out there, for she has not 
 been in the place long enough but that she can re- 
 form, and please never let any one know that it 
 was me that told you about her." 
 
 After she had left, as was my custom, I made a 
 memorandum of what she had told me. Then I 
 called a detective, whose services had been loaned 
 me by one of the reform associations of the city, 
 and sent him out to investigate the story. 
 
 He found it true in every detail. It required 
 some effort at first to get the little girl to tell her 
 story to the detective, as she feared he was one of 
 the " ringers " in the employ of the house, who are 
 sent to the various girls to find out if they are com- 
 plaining or have a desire to escape. After the de- 
 tective had gained the confidence of the girl, she 
 told a heart-rending story of being confined against 
 her will, with all the terrible details which would 
 be expected under such conditions. She told him 
 in confidence of the terrible beatings and horrible 
 treatment that she had been subjected to, and 
 begged to be taken out. 
 
i68 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 The detective lost no time in getting a cab and 
 drove up to the house, but after he had got the girl 
 in the cab and ordered the driver to go ahead, the 
 owners of the house, by threatening the " cabbie," 
 succeeded in making a long enough delay to enable 
 them to pull the girl from the detective's grasp, 
 taking her back into the house once more. 
 
 Several policemen, who came running up, be- 
 lieved there was an attempted kidnapping, and by 
 the time the detective had ex]3lained matters the 
 people in the house had gotten away with the girl 
 and she could not be found. 
 
 As a result of making public the facts about 
 white slavery and what we were doing to com- 
 bat the traffic, " tips " and clues came in from many 
 unexpected sources. 
 
 An anonymous letter was received by Lieutenant 
 Downey, in charge of the Cottage Grove Avenue 
 Station, and led to the raid of a resort on State 
 Street near Thirty-first Street. The letter said 
 that girls under age were held in a disreputable re- 
 sort. When the police arrived, two girls told them 
 that they had been enticed by Thomas St. John 
 from their employment in a down-town store and 
 
 sold into a resort. The girls were Clara W , 
 
 twenty years old, and Estelle M , twenty-two 
 
 years old. 
 
 Estelle cried bitterly as she told the story 
 of her capture and downfall to Judge Frank Crowe, 
 of the Municipal Court„ 
 
 " "We were working down-town when St. John 
 
The Value of Publicity 169 
 
 met us and told us we could earn lots of money if 
 we went to work in this place. He did not tell us 
 the character of the place. We did not want to 
 remain but our street clothes were taken from us 
 and we were forced to stay. St. John used to visit 
 the place once a week and collect our money from 
 the proprietor." 
 
 A crumpled letter was picked up by a passer-by 
 in the red light district and turned over to one of 
 the judges. The letter had evidently been thrown 
 from a window. It read as follows : 
 
 " Dear Judge : 
 
 " I am in a bad house since March and am 
 not yet sixteen. My father is dead, and mother 
 got married to a man I did not like, so I ran away. 
 A girl said she would put me on the stage like her, 
 but she left me in a bad house. She knew the lady 
 and went with the show herself. I have only a 
 small slip to wear or I would run away. I hope jj-ou 
 can come and get me — I can't write no more " 
 
 Here the letter was broken oif. Evidently she 
 heard some one coming and threw it out of the 
 window. 
 
 The judge despatched detectives immediately to 
 the neighbourhood in which the letter had been 
 found. A diligent search was made for the girl. 
 All the houses in the neighbourhood were gone 
 through from cellar to garret and the keepers 
 closely questioned, but the detectives could find no 
 trace of the enslaved girl. 
 
 A signed letter was received by the ^vriter on 
 
lyo Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 July 14, 1908, from a girl who was being held 
 captive. It follows : 
 
 " Chicago^ III., July 13, 1908. 
 " Dear Sir : 
 
 " Did you receive a letter from my Mother, 
 
 Mrs from Eloise Mich If so I wish you 
 
 would come and see me so I can tell you every- 
 thing I have not been out of the house for three 
 months I have not got any clothes to wear on the 
 street because I owe a debt I wish you would 
 come and see me and I can tell you everything 
 then I am a White Slave for sure" Please excuse 
 Pencle I had to write this a sneak this out. 
 " Please see to this at once 
 
 " and oblige 
 
 " Viola 
 
 " Armour Avenue, 
 
 "City." 
 {The name of the house.) 
 
 Very few girls were so fortunate as this one, 
 whose letter led to her rescue and the conviction of 
 the owners of the resort where she was held. The 
 sad fact is that the vast majority of them go down 
 to untimely graves, as the result of their own hand, 
 by suicide, as the result of a loathsome disease, or 
 else they wallow in the mire of a living death. 
 
 A romance which ended disastrously adds an- 
 other testimonial to the value of publicity. 
 
 A girl named Eose M came to Chicago to 
 
 visit friends. "While on a shopping tour she Avent 
 into one of the stores to buy some music. She was 
 at the counter looking over various sheets of music, 
 
The Value of Publicity 171 
 
 when her attention was attracted by a young man 
 who stood at her side. He was handsome and well 
 dressed. Apparently he also was looking at music. 
 She first noticed him when he turned towards her 
 and asked the names of some of the latest popular 
 songs, as he wanted to buy them. 
 
 Impelled by her native instinct, she turned away 
 and did not answer his inquiry. He was not to be 
 repulsed, however, and he pressed his attentions 
 upon her and continued to talk about different pieces 
 of music. Finally he engaged her in conversation ; 
 as she stood there discussing with him the best songs 
 to buy she looked into his large, dark brown eyes 
 and he seemed to her to be one of the handsomest 
 men she had ever met. 
 
 It was almost noon time and he asked her if she 
 would not take lunch with him at a near-by restau- 
 rant. The impulse, which had first seized her, to 
 avoid him disappeared as this chance acquaintance 
 told her of his interest in music. She really became 
 infatuated with him and accepted the invitation. 
 
 Soon they were seated at a table in a restaurant. 
 In his smooth, oily way, he spun the yarn by which 
 he hoped to entrap the girl. He told her that her 
 beauty had captivated him and that when they 
 were in the store he could not refrain from speak- 
 ing to her. He said that as he talked with her his 
 heart was completely won by her sweet voice and 
 that he had fallen in love with her at first sight. 
 He told her also that his father was a wealthy com- 
 mission merchant on South Water Street in the city. 
 
172 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 Rose had heard of girls falling in love at first 
 sight. Why shouldn't she do it ? She was con- 
 sumed with a feeling of admiration and love. How 
 grand it would be, she thought, to live in a big 
 house surrounded with luxury, and to have this 
 young man, who loved music as she did, for a life 
 companion. Carried away by this illusion, she was 
 soon within his power. 
 
 He proposed that they get married and she 
 agreed to it. As they were leaving the restaurant 
 he asked her to go with him and he would show 
 her photographs of his home and of various people 
 he knew. She did not think this would be proper 
 unless they were married ; so they were soon on the 
 hunt for a clergyman to marry them. They went 
 to a church in Chicago, where the priest refused to 
 say the service without the bishop's consent. Later 
 they went to the home of another priest and were 
 again refused ceremony. 
 
 Going to Elgin, Carlo Menillo, the young man, 
 refused to allow the girl to see her parents before 
 the wedding. They were married by a clergyman 
 in Elgin, who of course did not know the circum- 
 stances, and then went to the home of the girl's 
 parents and told them of the marriage. They 
 spent a day or so in Elgin, visiting the girl's parents 
 and friends. 
 
 Upon their return to Chicago, instead of taking 
 Rose to his supposed home, he took up a residence 
 with her on Wabash Avenue. He confided to her 
 that he had had some trouble with his people and 
 
The Value of Publicity 173 
 
 was almost without funds and tliat he would have to 
 raise money in some way. It was alleged that he 
 took charge of her savings of twenty-five dollars 
 and pawned her watch. Before a week had passed 
 they were almost without money again. One day, 
 apparently thinking over the situation for a few 
 minutes, a way out of the difficulty appeared to 
 hun, — so he told the girl. lie suggested that he 
 would take her to a place, Avhich he had heard 
 about, where she could easily make enough money in 
 a few days to tide them over until he could get work. 
 
 Kot understanding the nature of his intentions, 
 she at once became interested in this new way of 
 making money so easily. Then he explained what 
 he intended doing with her and where he proposed 
 to take her. 
 
 Slowly the realization dawned upon Kose that 
 Carlo was intending to place her in an immoral 
 house. She had read the stories in the newspapers 
 of how panders had caught other girls in the same 
 way. Was her dream of happiness and love to vanish 
 in a moment? Was all that she had hoped for 
 to be lost ? She knew that she must think quickly. 
 The proposal of this man had nauseated her. She 
 vaguely comprehended his purpose, but she knew 
 that he intended to do some great wrong to her. The 
 love of a few minutes before was turned to hatred. 
 
 Had he been quick to read impulses of women, 
 he would have detected in her face the flush 
 of anger. However, thinking that she was easy 
 prey, as she had been led so easily thus far, he did 
 
174 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 not notice that his words had changed her attitude 
 towards him. She, too, could play her part well. 
 
 Convinced that she was in the clutches of a 
 white slave trader, and fearing lest she might 
 arouse in him suspicion, she pretended to fall in with 
 his plan and consented to do as he requested. She 
 then went out with him and he led her into 
 the red light district. His purpose was now quite 
 plain to her. Suddenly turning to him she told 
 him that before going to the resort she would need 
 several articles of clothing which she did not have, 
 and arranged with him to meet her after she had 
 gone into the stores to make these purchases. A 
 certain down-town corner was agreed upon as the 
 meeting-place and then she left him. 
 
 When out of his sight she paused to think over 
 what was best to do. She was confused and at a 
 loss to know what to do. Would it be best to ex- 
 pose him or should she escape and return home the 
 quickest way possible? She had heard of the 
 county court and of the prosecution of the panders, 
 and she decided that this would be the best place 
 to go for protection. 
 
