Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls; Or, War on the White Slave Trade
History
Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls; Or, War on the White Slave Trade
Prostitution
"I should think that the Federal Government would have to pass stringent
laws providing a heavy penalty for all who are engaged in this business.
The law would then be the same in all states and people could not escape
from its provision as they would if the states tried to take up the
matter and passed conflicting statutes. An organization might secure the
passage of such an act by the Federal Government, but it hardly seems to
me that it is necessary, more than to state the facts, and have the
members of congress take immediate action that would put an end to the
whole matter."
While it is probably true that the Federal Government has power to
prohibit the carrying of women from one state to another for immoral
purposes, that power has not yet been specifically established by
actual tests in court and is therefore, in a sense, undefined. On the
other hand the states, under their police power, have a remedy in their
own hands, and it would seem both logical and natural that this power be
exercised in the protection of its own homes and daughters. As a matter
of fact we have found literally scores of cases, in our investigations
relative to the importation from foreign countries of girls destined for
immoral houses, where American born girls have been lured or kidnaped
from a home in one state and carried to some large city in another
state, there to be broken to the life of shame.
The federal investigations in Chicago and other localities have clearly
established the fact, that, generally speaking, houses of ill-fame in
large cities do not draw their recruits to any great extent from the
territory immediately surrounding them; for obvious reasons the white
slavers who are the recruiting agents for the vile traffic prefer to
work in states more or less distant from the centers to which their
victims are destined.
In view of all this it must be clearly apparent that the need of the
hour is legislation which will make it as difficult and dangerous for a
white slaver to take his victim from one state into another as it is for
him to bring a girl from France or Italy or Canada, or any other foreign
country, to a house of ill-fame in Chicago or any American city.
Therefore, it is suggested that if each state in the union would pass
and enforce severe and stringent laws against this importation, this
terrible traffic would be dealt a blow in its most vulnerable part. Such
an enactment might well be worded as follows:
"Whoever shall induce, entice or procure, or attempt to induce, entice
or procure, to come into this state, any woman or girl for the purpose
of prostitution or concubinage, or for any other immoral purpose, or to
enter any house of prostitution in this state, shall, upon conviction,
be imprisoned in the penitentiary for a period of not less than one (1)
nor more than five (5) years and be fined not more than five thousand
($5,000) dollars."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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