BOOKS .

THE WHITE SLAVE TRAFFIC IN THE UNITED STATES.* WE wish that all books ou the White Slave Traffic were writteft, with the ability and understanding of this work. When we say that it is able we imply, among other things, that it ie• quite devoid of any of the sensation-mongering which is the curse of books that treat of this delicate and intricate subject. That there are stories in it extraordinary enough to make any reader rub his eyes cannot be denied, but in all essentials they only confirm the book Daughters of Ishmael which we noticed , recently, and we do not doubt that they are true. Miss Addatns is too well known in Chicago for her to trifle with her reputa- tion for veracity when the ground of all her efforts would be cut from under her feet if it could be shown that she was • raising funds by foolish exaggeration. She believes that there

is now "a new conscience" in America intent on getting rid of a cruel evil ; she finds that every class is ready to help in-

this matter when it is shown bow help can be rendered. But the first thing necessary in every country, and particu- larly, we believe, in Great Britain, is to convince the public; that infamies which are hidden away may nevertheless happeh. frequently. The tendency of man is to hesitate to believe in what he cannot see. The Englishman, even if he believes that the capture and ruin of innocent girls form a regular and highly profitable trade in, say, New York or Vienna, is dis- inclined to believe that the trade is carried on to any extent in London. The Reports of the Travellers' Aid Society, the Girls' Friendly Society, and other agencies would convince him of his error if he would take the trouble to look at them. Mr. Arthur Lee's Bill now before the House of Commons gives this country an opportunity of taking a long step towards checking a horrible brigandage of virtue that battens on the inexperience, weakness, or financial distress of young women. If public opinion declares itself strongly in favour of the Bill there will be a very fair chance of carrying it through Parliament this Session. The risk that personal liberty will be interfered with or that the police will arrest persons suspected as procurers on insufficient evidence is one that fades to nothing compared with the evil to be cured. We say unhesitatingly that it ought not to be allowed to weigh in 'the balance. The British police are not perse- cutors, and it is only by persecutors that serious injustice could be done.

We would not be misiuene ydberstA000dt.ofWpeadrloianmotenbt,elieItievinicetl, possibility of ending v is not ended by private virtue it is certain that it will never be ended in any other way. Certain, States of AmeriCa have prohibited the sale of liquor, and the results do not • A Neai Consc:sacs and an Ancient &it: By Jane Addams, of Hull goose, Chicago. ',miaow: siasualllaa and Co.Oct. nct..1 encourage us. Drinking goes on as before; bUt the drinkers are driven to grotesque -stratagems and dodges which deceive, nobody. The ,ketal effect is to cultivate a public hypocrisy which is odious and demoralizing. But the com- merce of thoie— who trade in young women, capturing them byi trickery, 'detaining• them against their wills, and forcing them to purchase the means of subsistence by the surrender of themselves—this, or a large part of it, can be stopped; and ought to be stopped, by now measures and severer penalties.- We do not say' that whet happens in the United States.has its exact counterpart in Great Britain, but it is at

least a good guide to what happens here, for the trade is inter- national.

The most infamous aspect of the White Slave Traffic is the cold-bloodedness of ,it. The procurers employ agents who ruin girls deliberately a.s, a. matter of business and not in any

sense when, Sunder stress of temptation. There is a regular scale of payment for a girl safely delivered into the power of

the proprietors of disreputable houses, and a girl who has just • been hetrayod'is likely to be tractable and to resign lieself easily to her fide, as she is too much ashamed to wish to return to her relations. • Of course, a girl imported from a foreign country who cannot speak the language of the place where

she finds herself is the most manageable of all prisoners. Miss Addams gives examples. We will quote one :— " Ono of these-eases, which attracted much attention through- out the country, was of. Marie, a French girl, the daughter of a Breton stonemason, se old and poor that he was obliged to take her from her convent school at the ago of twelve years. He sent her to Paris, where she b6co.mo a little household drudge and nurse,maid, working from six-in. the morning until eight at night and for three years sending her wages, which were about a franc . a day, directly to her .parents in the Breton village. One after- noon, as elle-WAN:I bnying a bottle of milk at a tiny, shop, she was engaged in conversation by a young man, who invited her into a patisserie, wheie,after giving her some *sweets, he introduced '-her' to his rfriendi Monsieur Paret, who was gathering together a rtheartrioal troupe to; go to America. Paret showed her pictures of several young girls gorgeously arrayed and announcements of .their coming tour,. and Mario felt much flattered when it was . intimated that she might join this brilliant company. After 'several clandestine meetings to perfect the plan, she left the ;city with F'aret and a pretty French, girl to sail for America with thp rest of the so-called actors. Paret, escaped detection by the immigration authorities in New York, through his ruse of the Kinsella, troupe: and took the girls directly to Chicago. Here they wore placed in a disreputable house belonging to a man named Lair, who had advanced the money for their importation. The to French girls remained in this house for several months until it was raided by the police, when they were sent to separate houses. The records which wore later brought into court show that at this time'Mario was earning two hundred and fifty dollars -a week, all of which she gave to her employers. In spite of this large monetary return she was often cruelly beaten, was made to do the household scrubbing, and was, of course, never allowed to 'leave the house. Furthermore, as one of the methods of retaining a reluctant, girl is to put her hopelessly in debt and always to -charge against her the expenses incurred in securing her, Marie as an imported girlhad begun at once with the huge debt of the ocean journey for Paret and herself."

