Page:Roe 1911 What women might do with the ballot.djvu/4

 supply and demand and the result has been the opportunity for trading in the bodies and souls of our daughters.

They are procured into disreputable lives with or without their consent, and they are held slaves by the conditions which surround them. These conditions range from forcible detention to ingenious deception with discouragement and disease as intermediary stages. "They become slaves to their keepers, slaves to their patronage, slaves to the habit of drink, slaves to cigarettes, slaves to drugs, slaves to the very despair that shame and moral wreckage bring."

Those creatures, both male and female, who trade in human flesh to fill resorts of vice are called panders, procurers and white slave traders. The methods employed by these traders are varied. In fact all the ways and means for luring victims to shameful occupations have not been fathomed. Each day one who studies the question becomes more appalled at the magnitude of the problem and the innumerable and intricate avenues that must be followed to reach those engaged in this despicable business.

By appealing to the love instinct in girls, flattering their vanity, and promising employment to the poor are the more common methods used.

Perhaps the best way to ascertain how the procurers work is to go to court records. There one will find indisputable facts, and the greatest progress made thus far in the abolition of the white slave traffic has been brought about by giving these facts to the public. Hard, cold facts must convince.

All one has to do is to pick up a daily paper in almost any city, to read an account of the arrest, prosecution and conviction of a procurer. The average reader will immediately say, that case is exceptional. To prove that these cases are not exceptional let us glance for a moment over the list of cases tried in the courts of Chicago since the middle of May, 1911.

It should be understood that it is not suggested that Chicago is worse than any other large city. In fact Chicago, in proportion to its population, has less vice than many other cities, and white slavery is practically broken up there.