Chicago's Black Traffic in White Girls — John Shaqi
Chicago's Black Traffic in White GirlsTurner-Zimmermann, Jean
History
Chicago's Black Traffic in White Girls
Turner-Zimmermann, Jean
Chicago (Ill.) -- Moral conditions; Prostitution -- Illinois -- Chicago
I appeal in the name of Jehovah, to the Church, to the women's clubs, to
the labor federations and all honorable Jews and others of foreign birth
who have come to America for a home and a decent, honorable living, to aid
in every possible way the great work now going on to eradicate
segregated, protected White Slavery from our Land.
EXTRACTS FROM THE DAILY PAPERS
Quoting from the Daily Press, May 4, regarding the recent investigations
in New York concerning the question of White Slavery by the Rockefeller
jury (which after buying two girls themselves, later declared, "there is
no traffic in women in New York"):
Harry Levenson, the acknowledged "trader" of women who is in the
Tombs under $25,000 bail, made a startling confession to the District
Attorney to-night, giving names of men and women whose sole
occupation is dealing in unfortunates.
"I know of three places in New York," Levenson said, "where five to
ten girls are kept constantly at hand for sale. At any hour of the
day or night one of them, two or the whole ten, can be bought by any
one with the money to pay for them. They can be shipped anywhere at
an hour's notice."
GIVES HINT ON ARRESTS
The "trader" gave to Mr. Whitman the addresses of the three places,
which are known as "stockades." He also made suggestions as to how
their operators might be apprehended.
More than that, Levenson told how the financial arrangements of the
sales are made and how recruits are obtained.
Agents are continually at work obtaining young girls, the prisoner
said. The slave sellers do not want hardened women, he explained;
they want pretty, immature girls. The agents are generally well
dressed women who ingratiate themselves with their childish victims
at matinees and moving-picture shows, and by dining them and painting
rosy pictures of a life of ease, win them away from their homes or
their ill-paid positions.
"When there is a call for girls," Levenson continued, "the buyer
hands over the money paid for them to the keeper. Then an
agent--these are usually men--take the girls to wherever the "order"
comes from. These agents then collect 10 per cent of the girl's
weekly earnings."
Quoting from the National Prohibitionist, May 12:
THE SLAVE TRADE AND THE VOTER
The Christian voter who reads, and reads with blood boiling, as the
blood of every honest man must, the shameful story of the exposure of
the traffic in girls especially in New York, must not allow his
imagination to run away with his reasoning faculties.
Awful as the story is, we invite attention, not to its horror--the
horror of herds of little girls sold at a per-head price below the
value of pigs--but to the practical questions of responsibility and
cure.
Why does this infamy exist in our cities?
How can it exist?
Who is responsible?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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