 She was directed to Judge Sheridan Fry, then 
 one of the assistants to the county judge, and 
 told her pitiful story. An escort was given her 
 and she was brought to the court where I was 
 prosecuting. Then the story of how she was de- 
 ceived was repeated, and after I had heard it, I 
 had a warrant drawn up and despatched an officer 
 with the girl to the appointed place of meeting. 
 
The Value of Publicity 175 
 
 When they neared the corner the officer told the 
 girl that he would follow a short way behind her. 
 Menillo was there waiting for his wife, and as 
 Eose rushed up to him, apparently glad to see him, 
 her husband began to upbraid her for being so long 
 away. Then the officer stepped up, and the young 
 man was soon in the arms of the policeman, who 
 hustled him over to a cell. 
 
 The police officer provided a place for Rose to 
 stay over night, and the next morning, March 
 23, 1908, the case was called for trial before Judge 
 Crowe. The young man finally admitted that 
 the girl's story was substantially correct and he 
 was found guilty. 
 
 The parents of the girl, who had been notified, 
 came to Chicago and took her home with them. 
 Disappointed and heart-broken, the girl went home, 
 much wiser for her experience, but happy that she 
 was saved from a life of shame. Last spring, I am 
 told, an annulment of the marriage was secured in 
 the courts. 
 
 Had this girl not read of white slave cases, she 
 might not have been favoured by the good fortune 
 with which she was blessed and the outcome would 
 certainly have been more disastrous. Rose knew, 
 when it was too late, that it would have been much 
 better for her to have heeded the warning which 
 the stories of other girls had given her, which 
 warning, however, saved her from the life of a 
 white slave. 
 
xm 
 
 THE POLICE AND THE PANDERS 
 
 PEKHAPS the most perplexing problem the 
 police have had to solve has been the so- 
 cial evil. This is true not only in Chicago 
 but also in nearly every American city. To the 
 police the question has been an enigma because of 
 our hypocrisy. 
 
 We are too prone to place the blame for every- 
 thing that goes wrong in civic affairs upon the 
 shoulders of the police, when the fault really rests 
 upon us. It is not right for us to censure the 
 police when we create conditions which have a 
 hidden meaning to be guessed. 
 
 Why do we ask the police to solve a puzzle which 
 we cannot satisfactorily explain ? 
 
 In most of our states there are laws making it a 
 crime to conduct places of ill repute. Yet, custom 
 sanctions their existence in cities in nearly every 
 state. These laws are passed only to blind or ap- 
 pease the people. Most of the laws, however, are 
 too weak to be of any value. 
 
 Legally, the people say : " See how good we are ; 
 we have laws against the social evil ! " Morally, 
 many citizens say, and many of them stand high in 
 176 
 
The Police and the Panders 177 
 
 the eyes of the community, too : " These things 
 have existed for centuries and will continue to ex- 
 ist for centuries to come, unless the standards of 
 men are raised." Some even say: "They are 
 necessary to the safety of our girls and women." 
 
 What a riddle ! 
 
 Well might Dora Douglas cry out from behind 
 prison walls : " If it be a crime worthy of the 
 prison to secure an inmate for a vice resort, is it a 
 sure proof of public and private virtue that vice 
 resorts cover square miles of this city and the city 
 government ' regulates ' them ? " 
 
 This regulation of vice resorts by city authorities 
 has certainly confused the police and wTought 
 havoc in the careers of some. It has opened an 
 avenue to graft, which some have unwittingly or 
 purposely travelled. 
 
 Citizens cannot honestly reproach police for be- 
 coming victims of conditions which the citizens 
 themselves either create or tolerate. 
 
 It is therefore with some feeling of charity that 
 I recite facts concerning the relation of the police 
 and the panders. 
 
 During March and April, 1907, Judge Judson 
 Going found that a habit had grown up among 
 some of the police of taking out Avarrants for the 
 arrest of owners of disreputable places, that no ar- 
 rests were made upon these warrants and that the 
 Avarrants were never returned to the court. 
 
 The judge had his clerk go over the list, and he 
 found that over a hundred of these warrants on 
 
178 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 which no arrests had been made had been taken out 
 from his branch of the court alone. The court 
 bailiff was ordered by the judge to take the list 
 and personally to summon the resort owners into 
 court. 
 
 It was then ascertained that these resort owners 
 had never been arrested, although they were well 
 known, but the police had visited them telling them 
 that they had warrants for them. 
 
 April 13, 1907, Detective Murphy, of the Twenty- 
 second Street Police Station, was summoned into 
 court by Judge Going for an explanation. Most of 
 the warrants had been issued in December by 
 various judges of the Municipal Court, and in most 
 of them Detective Murphy was named as the com- 
 plaining witness. 
 
 The defense was made that " discretion " in not 
 having the warrants served was used, for — the saloon 
 and dive keepers had reformed after being warned. 
 This statement, however, was refuted by the testi- 
 mony of the dive keepers themselves, among them 
 Thomas Ferguson, who admitted on cross-exami- 
 nation that after being warned in December he still 
 permitted women to frequent his place. 
 
 Ferguson's warning was testified to by him in 
 this way : 
 
 " Were you ever warned to keep women out of 
 your house ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir. He (Murphy) told me there was an 
 investigation going on in the police department, and 
 I'd better be careful." 
 
The Police and the Panders 179 
 
 Publicity given by the newspapers revealed to 
 the citizens this condition of affairs, and popular 
 indignation compelled the chief of police to promise 
 to remove every police officer from the South 
 Side red light district. There was a great " shake 
 up " in the police force of the district ; and while it 
 was given out that the entire force had been 
 changed " for the good of the service," the fact was 
 that only fifty-six out of a hundred and fourteen 
 policemen in the district were removed. In this 
 regard the unsuspecting public was deceived as it 
 had been many times before. 
 
 Edward McCann, who had been made captain of 
 police, was sent from Englewood to the red light 
 district ; and with the arrival of a new set of police- 
 men, under the command of Captain McCann, this 
 section of the underworld experienced some huge 
 surprises. The newly installed captain, bent upon 
 making an enviable record, aided the State's At- 
 torney and the courts in bringing to the sur- 
 face the underground methods of the white slave 
 traffic. 
 
 During the summer and autumn of 1907 Captain 
 McCann was active in hunting down panders. It 
 seemed, however, that as winter came on the cap- 
 tain's ardour gradually cooled. 
 
 Early in January, 1908, information was sent to 
 me that two girls were held in a resort on Dearborn 
 
 Street. These girls, Frances C and Jessie K , 
 
 both twenty-one years old, said that the owner of 
 the resort refused to allow them to leave the place 
 
i8o Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 :r have their clothing, because she alleged that they 
 owed her four hundred dollars. 
 
 I sent two sergeants, who happened to be in my 
 office, to get these girls and their clothing. On 
 their arrival the madam called up Captain McCann. 
 The captain at once called me up, protesting against 
 my sending detectives into his district, promising 
 that the girls should be at my office the next morn- 
 ing and saying that he would like to talk the mat- 
 ter over with me then. 
 
 The next morning, January eighth, they were there 
 at the Harrison Street Court. I went into the of 
 fice to see the captain and he said that the people out 
 in his district would all have to go out of business 
 if I helped all the girls escape paying their debts, 
 and that he didn't propose to have his regulations 
 in the district interfered with. I asked him if it 
 greatly concerned him if the disreputable houses 
 did have to go out of business. I told him that the 
 proprietors of these houses could not intimidate 
 girls and hold them practically as slaves by hiding 
 their clothing until they paid debts. 
 
 This incident served to bring home to me the 
 philosophy of the trite old saying : "A new broom 
 sweeps clean." 
 
 However, it ought to be said in justice to Cap- 
 tain McCann that it is not always the fault of the 
 broom that it does not sweep clean, but sometimes 
 the person who holds the broom is to blame. He 
 perhaps went as far as he dared at that time in the 
 warfare against panders. 
 
The Police and the Panders i8l 
 
 In the summer of 1908 Captain McCann was 
 raised to the position of inspector of police and 
 placed in charge of the Desplaines Street district 
 where the West Side red light resorts are located. 
 
 During the month of July, 1909, the State's At- 
 torney secured information that Inspector McCann 
 was protecting the girl slave traders in their abom- 
 inable business. McCann was indicted in the mid- 
 dle of the summer for accepting bribes from resort 
 owners, and was accused of protecting the panders 
 by Louis Frank, who with his brother, Julius Frank, 
 carried on a saloon business. Frank turned against 
 McCann in order to save himself from prosecution 
 and became a state's witness. 
 
 The trial lasted from the first week in September 
 until September twenty-fourth. 
 
 During the trial the Plummer case was dug out 
 of the scrap pile of disposed of cases. Frank testi- 
 fied that he went to McCann in behalf of the 
 Plummers and offered him two hundred dollars to 
 drop the prosecution of the pandering case against 
 them. He said the inspector wanted three hundred 
 and fifty dollars and a bargain was finally made 
 and the Plummers were permitted to go free be- 
 cause McCann " could not," as he said, " produce 
 witnesses against them." 
 
 Many other instances of protection were disclosed 
 by witnesses Morris Schatz and Charlie Genker. 
 
 The defense charged that the prosecution of 
 McCann was the result of a conspiracy of the 
 denizens of the underworld to get rid of able police 
 
l82 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 officials. They sought to prove that Louis Frank 
 and other witnesses for the prosecution tried to get 
 McCann transferred from the Desplaines Street 
 Station, that Frank had made charges against other 
 public officials, including Captain Mahoney, and Lieu- 
 tenant Elliott, of the Desplaines Street Station, and 
 that there existed a general plan to get rid of police 
 officials who were too severe in theu* efforts to 
 clean up the district. 
 
 Louis Frank, however, testified that he had 
 levied tribute upon white slave traders and owners 
 of immoral houses for Inspector McCann and had 
 turned the money over to McCann, retaining his 
 commission, and the facts thus brought out against 
 Inspector McCann convinced the jury that he was 
 guilty. 
 
 A motion for a new trial was argued and denied 
 and the case is now in the Supreme Court of Illi- 
 nois upon an appeal by the inspector. 
 
