COMMUNICATIONS

WHO?

To the Editor:

(On seeing the White Slave by Abastenia St. Leger Eberle.)

This is the man that sells women’s souls into hell fire. Who is the buyer?

Louise W. Kneeland.

THE WHITE SLAVE

[Concerning the reproduction, on the cover of the May magazine number of The Survey, of Miss Eberle’s sculpture of that name.]

To the Editor:

I have to ask that you will remove my name and cancel my subscription to your publication, The Survey.

I was educated as an artist; have studied from the nude under Bonnat in Paris, and am by no means “squeamish;” but I am altogether unwilling to expose myself to the risk of having any such picture as appears upon the cover of The Survey for the week of May 3 sent into my home at the risk of its being seen by my four sons, the eldest of whom is a Methodist clergyman, and the three others of whom are under age.

I saw the statue of “a Gorilla carrying off a woman,” when it was first exhibited and much criticized, even at the time, in Paris—when it was first exhibited in the Paris salon.

The “idea” of this cover is, evidently, taken from that statue, but for offensiveness this goes it 500 per cent better.

Woodbury G. Langdon.

Morristown, N. J.

To the Editor:

As a subscriber and one who highly appreciates the work of The Survey, permit me to express my surprise and criticism on the lack of good judgment and good taste that permitted the design on the cover of the number just out, May 3. In my opinion, the aims and purposes of such a magazine as The Survey in endeavoring to meet and counteract the evils of the day are not furthered by such sensational eye pictures as this, and moreover, it has the characteristics of brutality and indecency, I am sure, from the point of view of a large number of your readers, and might have the result of lessening their opinion of your good judgment and taste in your manner of approaching this subject and others you are dealing with. I will offer no excuse for thus expressing my opinion sincerely, as I will assume that you desire to have such from your subscribers and readers.

J. B. Noel Wyatt.

Baltimore.

To the Editor:

In addition to an unusually valuable list of articles, permit me to thank you for the cover of the issue of May 3. The picture is profoundly educational, and those who have had some dealing at close quarters see in this picture of the White Slave a finished sermon on the subject.

Rudolph I. Coffee.

[Member Pittsburgh Morals Commission and Rabbi.]

Pittsburgh.

To the Editor:

For the enclosed, please send me a copy of your issue of May 3, with the White Slave picture on cover.

Allow me to congratulate you for giving that group just the prominent place you did.

[Rev.] Eliot White.

Rahway, N. J.

To the Editor:

As a regular subscriber, reader and admirer of your magazine and its valued work, I must earnestly protest against the outside cover of your May 3 issue. With several boys in my family, the only way I could lay the issue on my library table was after tearing off the cover, which is certainly glaringly offensive. We oppose (or should do so) indecent bill-board, newspaper advertising, etc., and therefore should not offend ourselves, no matter what the motive. Trust thee will be guarded for the future.

William Hager.

Lancaster, Pa.

To the Editor:

As friends of The Survey and of what it stands for, allow us to write our protest against placing such a subject as the White Slave on the outside cover of your issue of May 3, Vol. XXX, No. 5.

The publication of such a subject, treated in a sensational way with a conspicuous background, on the cover of any magazine seems to us ill-advised, and especially so on one which finds its way into private houses where decency and modesty are inculcated.

As your paper is to a certain degree technical, intended to be read chiefly by social workers who are cognizant of these conditions, the inside of its covers is excusable, but its outside, open to the observation of all, young and old, should to our minds be severely censured.

Please bring up this matter before your board of Survey Associates.

L. E. Opdycke and Edith Opdycke.

New York.

To the Editor:

Thank you for the frontispiece on The Survey of May 3. The beast carrying the woman did effective service in the Atlanta campaign, but this picture of a low human brute hawking into slavery a poor little immature girl will, I believe, be yet more effective in rousing the sluggish consciences of our American people. If it is art to use the pencil or the graver’s tool to portray sin in such a manner as to apply the lash to conscience, then I prefer this, under the existing dreadful conditions of tolerance of vice, to the Venus de Milo, and I thank the courageous artist who so consecrates her talents to the highest possible service of humanity.

