POLITICS AND VICE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 224, 10 February 1913, Page 6

POLITICS AND VICE.

THE WHITE SLAVE TRAFFIC IX AMERICA. New York, December 1. To us in New York, who have recently gone through the same phase of civic awakening, the outburst of public sentiment in London against the terrible "white slave" traffic is particularly interesting. You are facing almost exactly the same conditions that we faced three years ago; you are discussing the same contemplated reforms. The same sort of men are laboring to wipe out the stain on London's honor as labored so diligently in New York. This is wluit happened in New York. We fought honestly and bravely. We put our whole heart into the fight. We were not visionaries; we knew that in all probability there would be some measure of evil in the world so long as men persisted. But we did hope to do away with the more detestable form of vice and so ensure safety for the vast army of unprotected women of the lower immigrant class, upon whom the slinking "cadets" of the teeming East Side rely for their hordes of fresh recruits year bv year.

| We discovered some significant facts |in New York. Terliaps they will be of : interest to London. We found that there I were throe great centres of procuring for the "white slave" trade: three at that time, bear in mind. It would seem that London must now be added to the list. The three comprised the group of cities in Austrian and Russian Poland and fiaiieiii—the traditional recruiting ground—Paris and New York. From a position third on the list in the importance of its traffic, New York, in the early years of the present century forged into the first place. It became a clearing house for the exportation of the "daughters of the poor" to all corners of the world. MANY MARKETS. It sent them to the mining camps of South Africa, the West and Alaska; to the frontier towns of Australia; it contracted with the camp followers who accompanied the Russian army in Manchuria to' keep them supplied with victims; it supplied houses of ill-fame in Central and South America: even succeeding in getting business in Argentina, where the "white slave" traffic has been started and controlled by Parisian scoundrels; it shipped its human consignments to the East Indies, Hongkong and Singapore; its "ring" of Jewish and Italian-American slum politicians controlled the whole system of vice J throughout North America, from New I Orleans to Alaska.

New York to-day is perhaps the most vice-ridden city in the world. This is not because Americans are essentially vicious. They are not.

The great markets for women in the Middle Ages were the armies that ravaged the Continent. The great market for women to-day are the laboring camps and the quarters of immigrants in great cities, where men live alone. There were "white slaves'' in America before immigration on a large scale began. But it was not the traffic that we have had for more than half a century now, since New York became the clearing-house for,the supply of the New World.

As far back as 1857 the police of New York canvassed 2000 of the 0000 unfortunates then .supposed to be in the city. Of these women, more than three-fifths were foreign-born, at least three-quar-ters were of foreign birth or parentage, and. most significant of all, more than one-third of these 2000 women had been born in Ireland—a country noted, above ally other*. for the chastity of its women. ITALIANS. The Italians, strange to say., were not useful to the procurers. Although there ■'"'e many Italian women listed among the unfortunate victims of the "white slavers.' they have nearly all been imported from the Home Country, cheated into coming by pasty-faced men with pronuscs of marriage. The Italian mother in America guards her flock too well to permit the '•cadet" to ensnare them, as a general thing, at any rate. ' ! ' "J. 1S suggestive. Unmarked talian women never come to America without; their families. Hut it is a common thing f (l| . (!„• women of Eastern I'.iirope to cine alone to seek their fornmes m Ihe Western World. the old days, the traffic, what ' was of It:. m tlu , U|litod statw as entirely in the hands of women, but Intel the men joined in it crnS 'T' a f f'; d ' y ' iUld bit Wt- the men A ' d V 1 1" tl,e I,nnds of ,ii, i f '*71 bit h y hit ' !t liii » o OHL r °r'fn ''' ( ' onlrol 1:0 the control of other little groups of men. politi- (.; iis owners of cheap hotels and bars, nih'eis. and men „f no profms ; on at a 1 • the T, ? /; factor of n "st, i,S madp Ulp trnfTic , l : ugero,,s (], O 1711 it,.rl States . ,vdrl T r 8 " 110 ' 1 in thn wtil of ' • '"•i-hrniM moil si or „f licentious <■<■ 'iiptmn. which Hi,. bravest ~( rol. ( s f leform have been unable t,i ,l nv . I'loated by success, the "cid'el«» the Cast Sid,, of Xe W York formed them- , 7 ' ,;,n,ls "f despeviKioes. Paris "' T nl,v «' V the apaches or l.ii s. They became handy tools for fnupt politicians about election time

could be relied upon to ''beat; up" timid voters and to terrorise doubtful districts, as well as to act as efficient, and persist' cut '•'repealers." They were not Americans in the anthropological or physiological sense of the word. They were stunted, low-browed, swarthy, vicious human beasts, half men, half animals, as like the apaches as two peas are like each other. AM El WAX ABACI 1 F.S. They are the kind of men who have figured in the scandal rising out of the shooting of the gambler Rosenthal by agents of Police-Lieutenant Becker. They are the kind of men who comprise the membership of the famous gangs of New ork, the "Kirl Twist" gang, the Paul Kelly gang, the ''Monk" Eastman gang, and others. They are pariahs ami outcasts, and it is largely through their efforts and their organised system of procuring mid selling women "that the "white slave" traffic persists in its most hideous form to-day.

fn New York we have fought them for five years. We have had some slight effect upon them. Public sentiment has been aroused more than once. But each time public sentiment lias become supine after the usual hectic flush, and the work has all to be done over again. It is the alliance between politics and' the traffic which makes it so hard to down,