 During the trial it was hinted that Edward 
 McCann was not the only police official who was 
 protecting and receiving revenue from the panders. 
 It is certainly true that in many other instances 
 witnesses in pandering cases have disappeared be- 
 fore the cases were called in the courts where they 
 were to testify. 
 
 In the winter of 1908, Bessie M told a 
 
 story before Judge Sadler of her attempts to escape 
 from a resort in the red light district. She de- 
 clared that she had made vain appeals to two 
 policemen to take her out of the house, and that 
 
The Police and the Panders 183 
 
 they had refused to interfere. This startling 
 charge was made durmg the trial of William Cod- 
 dington, who was accused by Bessie of having 
 sold her to a disreputable house on Armour 
 Avenue. 
 
 Then another case in which some of the police 
 of the red light district seemed derelict in their 
 duty was revealed to the courts during this winter 
 season. Two fifteen-year-old girls were rescued 
 from a resort on Twenty-first Street. The keepers 
 of the place as well as the decoy er of thegh-ls were 
 arrested. 
 
 The girls, Annie K and Barbara G , 
 
 were found and taken out of the house when the 
 mother of one of the girls appealed to the police 
 department to rescue her daughter. Upon informa- 
 tion supplied by the mother, Policeman James 
 Horan of the Eawson Street Station, in company 
 with Lieutenant Duffy and Sergeant Yanetta, made 
 a search for the girl. It seems that although these 
 girls were known to the police to be in the district, 
 they were allowed to remain there until officers 
 from the outside came and got them. 
 
 Both girls told how they had been lured into 
 captivity by James Kose. He accosted them, they 
 said, in front of a barber shop on Milwaukee 
 Avenue and induced them to accompany him to 
 the place on Twenty-first Street. The girls said 
 that he had deceived them by false promises and 
 misrepresentations. Since the mistress of the house 
 to which they had been taken was doubtful of their 
 
184 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 ages when Rose brought them in, she notified the 
 police of the Twenty-second Street Station that she 
 had two new girls and she would like to have them 
 interviewed. 
 
 Two detectives, the woman said, visited the place 
 and questioned the girls, placing their names in a 
 book. The girls had been told by Rose to say that 
 they were nineteen years old, although an}^ one in 
 the court room could have discerned at a glance 
 that the girh were very much younger than that. 
 The two detectives, however, whose business it was 
 to book girls in immoral houses, according to a 
 system that had been inaugurated in the vice dis- 
 tricts, took the truth of the girls' statements in re- 
 gard to their ages for granted and did not make 
 any further inquiry, and that was the last heard of 
 the police until the girls were rescued. 
 
 The flagrant inconsistency of this booking system 
 is plainly seen in this instance. As a method for 
 the protection of girls and for the pm'pose of 
 eradicating the slave traffic it was not a success and 
 not productive of good results. 
 
 Either the officers who were assigned to visit the 
 various disorderl}^ houses and book the new inmates 
 were very lax and inefficient in the performance of 
 their duties, or there is only one other assumption 
 to be made. This conclusion is arrived at because 
 of the great number of girls who were constantly 
 being rescued from immoral houses, who had passed 
 the so-caUed " examination " of the booking officers, 
 and were later found to be the victims of slave 
 
The Police and the Panders 185 
 
 agents. The girls, after being liberated and while 
 either in the court testifying, or making statements 
 to the State's Attorney, invariably said that they 
 had never been questioned by the officers as to 
 whether or not they had been lured to the houses 
 by panders or had been intimidated and forced to 
 make false statements by the slave traders. 
 
 While it is true that many girls were taken out 
 of the houses by these officers, most of them were 
 immediately sent home and no investigation as to 
 how they were procured and no charges against the 
 panders were made. It was urged by these officers 
 that they did not wish to bring the girls before the 
 public and subject them and their families to the 
 scandal which would naturally attend the trial of 
 such cases. 
 
 At first glance this seems a good reason, and some 
 ministers and reform workers thought that it was 
 the best thing to do, but in the long run the public 
 has suffered for it. These girls and their families 
 were spared the additional disgrace of publicity, 
 but the girl slave traffickers and their agents were 
 allowed to continue unmolested in their dastardly 
 business. 
 
 If shielding the girls' reputations was really the 
 purpose, then the question may well be asked, — 
 Why was it that in some instances the cases were 
 brought to the attention of the courts and in others 
 the girls were shipped quietly out of the city with- 
 out the State's Attorney's office or the court's 
 knowing anything about the rescue of the girls ? 
 
i86 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 Soon after my present office was organized, in 
 October, 1909, an extensive inter-state slave traffic 
 between St. Louis and Chicago was uncovered, and 
 the heads of the gang, Maurice Van Bever and his 
 wife, Julia, of Chicago, and David Garfinkle, of 
 St. Louis, were convicted, together with several of 
 their agents. 
 
 The first intimation that the Van Bevers were 
 bringing girls from St. Louis came to the United 
 States District Attorney's office in July, 1909, in 
 the form of an anonymous letter which accused 
 one Mike Hart, then a barkeeper in Van Bever's 
 resort. The letter was sent to State's Attorney 
 Wayman, as the case was not within Federal juris- 
 diction, and was later turned over to the Chicago 
 Law and Order League for investigation. Mr. 
 Robert Paranteau, then an investigator for the 
 league, was sent out on the case. 
 
 His story is told in his affidavit, of which the 
 following is a copy, omitting the formal parts : 
 
 " ' A letter was placed in my hands containing 
 information that a certain party by the name of 
 Mike Hart was to bring from St, Louis three girls. 
 This was on August 31, 1909. That they were to 
 leave the train at a suburban station and bring the 
 girls in an automobile to a house (giving the loca- 
 tion) owned by one Van Bever. 
 
 " ' I immediately that afternoon went out to the 
 Twenty-second Street Station and met there Cap- 
 tain Cudmore, in command of the station, and 
 showed him the letter, and he said he would call 
 
The Police and the Panders 187 
 
 in the lieutenant, and I told him I had come out 
 there to see him especially and that I did not de- 
 sire to have this case fall through, and he said : 
 " You can rely on this man. Lieutenant Kellaher ; 
 he knows every one in the district. I don't." 
 
 " ' He then called in the lieutenant and intro- 
 duced him to me. He then went over the case 
 with the lieutenant. The lieutenant declared that 
 he knew of no man by the name of Mike Hart, but 
 that he had two men, very reliable, who had charge 
 of the registering all those people who were in the 
 district, and they would know if such a person was 
 in the district. I asked who these men were, and 
 he said : " Officers Duffy and Coe." 
 
 "'Captain Cudmore said: "I will have these 
 officers this evening at the patrol box at the north- 
 west corner of (naming the streets) at nine o'clock. 
 You meet us there." 
 
 " ' I then left the station. I did not get to the 
 corner specified until a quarter past nine. The 
 captain was there with the two officers. He said : 
 " You are not on time." I said : " No. Have 
 they come ? " He said : " We have seen nothing 
 of them." We waited there until eleven o'clock, 
 when the captain left us. I waited around with 
 Officers Coe and Duffy until midnight. While 
 waiting Coe left me with Duffy, and said he had 
 to go and call on some place in the district. He 
 was gone some little time and returned. We saw 
 no automobile stop at the place and got no trace 
 of the people we were looking for while I was there. 
 
i88 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 " ' Officers Coe and Duffy both declared to me 
 they had inquired at Van Bever's place, and no 
 one there knew of such a person, and that the 
 party evidently had given an assumed name. I 
 told them the information I had was reliable, and 
 we spoke about the letter, and they tried to leave 
 the impression that they were " on the square," 
 and were anxious to run down the matter, 
 
 " ' They said they had made inquiries in the 
 neighbourhood and they knew of no person in the 
 red light district, in Van Bever's place or else- 
 where, by the name of Hart, and that they had 
 found nobody in the district who did know any one 
 by that name. 
 
 " ' A few days later, September 13, 1909, I was 
 
 standing at the southwest corner of and 
 
 streets and I saw Officers Coe and Duffy 
 
 come down the street from the west. I saw them 
 
 go into the side entrance on street to Van 
 
 Bever's place, called " The White City." Presently 
 
 they came out of the front door on street 
 
 and crossed the street. I crossed after them and 
 
 we stopped at the side entrance on street 
 
 of the saloon on the ^southeast corner. I asked 
 them if they had heard anything more about Mike 
 Hart and they said they had found no such person 
 in the district ; that we had evidently been given 
 the wrong name ; in other words, " a bum 
 steer." 
 
 " ' I saw Captain Cudmore in the district after 
 that, September 18, 1909, and he said nothing ever 
 
The Police and the Panders 189 
 
 came from that information that I had given them. 
 I also met Coe and Diiffy several times in the 
 district and they always denied that there was 
 anything to the case above referred to. I said to 
 the captain, "You would know if any strange 
 Avomen came mto the district?" and he said, 
 " Sure," and he Avent on to explain to me how 
 they registered all inmates of houses of prostitu- 
 tion.' " 
 
 In contradiction to the story of Coe and Duffy, 
 as sworn to by Paranteau, is the following letter, 
 written September 4, 1909, by Mollie Hart, an in- 
 mate of Van Bever's resort, which letter was read 
 in evidence on the trial of the Yan Severs and 
 aided in their conviction, as it was written at the 
 dictation of Maurice Yan Bever. 
 
 " Well, dear, I received your letter special del 
 and I think you would be able to understand a 
 little by this time. Clark is Paul. (Paul Auer, 
 alias Du Bois, one of Yan Bever's agents, who 
 forfeited his bond later when arrested.) He 
 could not give his name Paul cause Coe and 
 Duffy came and told Mr. M. Yan Bever that a 
 certain party told them that you went after some 
 girls and these was watching for you w^hen you 
 return. 
 
 " So if you get any girls coming up here you had 
 better leave and send them a few days later or 
 either get off at Hinsdale and put them in a hotel 
 for a few days, or else don't bother with the girls. 
 Mr. M. Yan Bever said so you had better do some- 
 
190 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 thing and don't fool too long and get the boss sore 
 at you. . . . 
 