A picture of this kind will do more to instruct my daughters and my sons as to the dangers which surround them and their obligations to help the down-trodden daughters of the poor than many arguments. Thank God we have brought these reptiles out into the open where we can handle them with due violence, and we can now place the responsibility where it belongs—on our churches.

Can you loan me the original to make a lantern slide to use in my public talks on vice?

Howard A. Kelly, M. D.

Baltimore.

To the Editor:

I cannot forbear making a protest against the horrible and suggestive picture, which you have printed on the cover of your issue of May 3, Vol. XXX, No. 5. It is a picture calculated to suggest ideas which the whole country nowadays is trying to suppress. Teaching young people the facts of life is one thing—doubtless necessary. Making public the fact that there are people wicked enough to pander to vicious men is also, I am sure, necessary for efforts to suppress this traffic; but it is very demoralizing to send out broadcast and publicly such pictures as this. It shows that the familiar speaking and writing of this white slave—so called—traffic has blunted the judgment as to fitness and decency that this picture is displayed in this public way.

Miss Robins’ book, My Little Sister, is a true picture doubtless. She seems to affirm so with great confidence, but it will do more harm than good I fear in arousing evil thoughts and an unwholesome curiosity in the minds of young people in whose hands it falls. Published first in a reputable magazine, and then hawked about in trains, etc., recommended in your magazine, which claims to be devoted to the improvement of morals, it will do a great deal of harm. At the rate you are going on in freedom of speech and discussion of filth which should not even be named when young and inexperienced people can hear, you will soon be advising a moving picture of what goes on in the dens of vice in order to teach young people what they should not do.... This artist must have allowed her imagination to go deep into the haunts of vice before she made this statue.

—— ——

Newport, R. I.

To the Editor:

I do wish to express my extreme regret that you should have made public such a picture as appears on the cover of your issue of May 3. It ought never in my opinion to have been allowed to pass through the mail.

The readers of The Survey do not need any such reminder of the horrors of the white slave traffic, and to others, especially to young people and indifferent persons who are likely to pick up the magazine at random, such a picture with its unmistakable suggestions cannot fail to be demoralizing.

I find that other readers of The Survey here hold the same opinion.

—— ——

Newport, R. I.

To the Editor:

As a subscriber to The Survey and as one who has always tried to further its influence and increase its circulation, I beg to gravely remonstrate against your cover design of the issue of May 3.

Had you seen fit to place this most loathsome picture within the pages of your magazine, it would possibly have served a sufficient purpose, but to place it where it cannot fail to be seen by innocent children makes this issue unfit to appear in any home and appears to be, therefore, not only an instance of bad taste, but of bad morals.

Such lurid and outrageous efforts to excite the hysterical side of public opinion, pitifully defeat their aims and appear to be most unworthy of The Survey’s standards.

Lucia H. K. Sherman.

San Francisco.

To the Editor:

Kindly send to us C. O. D., twenty-five copies of The Survey, cover page of which contains the cut of a figure portraying the white slave traffic. The date and number cannot be furnished as the magazine has been loaned and we do not know to whom it was given.

We hope to secure, from the distribution of this issue among the ladies who are interested in social service, quite a number of subscriptions.

John L. Green.

[Superintendent Mississippi Children’s Home Society.]

Jackson, Miss.

One or two of these protests are so unrestrained that the temptation is strong to reply without mincing matters. Others are so moderate that they must provoke the respect of people who hold different opinions. In the same way we trust that those who break with the editor of The Survey on the reproduction of Miss Eberle’s statue, or on its use as a cover, will regard that use as a considered act.

Unquestionably there is a cleavage of judgment in the matter of public education as to the social evil and its prevention. It is not The Survey’s purpose to overemphasize the vice situation. But it is a part of our regular service in the field of preventive social measures to keep our readers thoroughly alive to the movements to protect girls and boys from ruin and disease, for that, as we see it, is of the very essence of the present discussion of commercialized prostitution.

In Miss Eberle’s statuette, the White Slave, and in Elizabeth Robins’ book, My Little Sister, art and literature have this spring added fire and conviction to the abolition movement against prostitution—that “twin of slavery, as old and outrageous as slavery itself and even more persistent,” to use Miss Addams’ phrase.

