Chapter 5 No.5

What Will You Bid for This Woman?

White Slavery-Price of a Body and Soul-Hell's Bondage-The "Cadet" Master-Death the Penalty-The Trapping of the Prey.

Thirty-three per cent of the women fed to the insatiable god of lust in the "redlight" districts of Chicago are White Slaves!

Nearly two thousand women, annually, are sold to the highest vice bidders!

They are procured from every imaginable source and by every imaginable method.

Thousands of women drift yearly into a life of prostitution, driven to it by hunger and want primarily.

Why then must others be sought out, trapped, brought, bound and tied, stood on the auction blocks of vice and sold to the thump of the gavel?

Because the demand is far greater than the supply!

Hell is always hungry; the taste of blood on the lips of the monster Vice, drives him mad with desire for more blood; the crushing of bones and the morsels of white woman's flesh, frenzies him for other bodies!

More women! more women!-that is the cry.

It is a difficult problem. The question arises, is it simply a feeding of men's passions that must be satisfied or is it a desire to make men hunger and buy because the women are placed in their pathways, so that the vice lords may reap the harvest?

We believe the latter is God's truth, or rather the devil's truth!

Many a man would not be the brute of unrestrained passion that he is, if his paths were clear of temptations.

The temptations are placed, the White Slaves are purchased to make gold and silver for the wretches who create, nourish and commercialize vice.

It isn't vice that is robbing homes of innocent girls each year. It is the Commerce and Traffic of Sin.

The White Slave Trust is a perfect organization existing in the city of Chicago today.

Its agents procure the flesh and blood product from every source, its agents peddle the human article, from house of ill fame to house of ill fame; sell it, take the profit and divide with the members of an infamous combine.

THE TRAPPING OF THE PREY.

There are 150 professional procurers or "buyers" for the White Slave corporation!

There are at least 300 more men who at times act as procurers and at other times as "cadets."

There are thousands of other men in every walk of life who are constantly on the lookout for a possible victim for whose sale they reap a small return in bloodstained dollars.

The professional procurer, hired by the members of this trust; the owners of houses of prostitution or men whose business depends on the prosperity of places of ill fame-play on the three inherent characteristics of every woman's heart-

Ambition, vanity and love!

By attacking the points of weakness they trap their victims.

Out in the country town they dazzle the fresh, pretty creatures by stories of the pleasures and delights of life in the big city, by making love to innocent children, by depriving them of their sacred chastity.

In the city they appeal to their vanity: they tell them they are beautiful, loveable; they promise them clothes and jewelry, and again the woman falls.

Every form of amusement, from the nickel theaters to the wine rooms, is used to entice the prey.

Outside the professional procurer, the city is infested with men who make the business a side issue.

The extra procurers are found in the department stores, in the dance halls, in the nickel theaters and penny arcades, in the waiting rooms of the railroad stations, on the lake boats, at excursions, at rest rooms, at employment agencies, theatrical agencies, factories, business offices, and a hundred other places where girls are employed at meager salaries.

AND ALL THIS TO FILL THE ROTTEN COFFERS OF THE VICE TRUST!

PRICE OF ONE BODY, ONE HEART, ONE SOUL.

In 1860 one black woman was sold for $25!

In 1860 one black woman was sold for $500!

You shudder when you remember those times!

In 1911, in the city of Chicago, one white woman is sold for $25.

In 1911, in the same city, one white woman is sold for $500!

Slavery succeeded by slavery, or worse than slavery!

THE TRAFFIC OF WHITE SLAVERY!

After a victim is procured, the next step on the part of the perfidious combine is to dispose of her to the highest bidder.

Absolute examples of women-selling and the prices paid by resort keepers for the women purchased are in the hands of the federal government. Uncle Sam does not tolerate fiction. That is why we know this is the truth.

Investigation has shown that the prices for women sold into bondage of crime run from $25 to $500.

That scale is sliding and depends on the qualities, mostly physical, of the woman, and the immediate demands of the purchaser.

A girl taken by a procurer who has dazzled her by his insidious lies, and who is not of a type that would attract men of wealth or particular tastes, can be bought by a keeper of a house of ill fame from the agents of the White Slave Trust for the inhuman price of $25.

