"We seized trunks in their possession on which were the stamps of the customs officials, showing that most of the women had come in the second cabin. In some of these trunks we found sealed letters, written by girls to parents in France, begging them to write, and as completing the slavery chain, we found other letters in possession of the keepers, written long before by these girls to parents, which the keepers had received for mailing but which they had refused to post for the helpless prisoners. "The girls were 18 to 22 years old and had come through Ellis Island under assumed names. The letters in the trunks revealed the true names of the writers. None of them could tell a date of sailing or date of landing. One of these girls had $1,500 charged against her for clothing furnished by the house. Another girl said the house owed her $890, which she had been unable to collect. Once a month they were sent to the 'summer cottage' of this resort, at Blue Island, where under guard of their slavers, they had the freedom of an elaborate house and the privileges of a launch and boats on the river. "Slavery is the only logical deduction accounting for these women's presence in these houses. None of them could tell anything about the appearance of a steamer ticket. Everything points to their having been imported to this country by slave traffickers and of their having been forwarded to Chicago directly from the port of entry under charge of some one who assumed all charge of them to every smallest detail of transportation. In the Chicago houses raided we found that some man was held responsible for one or more of these women. He lived off them and was looked to to enforce discipline among them in return for the privilege." Only the French and the Hungarian resorts so far have been raided by the United States district attorney. It is former Assistant State's Attorney Roe's discovery that on the west side where ten years ago scarcely a single Jewess was to be found in a resort, today 80 per cent of the inmates are Russian and Polish Jews. The field here is promising to the United States authorities, who can work only from the statute which allows of deporting these women under certain residence restrictions. One fact accounting for this increase in Jewish habitues of west side resorts is explained by a Russian exile in Chicago. In St. Petersburg, Moscow and other capitals of Russia only the Jewess in slavery may enter. It is the only condition under which the Jewish girl may enter these cities. At the first necessity for importation, how easy is the traffic? CHAPTER V. THE TRAGEDY OF THE STAGE. One thousand innocent girls, the majority of them still in their teens, are lured to a life of shame each year in the city of Chicago alone through the stage. This is the statement of the police. It is the statement of the keepers of the dives themselves.