, Miss Addams repeats in substance all that is said in ,Daughters of Ishmael about the corruption of officials and 'the political influences which can hardly be disentangled from the existence of disreputable houses.

" In reality the police, as they themselves know, are not expected to servo the public in this matter but to consult the desires of the politicians ; for, next to the fast and loose police control of gambling, nothing affords better political material than the regu- lation of commercialized vice. First in line is the ward politician Who keeps a disorderly saloon which serves both as a meeting- place for the vicious, young men engaged in the traffic and as a market for their wares. Back of this the .politician higher up 'receives his share of 'thertoll which this business pays that it may remain undisturbed.. The very existence of segregated district _under police regulation means, of course, that the existing law must be nullified or at least rendered totally inoperative. When police regulation takes the place of law enforcement a species of municipal, biackinail inevitably becomes intrenched. The police Urn forced. to regulate an'illicittratlep but because the men engaged -in an unlawful business expect to pay money for its protection, .the cOrrtmgon,of• the; police department is firmly established and, as the"Chicage vice commission report poirrts out, is merely called

protection to the brisiness.' The practice of grafting thereafter 'heti:irises tamest '

In those States•Where vied is' sanctioned by law it is inevitable that a girl Who'h&r'"-a past" should excite' much loss interest 'Surd compassitirl'Arbraig• officials. than one 'who may still be saved. If a recpielA is made on behalf of a girl that she may

.

be: registered: uoaeienging to, the unfortunate profession, and it is admitted that She iena-kmger-intiocent—that she is not, in the official phrase, "of previous chaste life and diameter" —the Chances are that it will be assumed that -what is being

done is with her full knowledge and consent. That is the general rule. But the assumption may be quite wrong as Miss Addams is able to prove.

The following example of ignorance and gullibility in a per. fectly innocent girl' is not stranger than several that Miss Addams relates :—

One day a telephone message came to Hull House from the inspector asking us to take charge of a young girl who had been brought into the station by an older woman for registration. The girl's youth and the innocence of her replies to the usual questions convinced the inspector that she was ignorant of the life she was about to enter -and that she probably believed she was simply registering her choice of a boarding-house. Her story which sho told at Hull House was as follows : She was a Milwaukee factory girl,„the daughter of a Bohemian carpenter. Ten days before she had met a Chicago young man at a Milwaukee dance hall and after a brief courtship had promised to marry him, arranging to meet him in Chicago the following week. Fearing that' her Bohemian mother would not approve of this plan, which she .called the' American way of getting married,' the girl had risen one morning even earlier than factory work necessitated and had taken the first train to Chicago. The young man met her at the station, took her to a saloon, where he introduced her to a friend, an older woman, who, he said, would take good care of her. After the young man disappeared, ostensibly for the marriage licence, the woman professed to be much shocked that the little bride had brought no luggage, and persuaded her that she must work a, few weeks in order to earn money for her trousseau, and that she, an older woman who- knew the city, would find a board- ing-house and a place in a factory for her. She further induced her to write postal cards to six of her girl friends in Milwaukee- telling them of the k.-td lady in Chicago, of the good chances for work, and urging them to come down to the address which she sent. The woman told the unsuspecting girl that, first of WI,- a newcomer must register her place of residence with the polite, as that was the law in Chicago. It was, of course, when the woman took her to the police station that the situation was disclosed. It needed but little investigation to make clear that the girl had narrowly escaped a well-organized plot, and that the young man to whom she was engaged was an agent for a disreputable house."

Some of the agents of procurers are boys of only fifteen or sixteen, who are employed to ruin young girls on the principle that- "youth calls to youth:" Miss Addams insists very strongly on the culpability of parents who are unkind to theii children when they lose a job or are temporarily earning small wages owing to a slackness in trade. The girl who is

made unhappy at home for this reason and learns with what fatal ease her wages may be supplemented is slinoet as good as lost. Another point, which is new to us, is that a large number of reined girls attribute the disaster to their being

tired out by their day's work. "I was too tired to know what I was doing," they say. Or, " I was dead-tired and sick of it all." These are interesting and valuable observa-

tions, but the most urgent point, to our thinking, is that it ought not to he possible to say that there is a poorer chance of help and prptection for a girl who has been rained than for any other. So far from her feeling that the law cannot help her she ought tn he able to feel that it will help her more than ever. She has every bit as much right to be pro-

tected by the law of the land as any one else, and it should ha made clear that -cynicism will not prevent the police from attending to any appeal for aid that reaches them.