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
One Sunday afternoon as we were working on Sangamon street a beautiful,
sinful Jewess insulted me and justified herself by saying with a strong
Jewish accent, "You spoil our business." The next Sunday or so a young
Jew parasite succeeded in breaking up our meeting. Captain Barcal was
indignant and took better care of us than ever. One Sunday a Jew said to
me, "The girls say you have spoiled their business." Soon afterward a
police order and the new municipal courts utterly transformed that
region. Business interest were weary of such outrageous conditions and
demanded a decisive change. Some months afterward a policeman remarked
upon the transformation and explained, "The Lord's time came to work and
He has been working." There is still very much to be done there, but the
former flagrancy of vice has been abolished.
Mr. Henry De Vries, Mr. and Mrs. F. J. Macdonald and Mr. R. M. Hawkins
worked with me during our conflict on the West Side. Mr. Macdonald was
killed the next year by a train.
AT TWENTY-SECOND STREET.
For the last three years since our mission was organized, chiefly
through the efforts of the Rev. Dr. John Balcom Shaw, we have labored
mostly in the great vice district and white slave market at
Twenty-second street. Of course we had no very glad welcome, after the
preceding conflicts. I have been assaulted three times in that district
and several who have worked with us have been roughly handled. Vile
drugs have been thrown into our meetings and on our clothes--assafoetida
and hydrogen sulphide. Viler words have been hurled into our ears. One
French trader threatened to break me to pieces and send me to a hospital
if it cost him a mint of money, but he afterward became friendly and
finally quit his loathsome business.
Objection was made to our scientific teaching and circulars. Even the
police captains, who have always taken splendid care of us, were
influenced by our adversaries to object to our telling the young men
about the diseases that are on sale in the resorts. Our circulars and
the circulars of the Chicago Society of Social Hygiene were referred by
the chief of police to the corporation counsel who promptly approved
them. He said we were like the Knights of the Garter and our circulars
not immoral but highly moral. We have circulated nearly a million pages
of these circulars. Young men hear us gladly and accept the circulars
with thanks. I have counted two hundred men listening at once to
Evangelist J. R. Beveridge, who is very plain speaking, while he was
working with us.
OTHER WORKERS IN THE NIGHT.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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