 " Everything will be all right if you come back ; 
 the way I told you is what we mean everything is 
 O. K. next week." 
 
 "Written on the face of the letter was this : 
 
 "Burn every letter and telegram you receive 
 
 from hear. Leave the girls behind with — . 
 
 The girls will have to wait a few days but you 
 come back at once alone." 
 
 Notwithstanding the fact that Mollie Hart wrote 
 that Yan Bever had been warned by Officers Coe 
 and Duffy, the Chicago-St. Louis traders continued 
 to carry on their business, although perhaps more 
 cautiously because of this warning. 
 
 Mike Hart on one of his trips to St. Louis had 
 
 seen Sarah J , and she was persuaded to come 
 
 to Chicago. It was the exploitation of this girl, 
 
 Sarah J , for the white slave market that 
 
 brought sorrow to the camp of these panders, for 
 in October detectives from my office who had been 
 watching their movements arrested Mollie Hart 
 and Mike Hart soon after Sarah was made a 
 slave. 
 
 The prosecution of the pandering cases against 
 these agents and the other members of the gang 
 brought out the fact that Hart did bring girls 
 from St. Louis and that Yan Bever, having been 
 "tipped off," invented other schemes for eluding 
 detectives who might be on the lookout. 
 
 Mike Hart, who was convicted of pandering, as 
 
The Police and the Panders 191 
 
 were the other traders and agents, frankly ad- 
 mitted his part in bringing girls to Chicago from 
 St. Louis, and made charges that Officers Coe and 
 Duffy received money from Van Bever. In in- 
 vestigating these charges it was found that at the 
 time charged Yan Bever cashed a pay check for 
 one of these officers. They thereby escaped per- 
 haps more serious consequences than that they were 
 put in uniform, after having served many years as 
 plain clothes men, and transferred from the red 
 light district to quiet residence or suburb stations. 
 An affidavit of Mike Hart, however, charges more 
 than that they received money from Van Bever, 
 and is interesting at least to bear out Paranteau's 
 story. 
 
 " State of Illinois, ) 
 County of Cook, j ^^ 
 
 " Michael Hart, being duly sworn, on oath 
 says : 
 
 " I was employed at the Paris (giving location), 
 from April to October, 1909, a large part of the 
 time as a bartender. I know Officer Coe and also 
 Officer Duffy. They used to come into the Paris, 
 
 at , often. They booked all the girls. They 
 
 spoke to me often. I would give them cigars and 
 drinks which they never paid for. They used to 
 call me Max and they knew me from April up to 
 the time I was arrested, October 13, 1909. They 
 knew me as long as I was there. They came in 
 almost every day. They knew MoUie Hart, too. 
 
192 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 " In the month of September m the Paris I saw 
 Maurice Yan Bever give Coe a roll of money. I 
 could not tell how much it was. I saw a ten 
 dollar bill and lots of other bills. Maurice "Van 
 Bever came down-stairs about two o'clock or three 
 o'clock and took the money from his pocket and 
 handed it to Coe. It looked to me fifty or a hun- 
 dred dollars. 
 
 " I pretended I did not see Coe get the money. 
 I let it look as if I did not see it. I did not want 
 to let him know I was interfering in his business. 
 After Coe took the money from Yan Bever I turned 
 my back and was doing something to the back of 
 the bar. I could see what was going on through 
 the mirror at the bar. Ofiicer Duffy was hanging 
 around just outside the door. That is the same 
 Coe that comes around with Duffy booking the 
 girls. Yan Bever said Coe and Duffy were the 
 only ones he could trust. He said they were his 
 friends. 
 
 " Coe and Yan Bever went over to the window, 
 in front of the big window, and talked low. I 
 couldn't hear what was said. I played ignorance. 
 I wanted Yan Bever to think I was a dunce. That 
 is what he always took me for, a big fool, and that 
 is the reason he would always talk in front of me. 
 
 " During the time that Mitchell was desk sergeant 
 at Twenty-second Street I wrapped up whiskey 
 every morning and Paul Auer, alias Paul Du 
 Bois, took it over to him. This took place every 
 day. ... I saw . . . Officers Coe and 
 
The Police and the Panders 193 
 
 Duffy drinking with Maurice and Julia Yan Bever 
 in the dining-room in the basement of the Paris. 
 " Michael Hart." 
 
 "Subscribed and sworn to 
 before me this twelfth day 
 of January, a. d. 1910. 
 
 " James P. Haerold, 
 
 " Notary Public." 
 
 This does not signify that the whole police de- 
 partment is corrupt. That would be an unfair 
 conclusion. Chief of Police Leroy T. Steward, 
 since his appointment in the summer of 1909, has 
 proved himself a most capable and efficient officer, 
 deserving of the highest praise and commendation 
 for his courageous and earnest efforts to rid the 
 city of its evil elements. As a matter of fact, I 
 have at all times enjoyed the confidence and per- 
 sistent help of the police of Chicago as a whole. 
 They have gone out with me and worked with me 
 in getting evidence, have gone "vWth me into the 
 com't rooms and testified in behalf of the people, 
 helping to obtain convictions against many offenders. 
 They are my friends, but they know and I know, 
 that if there had not been some corrupt officials 
 and subordinates, pandering could never have been 
 so great an evil in the city of Cliicago. 
 
XIV 
 
 THE LAST OF THE CHICAGO-ST. LOUIS GANG 
 
 MAUKICE VAN BEVEK and other mem- 
 bers of the Chicago-St. Louis gang had 
 been found guilty, Yan Bever receiving 
 the maximum sentence, one year and a fine of one 
 thousand dollars. 
 
 While Julia Yan Bever was being tried before 
 Judge "Walker, over in another court where Judge 
 Going was presiding, another member, the last of 
 the Chicago-St. Louis white slave crowd was on 
 trial. 
 
 This was David Gariinkle, who conducted the 
 slave headquarters in St. Louis. He was arrested 
 in St. Louis October twenty-eighth and brought to 
 Chicago November first. 
 
 The latter part of October detectives from my 
 office, acting upon information which had been se- 
 cured from the confessions and statements made by 
 other members of the gang in Chicago, scoured St. 
 Louis for additional evidence and succeeded in 
 winding around Garfinkle and others a chain of 
 evidence from which it was impossible to escape. 
 
 On the evening of October twenty-seventh I 
 went to St. Louis and the next morning caused 
 Garfinkle to be arrested. He was brought into the 
 194 
 
Last of the Chicago-St. Louis Gang 19 c 
 
 private office of E. P. Creecy, chief of pohce in St. 
 Louis, and there made a complete statement of his 
 connection with the pandering business. This state- 
 ment was made in the presence of Chief Creecy, 
 Detective William Bowler of Chicago and myself. 
 Garfinkle blamed the Yan Bevers and Dick Tyler, 
 one of the slave agents, for his trouble. 
 
 After he was brought to Chicago he was taken 
 before Judge Kewcomer at the Desplaines Street 
 court and there he demanded a jury trial. His 
 case was transferred to the criminal court building. 
 Inasmuch as I was to be a witness in this case, 
 having heard Garfinkle make a confession in St. 
 Louis, and knowing that legal ethics frown upon a 
 lawyer testifying in a case which he is trying, I was 
 fortunate in securing the able services of the Hon- 
 ourable Haynie R. Pearson, for years a member of 
 the State's Attorney's staff, to aid the Honourable 
 William E. Fetzer, Assistant State's Attorney, in the 
 trial of Garfinkle. 
 
 The trial began on N"ovember fifteenth and as 
 most of the day was consumed in getting a jury, 
 the witnesses were not called until the following 
 
 morning. The first witness was Emma W ° 
 
 who told what she knew about the case, as follows : 
 
 ^ "My name is Emma W and at the present 
 
 time I am staying at the Harrison Street Annex, 
 and have been there for five weeks. My home is 
 in St. Louis, Missouri. I have kno^\Ti the defend- 
 ant, David Garfinkle, since the first of May I 
 met him in a restaurant where I was eating lunch 
 
196 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 after I had come from my work. At that tune 
 I was working at Mellecks, Twelfth and Olive 
 Streets. 
 
 " After that I met hun a number of times at dif- 
 ferent places around in restaurants. The first time 
 I met Garfinkle he told me he was from Chicago, 
 and asked me whether I didn't want to go to 
 Chicago with him. He said he was a travelling 
 salesman in Chicago, and was going to return there. 
 
 " I was never in Chicago until I came up here 
 five months ago. I came to Chicago on the eight- 
 eenth day of June, 1909, and lived at Yan Bever's 
 
 place, No. Armour Avenue. When Dick 
 
 Tyler came down to St. Louis about the sixteenth 
 of June I had another talk with Garfinkle in which 
 he told me he was going to Chicago and asked me 
 to come. He introduced me to his friend Dick 
 Tyler. I told them I couldn't go and they said 
 that I could come with them. The next day Gar- 
 finlile said that he could not come with us that day 
 so he told me to come to Chicago with his friend 
 Dick Tyler and that he would come the following 
 two weeks. He said he would marry me after 
 a while but not then, and also that I could come to 
 Chicago and he would be on soon. He said I could 
 make more money in Chicago than I could there. 
 
 " After I left St. Louis with Dick Tyler I next 
 saw Garfinkle on the fourth day of July in Yan 
 Bever's house on Armour Avenue. He then told 
 me he was going back to St. Louis and said he 
 didn't have any money. Maurice Yan Bever gave 
 
Last of the Chicago-St. Louis Gang 197 
 
 him fifteen dollars, which was charged against me 
 and added to the debt I owed Van Bever." 
 