So we printed a photograph of the White Slave on our cover as a challenge to public conscience searching. And we printed a review of My Little Sister, in which Mrs. Laidlaw brought out the American aspects of the story of the sheltered little English girl who was kidnapped.

In the same issue was a ringing report of how the newly enfranchised women of San Francisco forced a reluctant Legislature to pass a bill which will close the notorious “red light district.” More than that, these women of the California Civic League and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union are caring for the helpless girls thrown out of the segregated district, befriending them and putting them on their feet again. It was the kind of story that led a subscriber to write the other day: “Every time I read an issue of The Survey I feel like getting right up and doing something worth while for somebody.”

On another page, A. Leo Weil, the militant president of the Pittsburgh Voters League, entered a plea for a special body of men in every city to deal with vice. And a physician in a New York village told how the local doctors, aghast at the amount of social disease among the young people of their little community—their own sons among the rest—banded together to wipe it out.

Up to the time of going to press it had been expected that Mr. Kneeland’s incisive analysis of commercialized prostitution in New York, made for the Bureau of Social Hygiene, would have been released by the Century Company by May 3, so that his findings could be added to this group of articles.⁠[2] All this was in The Survey’s spirit of facing hard facts for the sake of the future, and in line with its editorial policy with respect to this special subject: i.e. of banking up material rather than stringing it along.

Here, then, in a field to which The Survey bears special obligation, at a time when we were handling a group of articles interpretative of that obligation, was a piece of sculpture with the same message—with a thought-compelling quality which “linked it as a social force,” as Miss Merriman rightly pointed out, “with, say, the dispassionate but terrible report of the Chicago Vice Commission.”

Of course, the strength in such a challenge to public conscience-searching lies in its exceptionalness—repetition would dull its edge. There is no prospect of another such cover in the months ahead; we know of no “sermon in stone” of like calibre. For the same reason, when such an exceptional work does appear, our course is clear: we should bring it out.

Those moralists who feel that the work was suggestive read into it something which is not there. It is not unclean.

Those artists who have criticised the group on the ground that the woman’s figure alone should have been done—that, in other words, the sculptor should have abstracted all the pathos and beauty possible from the situation, but not the horror—miss its social message.

Those parents who protest against it as opening a dark world to sheltered members of their households must make the same protest against the sermon which would do more than skim the surface of the moral needs of a community; against the general periodical which would broach these things in ways specific enough to be helpful; against the play like Damaged Goods, which puts the consequences of evil living in human terms; for in all these audiences are there likely to be young people. And after all, in all these fields, we are not at this stage faced with the choice between home education and public education, but of rousing the home.

While the leaders in sex hygiene are bound to have a difficult task on their hands in restraining unscientific and slap-dash agencies who assume to give public instruction, the fact remains that the larger and most difficult task of those leaders is still that of arousing the public, a general and wide-spread process of education both as to the things that should be known and as to the need for knowing them. The reason for this is that the old policies of reticence have failed—failed so far that not only has America contributed nothing to the solution of a world-old problem, but has imported new commercialized phases of it and let them become rampant, to bring destruction and disease to thousands.

At such a juncture The Survey must give respectful hearing to those whose outlook is personal, but must draw its counsels rather from those who bring larger measure of social experience to the question—from superintendents of orphanages,⁠[3] who know what the old policies of ignorance have cost in the lives of boys and girls; from neurologists, who see the after consequences of that same ignorance; from reformatory heads; from educators; from physicians.

Without the fact of commercialized vice such a searching piece of work as Miss Eberle’s would lack truth; without the added fact that such vice exists, not merely because of the greed and lust of men, but because of the inertia, the reticence, the acceptance of things as they are by people who, if they aroused themselves, could put an end to it, it would lack occasion.

If such conditions exist, then it has blazing truth and insistent occasion and like Nast’s cartoons it may well be looked back upon as a crashing social force breaking through the crusts of toleration and neglect.

If such conditions exist—if they exist because the public does not know, or knowing, does not act; if the public’s ignorance or inaction is due in whole or in part to the benumbing effects of these same policies on journalism, on the church, and on the other channels of enlightenment—then it is the part of The Survey of all journals, standing as it does midway between the doctor, the social investigator, the criminologist and the general public, to bring out the truth and to bring it out in ways that will strike fire.

