I believe, as I write, that the final solving of this reeking, hideous question lies in the moral and Christian teaching and protection of the growing girls of our land. I believe in a rigidly enforced law that keeps girls under legal age and unattended off the down-town streets at night after a reasonable hour. Harry Balding, the convicted white slaver, in his confession before Judge Newcomer and Assistant State’s Attorney Roe, says: “We would be sent out by resort keepers to work up some girls, for whom we were paid from $10 to $50 each, though the cash bonus was much more. The majority of them were girls we met on the street. We would go around to the penny arcades and nickle theatres and when we saw a couple of young girls we would go up and talk with them. I will say this for myself—I never took a girl away from her home; the girls I took down there I met in the stores or on the streets.” There is a league of masonry worldwide that makes it possible for a mason anywhere in trouble or distress, to raise his hand toward the heavens with a certain sign and if there be a brother mason within reach, that brother, no matter of what nationality, kindred or tongue, is sworn to give him all needed protection. Listen, father, mother, sister, listen brother! Today from beneath Chicago’s awful moral sewerage which has sucked their hearts and souls and bodies under, a thousand trembling hands are held up to high heaven, and to you for help, hands reeking with the blood on which some whoremonger has fattened; the hands though of your sisters and of mine, and I believe that here in Chicago, the greatest market for white slaves on the continent, should be formed a league that would become worldwide, of earnest, law-abiding men and women whose efforts united with those of the proper police, municipal and Federal authorities, would make it practically impossible for a girl to be sold into or compelled to lead an immoral life, and through whose influence such open public flesh markets as our “red-light” and levee district would be banished forever from Chicago streets. I believe in helping, God knows, with heart and hand and money, every fallen woman in our land whom there is the slightest chance to help in any way, but I believe first of all in using every known measure to keep our girls from falling. You and I live beneath the only flag in all the world that has never known defeat, and the very basic principle upon which that flag is builded is human liberty and human protection, and so by personal work, by song, prayer and by the power of the cross let us set ourselves to help these helpless ones in our midst until the angels shall take up the story of shame and bitterness and wrong and bear to all the world and to heaven itself the swift acknowledgement that you are your brother’s keeper. Smashing The Traffic