 On cross-examination she said : 
 
 " In St. Louis I was a waitress in several restau- 
 rants. I know Mike Hart. He came to Chicago 
 on the same train that Dick Tyler brought me on. 
 Mike Hart was connected with one of Van Bever's 
 places too. I don't know who paid my fare to 
 Chicago, but Dick Tyler had the tickets. He took 
 me directly to this house, and I was an inmate in 
 the house for about four months. During these 
 four months I saw Tyler around there all the time. 
 I couldn't go home because I didn't have any money 
 and I was in debt to the house and they did not 
 allow me to get my clothes. The first two months 
 I was there I was not allowed to go out without 
 Madam Van Bever. I never went out alone. If 
 she was not with us somebody else was." 
 
 The next witness was Tootsie T , who said : 
 
 " My name is Tootsie T and I am stopping 
 
 at the Harrison Street Annex, and have been there 
 for the last three weeks. Before that I was at 
 
 Madam 's at No. Armour Avenue. I 
 
 know Emma "W , the young woman who has 
 
 just testified. She was at one of Van Bever's 
 places while I was there. I also know the defend- 
 ant, David Garfinkle. I met him about three 
 weeks before I came to Chicago at his place of 
 
 business in St. Louis. Emma W was with me. 
 
 He asked me to copie up to Chicago and said he 
 would be there in about two weeks. 
 
198 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 " I did not see him again until in July except 1 
 saw him the night of the eighteenth of June, when 
 I left St. Louis, that was when I had this conversa- 
 tion with him. I then had known him about three 
 
 weeks. Besides Emma W , Dick Tyler and 
 
 Mike Hart were present, well I don't know whether 
 Mike was there or not, but he was on the train 
 with us and brought a blond girl up here to 
 Chicago. The place we met was above Garfinkle's 
 store. It was sort of a big parlour or office. 
 
 " On the fourth day of July I saw Garfinkle at 
 Yan Bever's place. He came in there and says to 
 me, ' Tootsie, I am broke, I am up here and I am 
 all in and down and out, and Yan Bever is going 
 to give me twenty dollars on your account.' He 
 came back later in the evening and said he got the 
 money all right. 
 
 " When I lived in St. Louis I was working on 
 West Bell. I am eighteen years old. Tootsie was 
 the name given to me by Dick Tyler the day I came 
 up here and I have been known by that name ever 
 since. That is not my real name. 
 
 " I know Police Officer Coe of the Twenty-second 
 Street Station. When I first went to Yan Bever's 
 place I had a conversation with Officer Coe in 
 which I told him that I had been a bad woman for 
 two years and that I came to Chicago from Louis- 
 ville, Kentucky. This was not so, but I told that 
 to Officer Coe because Madam Yan Bever and Dick 
 Tyler told me I had to tell b^'m that." 
 
 Mike Hart, who as we have seen, had been con- 
 
Last of the Chicago-St. Louis Gang 199 
 
 victed previously, was then called to the witness 
 stand. 
 
 " My name is Michael Hart. I have been in the 
 house of correction since the twenty-third of last 
 month. My home was originally in St. Louis. I 
 have known the defendant, Garfinkle, since the mid- 
 dle of June. I got acquainted with him in St. Louis 
 where I was introduced by Dick Tyler, who told 
 him we were down there for girls, and he said he 
 could get a couple for us. He said he would get 
 
 this Emma W . I did not see Emma "W 
 
 nor Tootsie T until the night we left. I saw 
 
 the defendant that night in his place of business. I 
 asked him where the girls were, and he said they 
 were up-stairs. I asked him if they were coming 
 and he said, ' Yes.' I met them at the depot, these 
 two girls and Dick Tyler and we got on the train 
 and came to Chicago and went to Yan Bever's 
 resort. The girls stayed there. 
 
 " I next saw the defendant on the fourth of July 
 and had a talk with him and Dick Tyler. Garfinkle 
 and Tyler went out, and when they came back Gar- 
 finkle said he got fifteen dollars on Emma and 
 twenty dollars on Tootsie." 
 
 On cross-examination Mike Hart testified : 
 
 " I am twenty-three years old. I was born in 
 New Orleans but left there when ten years old to go 
 with my mother to St. Louis. During the last year 
 I lived with my wife in St. Louis. She has been an 
 inmate of this house on Armour Avenue where I 
 worked. I was a waiter and tended bar in both of 
 
200 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 Van Bever's places. I was sent to the Bridewell 
 for ten months and a three hundred dollar fine for 
 pandering. Procuring girls has been my business 
 for the last three months." 
 
 The next witness was Joseph L. Kinder, of the 
 Chicago Detective Bureau, who after stating his 
 name testified : 
 
 " I have been a police officer for twenty years. 
 I am now working on special detail, and have seen 
 this defendant and had a conversation with him at 
 the Desplaines Street Station. The day after he 
 came from St. Louis he told me that he came up 
 here from St. Louis about the fourth of July, that 
 he went down to Yan Bever's place on Armour 
 Avenue. He said that he had been out, spending 
 more money than he ought to have done, so that he 
 had not enough money to get back to St. Louis. 
 
 He said he asked Emma W for money and she 
 
 gave him five dollars and told him to stay over, and 
 that he got fifteen dollars from Van Bever." 
 
 Being cross-examined, Officer Kinder said : 
 
 " I went to the lieutenant's room with a stenog- 
 rapher and he was brought up there. I asked him 
 if he wanted to make a statement, told him he didn't 
 have to unless he wanted to, and he said that he had 
 made a statement to the chief of police of St. Louis 
 and to Mr. Koe, and that he did not want to say any 
 more. Mr. Hogan, an attorney, was with me." 
 
 Chief of Police Creecy, of St Louis, who had come 
 on to testify against Garfinkle, was the next witness 
 called : 
 
Last of the Chicago-St. Louis Gang 201 
 
 " My name is Edmund P. Creecy. I am chief of 
 police of St. Louis, Missouri, and I have met Mr. 
 Clifford G. Roe within the last month. I first met 
 the defendant, Garflnkle, at my office in St. Louis. 
 I had a conversation with him in Mr. Roe's pres- 
 ence. He told me he kept a saloon, and that he 
 knew a man by the name of Tyler. I asked him a 
 few questions merely to open the conversation, and 
 then Mr. Roe questioned him more particularly. 
 He spoke about Tyler coming to St. Louis, and said 
 he made his headquarters around his (the defend- 
 ant's) office, and spent a good deal of money around 
 the saloon, that telegrams and letters addressed to 
 Tyler came there from Chicago. Garfinkle said that 
 Tyler made three trips to St. Louis, the third time 
 he learned that Tyler was there to get girls and 
 take them to Chicago for immoral purposes, and he 
 mentioned having introduced Tyler to a girl whom 
 he knew who went to Chicago with him. I recall 
 
 that he mentioned the name of Emma "W , but 
 
 I don't remember the name Tootsie T . He 
 
 said that he went to Chicago in July, that Tyler 
 induced him to come and open a place of business 
 here. Tyler told him that everything was wide 
 open in Chicago, and he could make lots of money, 
 and he and three or four others came here on a 
 cheap rate and went to this place of Yan Bever's. 
 He said he spent two hundred dollars in there and 
 was going to leave and they did not want him to 
 go and loaned him some money. I am not positive 
 as to the amount, and that he spent it at the bar." 
 
202 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 On his cross-examination Chief Creecy testified : 
 
 " I have been connected with the police depart- 
 ment for thirty-two years, and have been chief of 
 police a little over three years. 
 
 " Garfinkle said in that conversation that he had 
 received telegrams addressed to him, and on open- 
 ing them found they were for Tyler." He then 
 gave the location of Garfinkle's place of business, 
 on Market Street in St. Louis. 
 
 At the conclusion of Chief Creecy's testimony I 
 was called to the stand and testified : 
 
 " My name is Clifford G. Koe. 
 
 " I know the defendant, Garfinkle. I first saw hhn 
 on the twenty-first of October, this year, in the 
 office of the chief of police of St. Louis, Missouri. 
 There were present at that meeting, the chief of 
 police. Detective William Bowler of Chicago, and 
 myself. 
 
 " After a few questions by the chief of police, 
 Garfinkle said he would tell the whole thing from 
 the beginning. He said that a man by the name of 
 Dick Tyler had worked for him as a bartender ; that 
 Dick Tyler had come on to Chicago and was work- 
 ing for Maurice Yan Bever at the . That he 
 
 came up to St. Louis three times, and had always 
 come to his place and had received mail and tele 
 grams there. That once or twice tickets had come 
 in the name of Garfinkle, and that Garfinkle had to 
 go to the station to get them. I asked him if he did 
 not know that Dick Tyler was getting girls to take 
 to a house of ill fame in Chicago, and he said that 
 
Last of the Chicago-St. Louis Gang 203 
 
 he did not know it until the last time and then I 
 said to him, ' Didn't you know it when you were 
 getting letters and telegrams and tickets to take 
 these girls down ? ' And he said he might have sur- 
 mised it but he did not know it. He said the last 
 time Dick Tyler was there he told him he would 
 get into trouble if he kept this up. He said 
 
 he knew Emma W , but not by that name, but 
 
 by the name of May W ; that he had intro- 
 duced this girl to Dick Tyler ; that they met in his 
 place the night before these girls came to Chicago. 
 
 " He said he came to Chicago about the fourth of 
 July with two or three friends, and went out to 
 Maurice Yan Bever's resorts. He said he got five 
 
 dollars from Emma W , or May W as he 
 
 called her, and fifteen dollars from Maurice Yan 
 Bever on this girl, but that he spent it all in the 
 place. 
 
 " The chief said to him, ' Do you call yourself a 
 good citizen when you did not caU me up when you 
 knew they were procuring girls from St. Louis and 
 taking them to Chicago, and using your place for 
 headquarters ? ' Garfinkle said, ' Chief, I did not 
 want to get the fellows in bad, I did not want to 
 get in bad myself. Tyler was spending lots of 
 money over my bar.' 
 
 " When I told him what the girls had said about 
 this, he said he would go right down to Chicago 
 and face the charges, if I would pay his car-fare and 
 a bartender to take his place and give him enough 
 to make up what he would make while he was 
 
204 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 gone. Later he said he would not come until he 
 had consulted a la^vyer. I told him that I would be 
 very glad for him to do so. I did not see him again 
 until he was in Chicago." 
 
