Читать книгу Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls; Or, War on the White Slave Trade - Various - Страница 13

Paris, the capital of such kings and the scene of such debauchery, became the source and headquarters of the world-wide white slave trade of the present time. With the spread of legitimate commerce to every part of the world, the long experienced traders in women sought a world-wide market for girls. There is not a civilized country which has not been exploited by the traders, alike as a hunting ground for victims and as a market in which to sell them.

All Europe, North America, Panama, South America, Egypt and other parts of Africa, India, China and Japan are the fields of operation of these atrocious men and serpentine women.

By no means all the traffickers are French. Many are Jews, many are Italians and Sicilians, some are Austrians, Germans, English, Americans, Greeks. But it is Paris that has made vice a fine art, and has made the white slave trade a wide-spread systematized commercial enterprise.

It is as true as it is lamentable that the beautiful city on the banks of the Seine, the center of fashion and of art, gained the shameful reputation of being the capital of the white slave trade, and deserved it, "by merit raised to that bad eminence."

In recent years the French government and people have felt keenly the reproach of this condition, and have been foremost in efforts to suppress the abominable commerce.