A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil | Page 5

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 girl had begun
at once with the huge debt of the ocean journey for Paret and herself. In
addition to this large sum she was charged, according to universal
custom, with exorbitant prices for all the clothing she received and with
any money which Paret chose to draw against her account. Later, when
Marie contracted typhoid fever, she was sent for treatment to a public
hospital and it was during her illness there, when a general
investigation was made of the white slave traffic, that a federal officer
visited her. Marie, who thought she was going to die, freely gave her
testimony, which proved to be most valuable.
The federal authorities following up her statements at last located Paret
in the city prison at Atlanta, Georgia, where he had been convicted on a
similar charge. He was brought to Chicago and on his testimony Lair
was also convicted and imprisoned.
Marie has since married a man who wishes to protect her from the
influence of her old life, but although not yet twenty years old and

making an honest effort, what she has undergone has apparently so far
warped and weakened her will that she is only partially successful in
keeping her resolutions, and she sends each month to her parents in
France ten or twelve dollars, which she confesses to have earned
illicitly. It is as if the shameful experiences to which this little
convent-bred Breton girl was forcibly subjected, had finally become
registered in every fibre of her being until the forced demoralization
has become genuine. She is as powerless now to save herself from her
subjective temptations as she was helpless five years ago to save herself
from her captors.
Such demoralization is, of course, most valuable to the white slave
trader, for when a girl has become thoroughly accustomed to the life
and testifies that she is in it of her own free will, she puts herself
beyond the protection of the law. She belongs to a legally degraded
class, without redress in courts of justice for personal outrages.
Marie, herself, at the end of her third year in America, wrote to the
police appealing for help, but the lieutenant who in response to her
letter visited the house, was convinced by Lair that she was there of her
own volition and that therefore he could do nothing for her. It is easy to
see why it thus becomes part of the business to break down a girl's
moral nature by all those horrible devices which are constantly used by
the owner of a white slave. Because life is so often shortened for these
wretched girls, their owners degrade them morally as quickly as
possible, lest death release them before their full profit has been
secured. In addition to the quantity of sacrificed virtue, to the bulk of
impotent suffering, which these white slaves represent, our civilization
becomes permanently tainted with the vicious practices designed to
accelerate the demoralization of unwilling victims in order to make
them commercially valuable. Moreover, a girl thus rendered more
useful to her owner, will thereafter fail to touch either the chivalry of
men or the tenderness of women because good men and women have
become convinced of her innate degeneracy, a word we have learned to
use with the unction formerly placed upon original sin. The very revolt
of society against such girls is used by their owners as a protection to
the business.

The case against the captors of Marie, as well as twenty-four other
cases, was ably and vigorously conducted by Edwin W. Sims, United
States District Attorney in Chicago. He prosecuted under a clause of
the immigration act of 1908, which was unfortunately declared
unconstitutional early the next year, when for the moment federal
authorities found themselves unable to proceed directly against this
international traffic. They could not act under the international white
slave treaty signed by the contracting powers in Paris in 1904, and
proclaimed by the President of the United States in 1908, because it
was found impossible to carry out its provisions without federal police.
The long consideration of this treaty by Congress made clear to the
nation that it is in matters of this sort that navies are powerless and that
as our international problems become more social, other agencies must
be provided, a point which arbitration committees have long urged. The
discussion of the international treaty brought the subject before the
entire country as a matter for immediate legislation and for executive
action, and the White Slave Traffic Act was finally passed by Congress
in 1910, under which all later prosecutions have