 At the conclusion of the State's testimony the 
 defendant, Garfinkle, took the witness stand in his 
 own behalf. He testified : 
 
 "My name is David Garfinkle. I am twenty- 
 eight years old, and am unmarried. Before coming 
 to the jail a few days ago I lived with my parents 
 
 at No. Cook Avenue in St. Louis. I have 
 
 been a saloon-keeper for eight years. My place of 
 business now is No. Market Street, St. Louis. 
 
 " I know Tootsie T and Emma W . I did 
 
 not induce or persuade Emma W to come to 
 
 Chicago to enter a house of prostitution. I never 
 knew Yan Bever until I came to Chicago and was 
 in his place the fifth of July. Dick Tyler was an 
 employee of mine. He worked for me two years 
 and a half. 
 
 " I remember the day I went to the office of the 
 chief of police of St. Louis. I don't remember the 
 conversation exactly, I was so excited. I got excited 
 and said, 'I will go to Chicago immediately.' 
 Mr. Roe said, ' You have been indicted by the 
 grand jury,' and then I said, ' If that is the case I 
 don't know what is up there ; I will have to engage 
 counsel and find out whether I was indicted.' After 
 wards I waived extradition and came back volun- 
 tarily. I was first brought to the Desplaines 
 Street Police Station. 
 
Last of the Chicago-St. Louis Gang 205 
 
 "I never asked Emma W and Tootsie 
 
 T or any women to come to Chicago and 
 
 enter a house of prostitution, and I never received 
 any money or any compensation from any person 
 for furnishing girls for immoral purposes. When I 
 came from St, Louis to Chicago I had about two 
 hundred and forty or two hundred and forty-five 
 dollars in my pocket. I did not visit Michael Hart, 
 but I stayed at the Elite Hotel on the West Side, 
 and visited the place on Armour Avenue on the 
 fifth of July. I saw Michael Hart ; he was work- 
 ing there. I had a few drinks with a friend at the 
 bar, and we went back in the rear of the house and 
 there I bought bottles of beer for seven." 
 
 Garfinkle was then cross-examined, as follows : 
 
 " I have been in the saloon business in St. Louis 
 for eight years. Before that time I worked at a 
 
 factory, . I was working there at a machine 
 
 in the clothing business. I was first located in the 
 saloon on Ninth Street, and after that I opened up a 
 place by myself on Pauline Street and was there 
 for about five or six years ; from there I went to 
 Chestnut Street, I stayed there about one year 
 and moved to the present place, where I have been 
 in business sixteen months, 
 
 " The first time I saw that woman (indicating 
 
 Tootsie T ) was the time she left for Chicago 
 
 with Dick Tyler. She was in the company that 
 went to Chicago with him. I knew they were go- 
 ing to Chicago because Emma W told me 
 
 she was going that evening. When Tyler cam© 
 
2o6 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 down the third time I didn't know what he came 
 for. He was in company with his wife. I never 
 knew that Dick Tyler was bringing girls to Chicago. 
 Dick was always a good boy. I didn't make the 
 statement to the chief of police and Mr. Roe in the 
 way they told it about knowing that Dick Tyler 
 was bringing girls. Officer Kinder's statement on 
 the stand was false. I never had any trouble with 
 the chief of police of St. Louis. I never knew him 
 until the day I was in his office. 
 
 " The chief of police asked me how I knew this 
 Tyler was associated with prostitutes. I said I 
 didn't know it until the last time when he came 
 there with his wife. I told the chief that I cen- 
 sured Tyler and told him he would go to the peni- 
 tentiary unless he led a better life and take his girl 
 out of the house of prostitution and make a living 
 for her. I liked the boy and told him he would go 
 to the penitentiary if he led that kind of a life. 
 Tyler was getting his mail at my place, and he got 
 railroad tickets there." 
 
 The jury brought in a verdict of guilty and the 
 judge sentenced Garfinkle to serve six months in 
 the house of correction and pay a fine of three hun- 
 dred dollars. 
 
XY 
 
 THE AWAKENING 
 
 THE traffic in girls is domestic and foreign, 
 local and international. Thus far refer- 
 ence has been made only to the domestic 
 and local traffic. 
 
 The trade in foreign gu^ls, the importation of 
 foreign girls for immoral purposes, assumed such 
 proportions that in 1904 the President of the 
 United States signed a treaty or convention with 
 several of the European nations, by which coopera- 
 tion to stamp out this international traffic in vice 
 was agreed upon. The Senate had ratified the 
 treaty, but as it called for enforcement by " Fed- 
 eral police," which the government does not possess, 
 the authorities in "Washington found that it was not 
 advisable to put the provisions of the treaty into ef- 
 fect. 
 
 The traffic in French girls had become notorious. 
 The large number of these women in vice resorts in 
 nearly every large city in the United States was 
 common knowledge to those who were at all con- 
 servant with the situation. But what could be 
 done ? Police officials of Chicago have since testi- 
 fied that French women came into the Chicago 
 levee districts " by the hundreds " each year, but 
 207 
 
2o8 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 they were all " over legal age," and it was " impos- 
 sible," they said, to find any evidence of the girls 
 having been sold. In the absence of any law pro- 
 vided especially against harbouring foreign women, 
 the police said they could do nothing. They were 
 suspicious, they testified, of panderous agencies at 
 work somewhere, but so well covered were the 
 tracks of the panders that not only Chicago police, 
 but detectives in the employ of both the United 
 States and of France declared they were completely 
 baffled. Government immigration officers seemed 
 likewise nonplussed. They knew the situation, but 
 were unable to solve it. 
 
 Accordingly Congress, in view of these facts, in 
 the spring of 1908, passed a law, seeking by im- 
 migration restrictions to stifle the international 
 slave traffic. This law made it a felony, punishable 
 by not more than five years' imprisonment and by 
 a fine not to exceed five thousand dollars to " keep, 
 maintain, control, support or harbour " any female 
 alien for immoral purposes within three years after 
 she shall have entered the United States. 
 
 Early in June Secretary of State Eoot became 
 convinced that the treaty of 1904 could be made 
 operative by cooperation between the Federal and 
 State governments. The desirability of such action 
 was made apparent to the administration by the 
 report of an investigation, which was made under 
 the direction of the Secretary of Commerce and 
 Labour. This investigation had found that there 
 were agents in various parts of Europe who mad© 
 
The Awakening 209 
 
 it a practice to send women to the United States 
 for iminoral purposes. 
 
 This treaty, known as the " Treaty, series Num- 
 ber 469, an agreement between the United States 
 and other powers for the repression of trade in 
 white women," adhered to by this country since 
 June 6, 1908, was proclaimed by President Koose- 
 velt on June fifteenth of that year. The treaty 
 has for its purpose : "To assure to women who 
 have attained their majority and are subjected to 
 deception or constraint, as well as minor women 
 and girls, an efficacious protection against the 
 criminal traffic known under the name of. Trade in 
 White Women, Traite des Blanches." One of the 
 provisions of the treaty is that " The government 
 agrees also within the limits of the law to return 
 to their country of origin those of such women and 
 girls who ask their return or who may be claimed 
 by persons having authority over them." 
 
 Under the Immigration Act, which was passed in 
 the spring of 1908, the Honourable Edwin W. Sims, 
 United States District Attorney in Chicago, aided 
 by his worthy assistant, Harry A. Parkin, prose- 
 cuted successfully twenty-four cases against pro- 
 curers, who were making a business of importing 
 foreign girls and selling them into disreputable 
 houses. 
 
 There was general regret, by the law-abiding 
 element, when these activities on the part of the 
 Federal authorities were brought to a standstill and 
 their successful prosecutions were hampered by a 
 
21 o Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 decision of the Supreme Court which declared un- 
 constitutional that part of the Immigration Act 
 relative to harbouring imported girls in immoral 
 resorts. 
 
 Although this decision thi'ew the burden of 
 prosecuting the panders back upon the states, the 
 Federal authorities have always been ready to co- 
 operate and give all possible assistance to the state 
 authorities in their efforts to run down and prose- 
 cute the panders. An instance of this cooperation 
 was the case of Adelbert Sterk, who was sent from 
 the United States District Attorney's office to the 
 State's Attorney to be prosecuted. 
 
 Sterk, who it was said was once an officer in the 
 Austrian army, was charged with harbouring an 
 alien woman for immoral purposes, and his case 
 was a particularly flagrant one. 
 
 The girl in the case was Tereza J , a young 
 
 Hungarian girl, who asserted that she first became 
 acquainted with Sterk in Budapest, Hungary. He 
 placed her in a house of ill repute in the Hungarian 
 city, and she remained there a year. Finally, she 
 saw an opportunity to escape from this place, and 
 came to America only to be pursued by Sterk who 
 followed her by the next boat. When he caught 
 up with her in the United States, he attempted to 
 sell her again for white slave purposes ; so as a 
 last resort the girl sought the Austrian Consul and 
 secured deportation to her native land. Sterk 
 learned of her plans to leave America and made 
 preparations to follow her, but before doing this 
 
The Awakening 2ii 
 
 he again tried to force lier into an immoral 
 house. 
 
 When he was turned over to the police oiScers, 
 whom I had sent after hmi, a' new charge was pre- 
 ferred against hun under the state law and he was 
 found guilty in Judge Newcomer's court and 
 sentenced to a year in the house of correction. 
 
 There have been hundreds of foreign ghls 
 shipped mto this country for immoral purposes, 
 and yet the number of such girls is much lower 
 than that of the girls of our own country who have 
 been procured by the panders. In the United 
 States, at least three-fourths of the girl slave vic- 
 tims have been mveigled from our own farms, 
 homes, towns and cities ; but it was the foreigner 
 who taught the American this dastardly busmess. 
 
 During the year of the World's Fair in Chicago 
 a great many women of loose character came to 
 this city. Others were brought by the French 
 maquereaux, the Jewish cadets and the Italian 
 pimps from New York City. The French and the 
 Italian procurers took up theh abode on the South 
 and North Sides of Chicago, the Jewish cadets on 
 the West Side. 
 
