It is a matter of no small importance that the Christian public of America should realize that in the Oriental slavery of its Pacific Coast it faces a flood. One can gaze with indifference upon a little stream that trickles through a wall, so long as it is thought to be merely a natural spring of water; but when one is informed that this is the trickling of water through a dike which dams out the raging sea, the sensations are changed to a realizing sense of imminent peril. If some are disposed to criticise this book for leading its readers into past history and far distant countries, to tell them harrowing tales, let them know it is intended to take them for a view behind the dike,--that they may understand the source of the trickling stream of brothel slaves that, almost unobserved, flows steadily into our fair land, and know that the stream is the precursor of a flood. No mere wall of immigration restrictions will ever get control of the flow so long as men are permitted to hold slaves after they have once been landed. And for the further reason, that so soon as China and Japan have drilled a little longer with the fire-arms furnished them by Western nations, they will force a free entrance to America. The yellow flood is sure to come, and we must make ready for it. We must realize what may happen to American women if almond-eyed citizens, bent on exploiting women for gain, obtain the ballot in advance of educated American women. We must realize how impossible it is to throttle this monster, Oriental Brothel-Slavery, unless we take it in its infancy. For these reasons, we wish to sound the cry long and loud: "At once to arms! Not a moment to be lost! We cannot build a dam in the midst of the raging sea. The new dam must be finished before the old one bursts." And beside the peril arising directly from the flood of Orientals who are accustomed to dealing with women as chattels, there will be the peril from a debased American manhood. Men cannot live in the midst of such slavery as this, tolerate it, defend it, make gain through it, patronize it, without losing all respect for woman and regard for her rights. And then, the slave business is fast becoming a vested interest of large dimensions to American men as well as to Chinese. There are fully as many (probably more) Japanese slaves as Chinese in the United States, and at the moderate reckoning that they are worth three thousand dollars each, that represents six million dollars in capital; and at the present time the Japanese traffic is more threatening to the United States than the Chinese, with which alone this book deals.[A] [Footnote A: When we undertook the task of writing this book we intended to include in it also a representation of the Japanese slave-trade, but have been obliged to desist for want of space.]