Chapter XII

THE AUCTIONEER OF SOULS.

By Clifford G. Roe, Assistant State's Attorney of Cook County, Illinois.

"Hear ye! Hear ye! How much will ye give for a human being—body and soul?"

"What is the soul worth?"

"Nothing," cried the auctioneer, "I throw that in with the sale of the body."

That is the value the White Slave traders place upon the soul of a girl when she is auctioned off to the highest bidder for a house of ill-repute. For a few paltry dollars to the buyer of girls, not only is the body delivered to be ravished and diseased, but the soul is given over to be tortured and depraved. This is the price fathers and mothers are placing upon their daughters' souls when they think more of the money the daughter can earn by sending her away to work without careful regard as to where she is going or with whom she is going away. That is the price that false modesty, which is nothing more nor less than affected innocence, is placing upon human beings when people shun the thought of White Slavery, because it has to do with the darker side of life.

Nothing is more beautiful than an innocent girl. Nothing is more hypocritical than affected innocence. Nothing is grander than a pure home. Nothing is more loathsome than the sham glare and tinsel of a house of ill-repute. Knowing the human weakness, the White Slave trader makes capital out of the carelessness and ambition of the parents, and the false modesty of the public, and thereby undermines innocence and steals the purity from the home.

Many and various schemes are resorted to by these auctioneers of souls. It is because no set rule for inveigling their captives away from home has been followed that they have succeeded so long in baffling detection.

The question of white slavery is economic as well as social. The condition of the working girl, the low salaries paid by employers, the desire for better clothes, and the great increase of the number of girls earning a livelihood contribute their share to the downfall of girls. All of these things are considered by the crafty trader who procures the girl to be auctioned into a life of slavery. Then, too, the confidence of the girl is gained by arousing her ambition or love. This is done by appealing to her vanity, by referring to her ability or her beauty.

True it is that some girls go willingly to the block to be auctioned into a disreputable life, only to find later their terrible mistake. The system of making bad girls worse is just as vicious as making good girls bad and all this is white slavery.

The most worked method of securing the confidence by appealing to the ambition of the girl is by the stage or theatrical route. It is because so many girls are "stage struck" now-a-days that this method has been worked most successfully. Perhaps of all the cases that have been tried in nearly the last three years in Chicago, the girls who have been procured by inducements to go upon the stage outnumber all others. The slave trader represents himself as the agent of some theatrical manager, or perhaps as the manager himself. Going to a factory town, for example, he makes it his business to meet some girl who is working there who he has learned is "stage struck." After the formalities of an introduction, which he secures in one way or another, he leads up to the subject by telling that he is a theatrical man and is looking for new recruits.

The girl is at once interested. She is naturally ambitious. She wants to better her condition in life. She doesn't suspect that a fiend with the heart of a devil is masquerading before her as the agent of some theatrical manager. He explains to her that if she will accompany him she can make from $15 to $20 a week at the very start and in a year she will be playing a part, and a year or so later she will possibly be leading lady. The picture is an alluring one to this young girl, for she is now making only perhaps $4, $5 or $6 a week, and the thought of securing such a large salary at the very start almost sweeps her off her feet. She is entranced by the beautiful picture that has been painted and she goes, perhaps to a stage from which she will never return.

The trader often has the impudence and nerve to interview the parents of the girl and obtain their consent, knowing that he is hiding behind some fictitious name, with little possibility of ever being apprehended. This was true in the case of a certain cadet who brought a little girl from Duluth, Minn. The girl was 17 years old. The parents gave their consent, thinking that through the girl's life upon the stage their position in life would be raised, and they sent the little girl on to Chicago with this man, bidding her "God-speed." The testimony in this case showed that under compulsion she wrote several letters to her parents, telling of her initial stage success, while the truth was that this man was a procurer and collecting toll upon the loathsome earnings of this girl, who was compelled by him to lead a disreputable life. He was convicted under the law for bringing a girl into the State under the age of 18 for immoral purposes and was sentenced to three years, and the girl was returned to the home of her parents.

This only serves as an illustration of how easy it is to appeal to the girl's ambition; yes, even to that of a parent, in this nefarious business of securing girls to be auctioned as white slaves.

Cases have been brought to light and facts uncovered, where even disreputable theatrical agents themselves have loaned their services to the white slave system. A case recent enough to be vividly recalled by the people of Illinois is that of two young girls who were working in one of the larger department stores of the City of Chicago. One day a woman was at the counter where one of these girls was selling goods. The woman complimented the beauty of the girl, at once appealing to her vanity, and asked her how she would like to go upon the stage. The girl, who was Evelyn K——, was overjoyed at the very thought, for only a few nights before she had been talking with her chum, Ida P——, about becoming an actress. The bait that the woman had cast was readily grabbed at. The woman gave Evelyn a card with the address of a certain theatrical agent on it and instructed the girl to call there at a certain time. This she did, accompanied by her friend, Ida. Arrangements were made and tickets procured, and the girls were soon on their way to Springfield, Ill., headed for a disreputable resort, as the evidence in the case afterwards showed. Had it not been for the interference of a good Scotch lady, into whose house these girls had gone for lodging before making themselves known to their new employers, they would have been cast into a life far different from that which they had anticipated. The Scotch lady, learning their destination and knowing the reputation of the resort to which these girls had been sent, warned them of the danger they were in, and aided in sending them back to Chicago.

While the case against this theatrical agent was pending, these girls, who were waiting to testify, were taken out of the city and secreted in Milwaukee, Wis., where after several weeks' hunt they were finally found and brought back to Chicago, and afterwards testified in the court to the foregoing facts.