If under such promptings The Survey uses the White Slave, then it should use it in such a way as to cleave through to the widest circle of its audience. Hence the cover. Probably in all his long pastorate, Henry Ward Beecher was never more criticized than when he emphasized the auction of two fugitive slave girls at the Broadway Tabernacle. Those who in his day were shocked at what they felt to be sensationalism and the desecration of God’s temple have given way in the passage of time to those who see that the desecration was mankind’s in the toleration of slavery itself.

Dr. Abbott in his life of Beecher says:

“He believed that thousands who would regard with apathy if not complacency the slave system at a distance, would regard with abhorrence the reform of an individual slave girl to a life of enforced sin and shame....

“He said: ‘The very men who give counsel and zeal and money against the unseen slave of the South irresistibly pity the particular fugitive whom they may see running through the North.’

“Had he been inclined to defend his method from those who criticized it as sensational, he might have referred them to the methods used by the Hebrew prophets, who taught so often and so effectually by dramatic object-lessons.”

New times bring new needs.

Miss Eberle has modeled the auction block of a new slavery.

In the Brooklyn Eagle of April 21 appeared a powerful sermon by Dr. Hillis from Dr. Beecher’s old pulpit on social diseases and heredity, in which such strong language as the following was used in speaking of the “conspiracy of silence”: “It is a guilty, cruel, dastardly, damnable silence on the part of preacher, teacher and parent.”—Ed.

FOOTNOTES:

THE PATERSON STRIKE

To the Editor:

For a number of years I have been a reader and subscriber of The Survey and it both shocks and pains me to find that The Survey has apparently taken a biased view of the strike here in Paterson. I understand that several Survey investigators have been to Paterson before preparing the news items on pages 81-82 and 83 in your issue of April 19. These investigators did not call upon those in our city to whom it seems to me they should naturally have turned, the Charity Organization Society. If they had, they would not have made some of the glaring and ill-advised statements contained in your editorial.

They would have been better posted as to the type of looms which they have called multiple or automatic looms throughout the article. Both names so far as applied to silk are erroneous. All broad silk looms with few exceptions are supplied with either side or center filling stop motions. This stops the loom when the thread in the shuttle breaks. This has been common for years and does not constitute an automatic loom. Some looms have been equipped with warp stop motions, stopping the loom when a warp end breaks. This does not constitute an automatic loom. An automatic loom is one in which either the shuttle, which has already been filled with new thread, or quill or bobbin changes automatically. It would also very likely be equipped with both warp and filling stop motions. Such looms as last mentioned have never proven satisfactory on silk.

In the article you make certain statements but have not made them clearly. As your paper is read by many charitable and philanthropic people, it is hardly fair to the charitable and philanthropic people of Paterson to have such statements as you have made concerning Paterson go forth to the world without objections on our part. You have not made clear the meaning of the three and four loom system. The word system, as used here, has an arbitrary meaning and means one weaver to three or four looms. You state that Paterson is “importing” the four loom system. This is not true because there is nothing to import.

You further made a statement that competition between Pennsylvania and New Jersey is over. This is not so, it is just as keen today as ever. You further make a statement that great factories are equipped with automatic looms in Pennsylvania, four of these looms being operated by one boy or girl.⁠[4] Can you name a single mill where this is so? I have been fifteen years calling on the silk mills and I have yet to learn of an automatic loom being used to weave silk or where four looms are operated by a boy or girl. You further make a statement that weavers are required to tend three looms. I think this is wrong. There is no question but that they could operate three to four looms of their own free will, but there is no compulsion about it.⁠[5]⁠

In quoting from the Paterson Evening News you infer that an additional strain is placed on a weaver in taking care of three or four looms. If this is so, it remains to be proven. I have talked about this with a number of weavers and they state that they have not noticed this fact, if it is one. You further imply that it will change the character of work in Paterson if the three and four loom system is put in operation. I think this is a mis-apprehension because only about 40 per cent of the looms of Paterson, of which there are about 16,000 would be affected in any way by this so-called three and four loom system. As you quoted, in a statement made by the silk manufacturers, only a percentage of these would be affected because many plain looms have jacquards mounted over them and the manufacturers have never attempted to run more than two looms of this nature to one weaver, nor does the so-called three and four loom system reduce the wages. I know of one mill in this town that is in operation today despite the fact of the strike where sixteen looms are being operated by three weavers. One of these weavers in this particular mill has been operating four looms since last October and her earnings have averaged over $75 every two weeks.

