Another humanitarian movement from which assistance will doubtless come
to the crusade against the social evil, is the great movement against
alcoholism with its recent revival in every civilized country of the
world. A careful scientist has called alcohol the indispensable vehicle
of the business transacted by the white slave traders, and has asserted
that without its use this trade could not long continue. Whoever has
tried to help a girl making an effort to leave the irregular life she
has been leading, must have been discouraged by the victim's attempts to
overcome the habit of using alcohol and drugs. Such a girl has commonly
been drawn into the life in the first place when under the influence of
liquor and has continued to drink that she might be able to live through
each day. Furthermore, the drinking habit grows upon her because she is
constantly required to sell liquor and to be "treated."
It is estimated that the liquor sold by such girls nets a profit to the
trade of two hundred and fifty per cent. over and above the girl's own
commission. Chicago made at least one honest effort to divorce the sale
of liquor from prostitution, when the superintendent of police last year
ruled that no liquor should be sold in any disreputable house. The
difficulty of enforcing such an order is greatly increased because such
houses, as well as the questionable dance halls, commonly obtain a
special permit to sell liquor under a federal license, which is not only
cheaper than the saloon license obtained from the city, but has the
added advantage to the holder that he can sell after one o'clock in the
morning, at which time the city closes all saloons.
The aggregate annual profit of the two hundred and thirty-six disorderly
saloons recently investigated in Chicago by the Vice Commission was
$4,307,000. This profit on the sale of liquor can be traced all along
the line in connection with the white slave traffic and is no less
disastrous from the point of view of young men than of the girls. Even a
slight exhilaration from alcohol relaxes the moral sense and throws a
sentimental or adventurous glamor over an aspect of life from which a
decent young man would ordinarily recoil, and its continued use
stimulates the senses at the very moment when the intellectual and moral
inhibitions are lessened. May we not conclude that both chastity and
self-restraint are more firmly established in the modern city than we
realize, when the white slave traders find it necessary both forcibly to
detain their victims and to ply young men with alcohol that they may
profit thereby? General Bingham, who as Police Commissioner of New York
certainly knew whereof he spoke, says: "There is not enough depravity in
human nature to keep alive this very large business. The immorality of
women and the brutishness of men have to be persuaded, coaxed and
constantly stimulated in order to keep the social evil in its present
state of business prosperity."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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