Читать книгу Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls; Or, War on the White Slave Trade - Various - Страница 23

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The most conspicuous work of United States Attorney Sims against the white slave traders in Chicago was the arrest and indictment of a notorious French trader and his wife, Alphonse and Eva Dufour. The federal grand jury voted five indictments against each of them. They spent six weeks or so in Cook county jail, when they gained their liberty on bonds of $26,500, which they immediately forfeited and fled to Paris, in August, 1908.

My missionary duties took me occasionally to the clearing house of the Dufours, and we have often held gospel meetings in front of their resort. In this place were about twenty girls, whom the agents of this wicked couple had snared in different parts of Europe and America. One girl was from Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, who had been deceived into entering the house and then held there without her street clothes. She managed to send word out and secured her release. The Dufour woman was arraigned in court but was not punished seriously for this very common crime.

A very young black-eyed, black-haired Spanish girl was among the inmates, and my thoughts inevitably went to some broken-hearted mother in sunny Spain, whose daughter had been hunted for Chicago's white slave market. These murderous traffickers drink the heart's blood of weeping mothers while they eat the flesh of their daughters, by living and fattening themselves on the destruction of the girls. Disease and debauch quickly blast the beauty of these lovely victims. Many of them are dead in two or three years. Cannibals seem almost merciful in comparison with the white slavers, who murder the girls by inches. It is a dark mystery that twentieth century civilization allows these atrocities, even under the flag of the free.

In this glittering den, with its walls and ceiling of mirrors, was a sweet Russian girl, perhaps sixteen years old, whose fate made my heart bleed. She was of the best Russian type, blonde, of medium height, peach-blossom complexion, roundish mouth, and of exceedingly gentle and loving disposition. Some father, perhaps a nobleman, perhaps dead and unable longer to protect the delight of his eyes, comes inevitably to my thoughts as I write. Oh, the pity of it all, and the shame. How can any father of girls escape the nightmare of what might befall his own daughters if his own power to protect them should fail?

I went to Baron Schlippenbach, who was then the consul of the mighty Czar in Chicago, but I never learned that he was able to accomplish anything for this dear Russian girl. The Czar is only "the little father," as the Russian people call him. May the Great Father in heaven help his deeply wronged daughters, in a way that shall break in pieces their oppressors.

The den of the Dufours had an income of $102,720 in the year 1907, and $41,000 in the first five months of 1908. One white slave was made to earn for them in May, 1908, the sum of $723. These figures were taken from their own account books, which were seized by the United States government after the Dufours fled to Paris.

This terrible place was both a receiving and a distributing station, and also a wide open immoral resort, patronized by thousands of young men—who are the ultimate white slavers, as they pay the expenses of the white slave trade. From this central clearing house girls were shipped to Denver, San Francisco and every place where the Dufours had correspondents. All this was revealed by their own documents after the United States had driven this tiger and tigress back to Paris.

Soon after we had initiated the public agitation against the white slave horror in Chicago I received three letters from a victim of the French traders. Such parts of the letters as can be made public are here given. These letters have supplied both information and inspiration to the workers who first brought this infamous traffic to public notice in Chicago.