 Soon the ownersliip of the disreputable houses 
 passed into the hands of these men, who, with a 
 constant supply of fresh immigrant girls, prospered. 
 They continue to be the landlords of vice in the 
 Chicago "segregated" districts, and the w^omen 
 who appear to be the owners are for the most part 
 only hirelings. 
 
212 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 Self-preservation prompted the other owners, 
 who saw these men of foreign birth growing rich 
 all around them, to adopt the same methods. They 
 began sending out panders to get one or two new 
 girls, and when this experiment was found to be easy 
 and profitable, they began to hire men and women 
 for the sole purpose of procuring white slaves. 
 
 Thus the traffic we know to-day, which extends 
 throughout the United States. 
 
 Twenty-eight of the forty-six states of the Union 
 have witnessed white slave cases of more or less 
 horrible detail since November 1, 1909. Not 
 that social conditions have been worse during that 
 period than at other times, or even that more girls 
 have been sold into slavery than formerly, but a 
 combination of circmnstances has caused certain 
 public officials in the various states to look about 
 them, and having looked they have seen. Perhaps 
 further investigation would reveal more instances 
 of the deadly work of the white slave agents. 
 
 Chief among the causes for the general activity 
 which has brought to light pandering cases m all 
 sections of the country is the fight which has been 
 waged in New York and Chicago against the 
 panders. 
 
 Since December, 1906, more than three hundred 
 cases against the owners and procurers of girls have 
 been successfully prosecuted in Chicago. Kenewed 
 strength and greater facilities for the fight, how- 
 ever, have brought telling results since October, 
 1909, when — after my resignation from the office of 
 
The Awakening 213 
 
 Assistant State's Attorney — a Chicago philantln-o- 
 pist established my present office, with its corps of 
 competent detectives and maintained this office for 
 several months until other philanthropists volun- 
 teered to help carry on the work. Further the 
 stringent orders issued by Chief of Police Steward, 
 requiring the closing of all doors between saloons 
 and immoral resorts, the banishing of men owners, 
 managers and employees, and forbidding unescorted 
 women to be in saloons, have had a marked effect. 
 
 In New York since the prosecutions which fol- 
 lowed the report of the famous " Committee of 
 Fifteen " in 1902, the panders had been operating 
 almost unchecked, until just before the Xew York 
 elections in 1909, when the white slave traffic 
 became a political issue. The investigations of the 
 special grand jury of which Mr. John D. Rocke- 
 feller, Jr., was foreman, and the able prosecuting 
 by District Attorney Charles S. Whitman resulted 
 in the conviction of several white slave dealers. 
 
 Many panders in New York and Chicago decided 
 suddenly that the climate of other cities would be 
 more conducive of their general welfare. Indeed 
 the indications are that eight or nine hundred men, 
 who were living off the loathsome earnings of 
 women, whom they practically owned, have seen 
 fit to leave Chicago and take up residence elsewhere 
 since November, 1909. What New York and 
 Chicago have lost by this exodus, other cities have 
 gained, or vice versa, if you prefer. 
 
 Despite the fact that the general press had in 
 
214 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 formed the people everywhere of the prosecutions 
 of the panders in the two largest cities and spread 
 the warning to parents which I and others had ex- 
 pressed whenever called upon to speak upon this 
 subject, some communities were rudely awakened 
 by the report of the Immigration Commission, in 
 the fall of 1909. This report named, besides New 
 York and Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, 
 Salt Lake, Ogden, Butte, Denver, Buffalo, Boston 
 and New Orleans as white slave trading points. 
 It was soon followed by President Taft's message 
 to Congress, recommending a Federal law directed 
 against white slavery. 
 
 All these things have contributed to the general 
 awakening throughout the country, which has 
 brought to light so many white slave cases. 
 They have helped to arouse the people to the 
 enormity of the situation, and caused them to de- 
 mand better laws directed at the suppression of 
 pandering. 
 
 Since the pandering law became operative in 
 Illinois, July 1, 1908, twelve other states have 
 passed the same, or similar laws. New York and 
 Louisiana now have laws pending, and proposed 
 legislation along this line is now under way in many 
 other states. 
 
 This awakening has also helped to stir public 
 officials to uncover numerous pandering cases. 
 These public officials have found that there is not 
 one great syndicate, as is sometimes supposed, own- 
 ing and operating this business. It is conducted by 
 
The Awakening 215 
 
 separate groups who have adopted like methods, 
 many of them having either direct or indirect rela- 
 tions and understandings with each other. 
 
 The awakening of the people has brought to light 
 too that not only has the immigrant girl in America 
 been exploited in this foreign traffic, but American 
 girls have been procured for the foreign market. 
 Girls from many !North American cities have been 
 sent to South America, to Shanghai and to Australia. 
 
 For years the camps of the miners and the armies 
 have afforded a ready market for the sale of girls. 
 The procurers took girls to South Africa, where 
 many mining camps were located, followed the 
 Russian army through the Russo-Japanese war, 
 founded colonies in the mining camps of Alaska, 
 and camped with their victims on the banks of the 
 Panama Canal. 
 
 Thus the awakening to the full realization of the 
 magnitude of the traffic in girls has been a shock 
 to most people. From its birth in Eastern Eurrope 
 where the Kaftan, as the procurer was then called, 
 gathered up girls in Galacia and Russian Poland 
 and sold them into Asia, this commerce in victims 
 for dens of vice has spread in all directions. In 
 Europe, Lemberg and Paris have become the chief 
 distributing centres, while in America, New York, 
 Cliicago, St. Louis and San Francisco have become 
 the main distributing points. 
 
XVI 
 THE LESSONS THAT WHITE SLAVERY TEACHES 
 
 THE traffic in women slaves, in one form or 
 another, is older than Babylon, but it has 
 remained for the present age to see it 
 crystallized into a well-defined business. As we 
 know it to-day, this traffic is a new form of an old 
 enemy. This old enemy in its new form teaches 
 us many lessons. 
 
 There are those who doubt the existence of a 
 well-defined white slave traffic. They say that 
 pandering as a business does not exist, but that it 
 is only " sporadic instances of the barter and sale 
 of white female slaves." The doubters should 
 study the situation carefully before they venture 
 opinions concerning the traific in girls. 
 
 Shall I tell the story of Kate McK , the 
 
 fifteen-year-old victim of Jennie Moulton, who was 
 lured into a Greek resort on the West Side of Chi- 
 cago, run by a man known as Gus Polls? Kate 
 said that she became acquainted with Jennie Moul- 
 ton in a candy factory. The girl was poor and 
 was forced to work long hours in the factory. To 
 her inexperienced view it looked like a golden op- 
 portunity when the Moulton woman offered to take 
 her to a place where she could make more money. 
 216 
 
Lessons That White Slavery Teaches 217 
 
 Although this was a clear pandering case, more 
 severe punishment could be obtained on another 
 charge, because of the girl's tender age. There- 
 fore, Gus Polis and Nicholas Deurutaholia were 
 charged with rape, and Jennie Moulton was made 
 an accessory to the same crime. The case ended 
 by passing the penalty of twenty years in the 
 penitentiary upon Jennie Moulton. Polis and 
 Deurutaholia received sentences of five years in 
 the penitentiary. 
 
 Will it help to hear Alexander Hooper tell 
 
 how he lured Loretta C from St. Louis to 
 
 Chicago, where she was forced into the life of a 
 white slave ? He tells that about the middle of 
 July, 1909, he made arrangements with a resort 
 owner to bring a girl from St. Louis to Chicago, 
 
 " He gave me thirty-five dollars, and I brought 
 
 Loretta C to Chicago two days after this. 
 
 "We came over the Chicago and Alton Kailway. 
 We got off the train at Halsted Street, and there 
 met two men sent to meet us. They escorted us 
 
 to a house known as the . There I placed 
 
 Loretta C where she became an inmate, and 
 
 where she was put in debt for the amount paid me, 
 and also for clothes amounting to fifty-five dollars." 
 
 Hooper was sentenced to ten months' unprison- 
 ment in the house of correction and was fined three 
 hundred dollars and costs. 
 
 Would it be more convincing to know that 
 
 Clarence Gentry procured Katherine Y from 
 
 Nashville, Tennessee, July 24, 1909, and sold her 
 
2i8 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 into a Chicago resort ? This girl told in court that 
 she had been deceived by Gentry who promised to 
 marry her, and upon that representation she came 
 to Chicago with him. She told also that he threat- 
 ened to kill her at one time if she tried to escape. 
 At another time when he found her writing a letter 
 he had beaten her unmercifully and cut her with a 
 knife. He showed her a finger of a dead person on 
 one occasion, and said to her, " This is what be- 
 comes of people who snitch." 
 
 After she had been in this place about nine 
 weeks Gypsy Smith, the evangelist, held a meeting 
 in the red light district, and a reporter investigating 
 the effect of the evangelist's meeting upon vice re- 
 sorts asked her if she wanted to get out. 
 
 " I will take you out," he promised. And he 
 was true to his word. It was after this that Gentry 
 was arrested and found guilty of pandering in 
 Judge Newcomer's court January 28, 1910, and 
 given a sentence of six months in the house of cor- 
 rection, and a fine of three hundred dollars. 
 
 Fay B , a fifteen-year-old orphan girl, came 
 
 to Chicago from Valparaiso, Indiana, after the 
 death of her father, and walked the streets until 
 she was almost famished from hunger. She was al- 
 most dead from loss of sleep when she met Anna 
 Johnson, who said she was wealthy, needing a 
 housekeeper, and appearing to sympathize with the 
 girl, lured her to a disreputable life. 
 
 It was Friday, December twenty-seventh, when 
 detectives rescued Theresa B , seventeen years 
 
Lessons That White Slavery Teaches 219 
 
 old, from the place to which she had been sold by 
 Frank Cavello. This pander was tried in the court 
 where Judge Beitler presided, and was found guilty 
 and sentenced. 
 
