“Not one, but many shipments, of which I have personal knowledge, based upon testimony of people who have pleaded guilty, many shipments come from Paris and other European cities to New York; and from New York to Chicago and other western points; and from Chicago as a distributing point to the West and Southwest; and on the western coast coming into San Francisco and other ports there. No, it is a real fact; and it is something that we have got to take notice of, and something that, while it may have been developed largely during the past ten years, the national government itself has recently taken notice of its existence.” Mr. Clifford G. Roe, formerly Assistant State’s Attorney, who has prosecuted very many cases against the traffickers in women, said before the union meeting of ministers called to consider the white slave traffic, at the auditorium of the Young Men’s Christian Association, February 10, 1908: “A great many persons are yet skeptical of the existence of an organized traffic in girls. They seem to think that those advocating the abolition of this trade are either fanatics or notoriety seekers. They doubt the truth of the impossibility of escape and content themselves with the thought that girls use the plea of slavery to right themselves with their parents and friends when their cases are made public. “However, if these same people could have been in the courts of Chicago during the past year their minds would be disabused of the idea that slavery does not exist in Chicago. “The startling disclosures made in nearly a hundred cases ought to arouse not only the citizens of Chicago, but the whole country to the highest pitch of indignation.” Chicago’s Soul Market. “O, he keeps a bunch of 'fillies’ in the shanty down near the corner of Monroe and Peoria streets, and they’re not foreigners, either. They’re your nice American girls. No wonder he can make a bet like that on a mere chance, from a roll of yellow-backs.” The speaker was a madam of a Peoria street resort, the listeners a motley crowd of women gathered in the rear room of a popular saloon and gambling house not far from the corner of Green and Madison streets on the seething, congested west side of Chicago. These women assembled in that screened back room to risk their hard-earned or evil-gotten money on the horses of the Louisville race track.