If the girl is ruddy with the glow of health, well-formed of limb and innocent of deep crime-the price soars.

Cases have been cited by ministers and reformers within the past year, where keepers of high-priced houses in the levee districts have paid outright, $500 to the White Slave combine's agents for girls whose purity has only been defiled by the procurer himself, and whose bodies are capable of bringing their masters thousands of dollars within the year.

These are the treasure-slaves of the hell-hounds!

It is of standing record, according to an investigator into the flesh traffic, that one procurer in one trip into the country districts of Illinois, trapped eight girls and sold them at prices ranging from $40 to $350!

One of these girls was a virgin. She was drugged by the procurer and awoke the next morning to find that she was a prisoner in a house of ill fame. She had been sold while robbed of her senses. She had been outraged while unconscious. The landlady approached her the next morning with an air of good fellowship, told of the benefits of the new life, promised her beautiful gowns and jewelry before night and attempted to make her forget the real, sweet and pure things of life which had been so mercilessly stolen from her.

This is the story of but one out of thousands.

$200,000 ANNUAL WHITE SLAVE PRICE.

We have said there are 2,000 White Slaves sold every year.

The average price is $100 a girl, according to a well known federal official, who has investigated and prosecuted several hundred cases of White Slavery.

That makes the aggregate purchase price of White Slaves in Chicago annually, $200,000!

This same official declared that the South side levee district contributes $60,000 a year to the White Slave Trust for new victims.

The balance is paid by the resort keepers of the other districts of vice and by keepers of the "houses of call"-the places where men of wealth and bestial perversion seek for virgins on whom to wreak the fury of abandoned passions!

Here is a terrible example of the procuring of an innocent girl for the perversion of a wealthy man.

Detectives investigating the conduct of a man implicated in graft charges affecting the high personnel of a big railroad, discovered that at a Michigan avenue "house of call" a tender and unsullied virgin procured by White Slave agents, was given into his lust-stained hands for desecration weekly!

That same man, the investigation showed, paid as high as $500 for an undefiled child!

He even went so far as to go outside of the city, in search of purity and goodness to be sacrificed in the fires of his degenerate passions.

THE SHACKLES OF THE WHITE SLAVE.

Many a girl after a month of horror, revolts against the conditions confronting her; the terrors in her dreams of the future fill her soul with fear and she yearns for freedom once again.

The dreams, which the stories told her by the procurer aroused, have never materialized; she is as poor as she was before she was trapped into the life of shame; she is broken in spirit and in health.

Can she walk out a free woman?

No. She is a White Slave; the slavery is not just one of selling and purchasing; it is one of permanent bondage in ninety cases out of one hundred.

The man who trapped her has become her "cadet." He is her "guardian" for her master. His word is law. She is a slave forever. She is treated brutally if she makes serious attempts at escape; she is even locked in a room and in some instances women have been tied hands and feet to bedposts.

She is at times drugged in order to make her forget her misery and her plans of escape. Every possible precaution is taken to prevent her release from bondage.

Her procurer in dull times, may take her from one house and resell her for a new price. She is thus bartered as a dead commodity instead of a woman of flesh and blood.

There is nothing in human history that is so filled with horror as this. There is no deeper stain on the annals of this nation than the crimson stain of White Slavery.

It is the evil that cries daily to Heaven for vengeance. Thousands of mothers lift their trembling arms and cry out to God to kill the monster that has eaten their daughters.

And this White Slave Trust, taking the money from these ill-fated women, turns part of its profits over to the magnates of the great Vice Trust,-to men who stand high in the world of politics, to men to whom we intrust the task of making our laws and administering them!

The law stands without and makes no effort to stem the tide of infamous traffic in women. Political leaders listen to the voice of a people's protest, sham a "clean-up" and then send forth the word to the vice lieutenants to "lay low" for a short time. Within a few weeks, the monster creeps from his hiding place and feasts ravenously on the victims piled up and waiting for him.

We have shown the price of these pitiful victims of a vice system.

We are now ready to show how every form of vice in which woman stands as the central figure is protected by the police department at the command of the political lords and their friends, in order that they may derive a vast income from the human sacrifice.

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