POLITICS AND VICE.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIV, Issue 28, 1 February 1913, Page 21

POLITICS AND VICE.

THE WHITE SLAVE TRAFFIC IN* AMERICA. (Bt ARTHUR D. HOWDEN" SMITH.) T.i v- in New York, who have recently) pin. hroueh the amn phase of c'rril awak- ! eni-ii:. the outburst of public sentiment in ' !_._■?»n against the terrible "white slave" , traffic _• particularly iuieresting. The , ,-.'.■ ~n.-n? in England are facing almost j ex*. •-'!". tie same conditions that we! f.-i.-.-- ; three vert- i_ : they are discuss- | ing -if same en: -Tr; Lite, reform-. The j Ban:.- --.r: nt" n■n i r labouring to wipe ■ ou -' : ; ; .- si.iin T i-.n.ionV honour as j labored so d:i.gently in Sew , ork. This it wha' iiappened in New York. ■ We fought h-.n.-tly and bravely. We put iur w_->V heart into tho fig-!::. We TP re r.U visionaries: we knew that in al- probability there would be some -fj.--j:-- of evil in the world so long as the men persisted. Bui we did h,>pe to do away with, the more detestable kir,': -f vice, and to ensure safely for the v-a-t army of unprotected women of j the lower immigrant .-..ts-s. upon which the slinking "cadet-" of the teeming East Side rt-'.y for their hordes of fresh recruits year by year. We discover.-.i some significant facts in New York. We found tliat there were three great centres of procuring- for the "white slave trader—three at that time. bear in mind. It would seem that London must now he added :•• the li.-:. The three comprised the group of cities in Austrian and Russian Poland and Galicia—tie traditional recruiting ground— j Pans and New York. From a position ', third on t-he list :r: the importance of its traffic. New York, in the e.uly years of j the preeexrt century, forged in:o the first pirace. It bevame a clearing-hotiise for the exportation of the '■Daughters of the Poor' to atf corners of the world, i MANY MARKETS. It sent them to thr- mining camps of South Africa, the West and Alaska: tn tbe frontier towns of Australia; it contracted witli the -vi-mp followers who accompanied the Russian army in Mancburia to keep them supplied w : th victims: it supplied hoiuses of ill-fame in Central aad So-uth America, even sue- | reeling in getting luisiness in Argentina, where the "white slave" traffic had been started-and controlled by Parisian scoundrels; it shipped its human consign- I menis to the Eas*t Indies. Hongkong and j Singapore: its "ring" of Jewish and ; Its '.ian-Ameriean slum politicians con- ' trolled the whole system of vice through- j out North America, from New Orleans to AlaskaNew York to-day is perhaps the most | vke-ndden city in the world. This is j not because Americans are essentially | vicious. They are not. The great markets for women in the .Middle Ages were the armies that ravaged the Continent. The great mar- | kets for women to-day are the labourers' ] camps and. the quarters of immigrants in great cities, where men live alone. There were ""white slaves" in America before immigration on a large scale began. But it was not _he traffic that we have had for more than half a century now, since New York became the clearing-house for the supply of the New World. As far back as 15.57 the police of New Y/ork canvassed 2.000 of the 6.000 unfortunates then s-n-pposed to be in the city. Of these women, more than three-fifths were foreign horn, at least three-quarters were of foreign birth or parentage, and most significant fact of all, more than one-third of these 2.000 women had -been born in Ireland—a country noted, above all others, for the chastity of its women. ITALIANS. The Italians, strange to say, were not useful to the procurers. Although there are many Italian women listed among the unfortunate victims of the "whiteslavers,"' they have nearly all been imported from the home country, cheated into earning by the pasty-faced men with promises of marriage. The Italian mother in America guards her flock too j well to permit the "cadet" to ensnare them, as a general thing at any rate, i That, in itself, is suggestive. Urrmarried Italian women never come to America without their families. But it is a com- j mon tiring for the women of li?r_stern i Europe to come alone to seek their for- j tunes in tbe Western World. In the eld days the traffic, what there i was of it, in the United States was en- ] th-ely in the hands of women, but later ! the men joined in it. Then gradually, and bit by bit. the ; eo-trol shifted into the hind- of these ! Ee_- And grad_ally, bit by bit, it has ; shifted from their control to the control of other Mttie groups of men. politicians, ovraets of cheap hotels and bare, gamblers and men of no profession at all. This is the most sinister factor of all, the factor that has made the traffic most -_-gexo-_ in the United States, and ishi-h has resulted in the growth of a -ydra-h-aded political monster of licentious corruption, which the bravest efforts of reform have been nnable to slay. Bloated by success, the "cadets" of «»-East Side of New York formed themselves into bands of desperadoes, un-Bat-bed in Europe, by the Apaches ™Parie- They became handy tools for "STrnpt politicians about election time, cwnd be relied upon to "beat up'" timid Totem and to ferrorise doubtful districts, as w_a as to act as efficient and persistent "_epe_t_rs." They were not Americans in tie anthropological or physiological sense of the word. They were fkm-ed, low-browed, swarthy, "vicious itt-nan beasrte, half men, half animals, as lie the Apaches as two peas are like each other. AIEEBIftAN APACHES. They are the kind of men who have Spred in the scandal rising out of the -hooting of the gambler Rosenthal by agents of Police Lieutenant Becker. They *xc the kind of men who comprise the membership of the famous gangs of New rorfc, the "Kid Twist" gang, the Paul *K3ley gang, lhe "Monk" Eastman md others. They are pariahs and Ottkasi-. and it is largely through their -ffor_s and their organised syetem of proand selling women that the "white jzve" trade persists in its most hideous -onn to-dar.

In New York we have fought them for E£e years. We have had some slight *£ect upon them. Public sen-timem has been aroused more than once. But each tune public sentiment has become supine after the usual hectic flash, and the work "as all bad to be done over again. It is the ailiance between politics and the traffic which makes it so hard to down.