Further along you say the multiple looms are large and equipped with automatic devices and can only be installed in large mills. This is absolutely incorrect. There is nothing to prevent a small mill from using any loom that is now manufactured. The smaller mill, in only a few cases, has so far taken over jacquard weaving which is the most intricate of all the weaving, and requires the most skill, and as intimated, is largely confined to the large factories. The smaller mills are mostly equipped with plain looms. Quite a few of these are mills running three to four looms to a weaver.

In making your contrast of the average wages paid in Paterson and the average paid in Pennsylvania, have you been fair? According to the reports which I have, the weavers of Paterson earn on an average about $12.55 a week and I am afraid in taking your Pennsylvania average you included all classes of textile workers, including the very low paid help in throwing mills, so cutting the average Pennsylvania wage down.⁠[6]⁠

The employers have not refused to confer with their employes except that they have rightly refused to treat with the Industrial Workers of the World agitators towards this settlement. You have not made clear the doctrines or propaganda of the Industrial Workers of the World whom you have called Industrial Socialists. The Socialists as you know have repudiated Haywood. Your statements in regard to the arrest of William D. Haywood and his subsequent release when arrested on March 30 are correct. I sincerely hope that you will immediately send other investigators to Paterson who will call on the Charity Organization Society and the ministers who formed the committee invited to the aldermanic meeting, Rev. A. H. Stein, Rev. D. S. Hamilton, Rev. W. C. Snodgrass, Rev. J. F. Shaw and Dr. Jones. I would also suggest some of the business men of the town whose stores you could enter along Main street or Market street. I would suggest William Wieda; John C. Mason, Quackenbush & Co.; A. P. Van Saun, Van Dyk Furniture Co.; Ex-Judge Francis Scott; Ex-Judge James Inglis; John W. Ferguson; H. H. Parmelee; Hamilton Trust Co.; Edward T. Bell, First National Bank; and Wm. H. Blauvelt, Second National Bank.

I would suggest that you call attention to the articles in The Survey of May 4, 1912 and April 6, 1912 telling about the Industrial Workers of the World. I am also enclosing an article written by Lincoln Steffens in the Globe and Commercial Advertiser of March 29, 1912.

Will you kindly publish this letter in fairness not only to Paterson but to the “things” The Survey stands for, as your news items contain so many technical errors which have a vital bearing to a certain extent on this strike?

W. L. Kinkead.

[Secretary Central Charities Committee.]

Paterson, N. J.

FOOTNOTES:

[The Survey is more than willing to accept Mr. Kinkead’s corrections as to looms and textile processes, for his business is mill machinery. It does not quite agree with him, however, as to the importance of the matter, since the technical terms were incidental merely to the subject of the strike.

Three points in Mr. Kinkead’s letter should perhaps be footnoted:

A. The three and four loom systems are now in use in Pennsylvania. The federal report on the Condition of Woman and Child Wage-Earners in the United States, says: “In Pennsylvania, where the broad silks manufactured are of the plainer grades, not requiring the skill, efficiency and attention given to the higher grades made in Paterson, woman and child weavers have the field practically to themselves.”

B. Mr. Kinkead would certainly not wish to maintain that, when the change is made from a two to a four loom system, the earnings of weavers, who preferred to stick to two looms, would not be cut. If you cut a chair caner’s wage from ten to eight cents a chair, there is no compulsion for him to make more chairs than before; but he does if he has a family hanging on his earnings. The silk manufacturer who, when he makes the change, pays a weaver more than before if he will work four looms instead of two, and less than before if he continues to work two is merely dodging if he claims there is no compulsion about it.

C. A more accurate analysis of the government figures would give the average wage of Paterson weavers as $11.80 instead of $11.69; that of the Pennsylvania weavers as $6.99 instead of $6.56. The error that Mr. Kinkead suggests was, however, not made.

As a matter of fact, such a staff inquiry as Mr. Kinkead suggests has been in progress and in the June magazine number The Survey will publish an article by John A. Fitch.—Ed.]