There are many other instances of girls being brought to the city or taken from the city upon the pretext of becoming embryo actresses. In the case of a certain ex-prize fighter, who was arrested during a raid upon one of the strongholds of white slavery, the evidence was brought to light that he and another young man procured a consignment of girls in the City of Chicago, presumably to take them out with a southern musical comedy road company. These girls were sent South in company with a certain Myrtle B——, and they ended up in a resort at Beaumont, Texas. Many other cases might be cited to illustrate how easy it is to secure girls to come to the city or leave the city under the guise of putting them upon the stage. Let it be understood, however, that in all of the cases tried nothing has ever been hinted at that would involve any reputable theatrical manager or agency, and the procurers have never been really associated with theatrical managers in any way, but have always falsely paraded under the theatrical mask.

Almost all positions alluring to young girls have been used to catch them in the great net these procurers have set for them. We can't blame the girls for being ambitious. We can't blame them for wanting to better their condition in life, and we can't blame them for falling prey to the white slave monster, with its tentacles spread throughout the country ready at every possible chance to clutch them within its grasp. We can only warn them to be more cautious, to investigate carefully before going away from home with people they do not know. Fathers and mothers are too negligent in this regard, and through their laxity and carelessness they have allowed their daughters to be entrapped. They should see to it that the girls, in going to the cities, are surrounded by honest and reputable acquaintances. In one case they contributed directly to the procuring of their daughters by not writing a letter to them as they had promised. The girls who had gone to the post-office, turning away from the window downcast and disheartened, were approached by a young man who had noted their sad faces. He said to them: "You appear to be in trouble." One answered, "Yes, we expected a letter from home with some money, but we did not receive it. We have been here only two days and are without funds until we receive this letter. We did not get the positions we expected to get and until we find work we have no place to stay."

The young man volunteered to find them work. They had fallen into the hands of a procurer, ever on the watch, and were sold into a disorderly house before they knew it, thinking it was at this place they were to obtain work. When the facts in this case were brought to light, the procurer had fled to New York City. Through funds advanced by one of the leading clubs of Chicago and some big hearted police officers the procurer was apprehended, extradited, brought back, tried and convicted.

Through the other well known method the procurer, by pretending to be in love with his victim, appeals to her vanity and is often successful. Pretending that it is love at first sight and showering flattery upon the girls they succeed in winning confidence and hearts by the easiest method in the world.

In the early summer of 1907, Mona M——, while working at the ribbon counter of one of the Chicago stores, fell in love with handsome Harry B—— on sight. After an acquaintance of three days she was willing to go away with him to be married. It was the sale of this girl into a disreputable house and her final escape that led to the unearthing of one of the headquarters of the white slave traders and seven of them were arrested in one night, her procurer receiving the longest sentence of them all.

The little Elgin girl mentioned in Chapter X, on page 142 of this book, was caught by the love method in one day; and the very recent case, in which two procurers and the man behind the scenes who had hired them, the white slave dealer, were all convicted, was an example of securing girls through pretended love. This, the first case under the amendment to the Pandering Act in Illinois was severely fought in court by two of the men. One of the procurers by the name of Lewis B—— made a confession, telling how the dealer in human souls, had hired Jacob J. and himself to go about on the streets and catch girls to be turned over to immoral resorts. The testimony in the case in which they were found guilty will show how successful they were.

Two sixteen-year-old girls, one picked up by a flirtation in one of Chicago's large summer amusement parks, were sold into captivity. This is one of the most appalling cases that has yet come to our notice. These girls were procured upon promises of marriage and a trip to New York, all of which was fine and grand to them.

So many and varied are the ways of procuring girls that it is quite impossible to tell all of them. Employment agents have been convicted for sending girls out as house servants to immoral places for the ultimate reason of making them inmates in the house. The procurers have masqueraded as graphophone agents, as the sons of bankers, as detective agents looking for women detectives to work for them, and in a very recent letter received from a lady in Massachusetts the story is told how she, as a country girl, went to certain photograph studios in Boston and found that this photographer was a procurer. In a letter setting forth very vividly her experiences she says: "There were girls whom he had found nice fellows for and he would help me to find one and a possible fine marriage. I did not know then that I should have exposed him." She tells of how she eluded this man and when she saw him on the streets afterwards in Boston she would hurry into a store or a hallway and hide from him. She says: "I found afterwards that was really his business, introducing girls that he met in a business way in different studies and other places."

Through information received from letters and many other ways, we are constantly on the lookout for the procurer. One said in a confession: "We use any method to get them. Our business is to land them and we don't care how we do it. If they look easy we tell them of the fine clothes, the diamonds and all the money that they can have. If they are hard to get we use knock-out drops." His words express the whole idea of the girl auctioneer, "any way to get them for sale."

Schools for manicuring, houses for vapor and electric baths, large steamboats running between the city and summer resorts, amusement parks, the nickel theaters, the waiting rooms in the depots and stores are all haunts and procuring places for the white slave trader. A Chicago girl only a short time ago wrote to one of the daily papers of her experiences on a steamboat going out of Chicago and at one of the nearby summer resorts.

Girls, look out for the pitfalls. Mothers and fathers, you can't afford to let your young daughters leave home with strangers unless you want to send them to ruin. You are unwittingly thereby aiding the white slave traders and aiding in your daughters' downfall. Train the daughters right at home, watch over them, and protect them and know where they are going and with whom they are going away. They are worthy of your greatest and kindest consideration. Do not be too anxious to make money, or for higher position in the social life at the expense of your daughter. Do not be over ready to cast off the burden of supporting your family by sending your daughter out to learn a livelihood at an early age, lest the price you get be the price of a soul.