 If these facts would bring home to the people 
 who still doubt a realization that a terrible evil 
 has been steadily growing in power and extent ; 
 if the recital of cases will result in keeping the 
 regular agencies of surveillance and protection 
 efficiently active and arouse a vital public opinion, 
 then the steady procession of arrests, prosecutions 
 and convictions which has marked the years of 
 struggle to effectually stamp out the panders will 
 not have been in vain. 
 
 We laud and honour chastity and purity in women, 
 and it is the traffic in women that undermines that 
 which we have always cherished. It is for this 
 reason that it seems so strange that some people, 
 even those with the kindest hearts and the highest 
 motives, have discounted the very existence of 
 white slavery. 
 
 The question is often asked,— Why cannot gu-ls 
 run away ? Why can they not call to people pass- 
 ing on the streets ? Many do attempt to escape and 
 are forced back into slavery. They are not per- 
 mitted to go near the windows, oftentimes because 
 of police regulations. Many say that they wish to 
 get away, only to find that they have confided in 
 the " ringers " who appear to sympathize ^Wth them, 
 as a ruse, to ascertain whether they will tell that 
 they want to get away, as they have been forbidden 
 
220 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 to do. If the girls say they want to get out of the 
 houses the " ringers " report to the proprietors and 
 the girls are whipped, ill treated and cowed into sub- 
 mission. Then they are afraid to tell their stories 
 to any man, fearing lest he be a " ringer." 
 
 Many girls, however, succeed in telling men of 
 their wish to escape, and are promised aid, but 
 the promise is broken lest it bring publicity and 
 disgrace. Thus the girls, whose hopes were raised, 
 give up in despair. 
 
 While some may still doubt, those interested in 
 the elimination of white slavery may be greatly en- 
 couraged because of the splendid backing the cam- 
 paign is receiving. One of the most powerful or- 
 ganizations to enter the arena to combat this social 
 evil is the Federation of Women's Clubs. These 
 clubs are sending out letters and literature to warn 
 mothers and daughters. They are aiding greatly 
 in the educational legal and publicity campaign. 
 The Women's Christian Temperance Union has also 
 entered heartily in the war against the girl traffic. 
 
 In fact organizations for good throughout the 
 country as well as men and women of influence 
 have been aroused to put forth strenuous efforts to 
 blot out this, the blackest cloud hanging over our 
 land. Through the efforts of such influences, those 
 who doubt are fast becoming few and far between. 
 
 And we may learn from the fate of gu'ls who 
 have been sacrificed upon the altars of lust and 
 gold to bring money down from the throne. To- 
 day the American idol is gold. We have become 
 
Lessons That White Slavery Teaches 221 
 
 money worshippers. Most of our reforms have to 
 do with money. We have confined our efforts 
 within the circumference of the dollar. Let us put 
 the purity of our homes and the morals of the people 
 back in the proper place. Let them be the goals we 
 strive to reach. Then we shall not rack the lives 
 of our girls upon the wheel of economic conditions. 
 Parents and those having the charge of girls will 
 not send girls then to earn money just to help fill 
 the family coffers. 
 
 Another lesson that white slavery teaches is that 
 false modesty should be cast aside in discussing 
 social evil problems. N'othing is more beautiful 
 than innocence. Nothing is more hypocritical than 
 affected innocence. False modesty is affected inno- 
 cence, and too long have parents, because of this 
 false modesty, failed to bring to the knowledge of 
 their children those facts which every person should 
 know about. They allow their children to get their 
 tutelage upon the streets, instead of at the fireside 
 at home. "When they send their daughters out into 
 the world, without the safeguards which knowl- 
 edge furnishes, in the language of a confessed 
 pander, "Are they not frightfully guilty of the 
 murder of their own daughters ? " Yes, fathers 
 and mothers are oftentimes morally responsible for 
 the do^vnf all of their daughters for not taking them 
 into their confidence at home. They should cast 
 aside all fanciful notions of modesty, so that their 
 daughters may know the truth. 
 
 Neglect by parents in the raising of their daugh- 
 
222 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 ters is an unportant element in the making of white 
 slaves. The highest aim of parents should be the 
 proper rearing of their children. Instead, too 
 often, it seems to-day that fathers and mothers are 
 thinking of almost everything else. They let their 
 children grow up like weeds in the prairie to care 
 for and look after themselves. Girls who are 
 brought up under such influence are as a rule easily 
 deceived by the panders. 
 
 In the effort to cast a white light upon these arch 
 enemies to society who lurk in the darkness, who 
 buy and sell the souls of daughters, who gather in 
 the miserable dollars coined from the tears of girls, 
 I have tried to handle hard, cold facts as delicately 
 as possible, that any child of proper age may read 
 and know. I have striven to avoid the sensational. 
 And 3^et to the uninitiated the very subject must seem 
 sensational. It may seem sensational because too 
 many of us are heirs to well-intentioned but erro- 
 neous ideas concerning the most important part of 
 our moral as well as our physical education. 
 
 Furthermore the campaign against white slavery 
 has taught us to hue straight to the line. Friends 
 who try to aid in the extermination of panders 
 hinder the very cause they would help by dragging 
 it into the fights for other reforms. 
 
 There is a work that is at least American wide 
 in elhninating the procuring of girls. This is a huge 
 task but by no means an insurmountable one. 
 Other cities will have to face the same problems 
 that Kew York and Chicago are now facing with 
 
Lessons That White Slavery Teaches 223 
 
 the brightest prospects for success. Organizations 
 Hke the National Vigilance Committee of IS'ew 
 York and Baltimore, the American Alliance in 
 Chicago, the American Purity Federation, with 
 headquarters in La Crosse, Wisconsin, and the New 
 England Watch and Ward Society of Boston, which 
 are hueing straight to the line in fighting white 
 slavery, deserve support. Offices like our own sup- 
 ported voluntarily must continue unceasingly. 
 
 Homes similar to those supported by the Women's 
 Clubs of Illinois in Chicago must be instituted in 
 all large cities. We are running down and prose- 
 cuting the panders. The girls must be looked after 
 when they are rescued for they cannot be turned 
 out in the streets, friendless. Many do not want 
 to return home for various reasons. These homes, 
 not reform institutions, must help the girls to get a 
 fresh start in a wholesome way so that they will 
 not have to battle with the prejudice of past Uves. 
 
 Shall we cast these girls aside and deny them pro- 
 tection ? Shall we not answer the appeals of the 
 mothers Avho are calling upon us to find their daugh- 
 ters and bring them home ? Shall we not uproot 
 a system that is snatching girls away from their 
 homes and casting them into a most degi-aded life ? 
 Shall we not reclaim these girls who would turn 
 back and leave their loathsome existence behind 
 them, taking them from the dens of disease and 
 horror and make them better and truer women ? 
 
 Let us as individuals, as private citizens, strive to 
 educate the people to cast aside false modesty : and 
 
224 Panders and Their White Slaves 
 
 those of us who are fathers and mothers, let us be 
 gin with our own daughters. And then, ha^dng 
 made it less easy for panders to secure their victims, 
 let us use our influence to secure uniform laws for 
 the prosecution of panders, with high penalties, say 
 from one year to life, in every state in the Union. 
 And as voters let us see that public officials do 
 their duty to enforce the laws. And let us do this 
 for the womanhood of America. 
 
 God '/^^x- V-:- \j.c jOiiui w^. frooyui. 
 
 FROM WEBSTER'S DICTIONARY. 
 
 'ESAN-'A prostitute, a Woman who prostikufc 
 erself for hire, especially to men- of rank. 
 
 "Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall 
 hardly enter the kingdom of HEAVEN/' 
 
 JESUa 
 
 Md' 
 
 YE are Witnesses of these ihawp^ 
 
 Printed In the United States of America. 
 
 What if this Girl were your Sister^ 
 
 i 
 
 What constitutes a Devil Man? I 
 
 God tempts ao maa or w( 
 
OHRKSTIAN GIRL 
 
 What if 
 
 V 
 
TTE — \ 
 
 E SLAV E. 
 
 THE 
 
 TRAGEDY O 
 
 IGNORANCE. 
 
 To S AVB that which 
 
 >was LOST. * 
 
 MATHEMATICS FOR CHRISTIANS. 
 Each 100 Devil Men. Require an Innor 
 
 Girl, to be Made a Tenderloin Whore. 
 God temgts no maa or woman. 
 
 And YE are witnesses of these thir.^ 
 
 CHRIST IS KING. 
 
 Were Christ Actual King of every lif* < 
 Thsvo v/ovild be no Murder-No Under 
 World-No Lawlessness Churches would 
 Thrive and every Sou! Saved, 
 
 hat if this Girl were your Slste 
 Vyhat constitutes a Devil Man? 
 
 To SAVE that which was LOb L" 
 
50D. 
 
 HO 
 
THE WHITE SLAT 
 
 :? 
 
 I .' / J » 
 
 llrl were your Sister? 
 V/hat constitutes a Devil Man? I 
 
CANNOT CHANGE THE LAWS OF GOD 
 lEITHER PAGAN, JEW, OR CHRISTIAN. 
 
 American Daughters [their 
 
 Wothers support in old age] 
 
 Sold, bought, used by human 
 
 "Vipers" "Adulterers". 
 
 LOST GIRLS. 
 Read Pages 165 to 168. 
 
' TO THt 
 
 Adultery in any form, IS- RAPE OF WIFEHOOD, 
 MOTHERHOOD. By it. Deceit, Falsehood, Treachery, 
 Murder, Prevent Gods will, hence Gods Hell in Eternity 
 
 Behind bars and locks 
 
 HELPLESS VICTIMS, Children 
 
 of Sorrowing Mothers. 
 
 OVER 1000 
 
 Persons DISAPPEARED in an 
 
 American City IN ONE YEAR. 
 
 3-4 YOUNG GIRLS. 
 
 ''WILD OATS" IS ALWAYS 
 A PREMEDITATED CRIME. 
 
 Rev.^2:15. 
 

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