W.C.T.U. CONGRESS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXV, Issue 16493, 7 March 1914, Page 12

W.C.T.U. CONGRESS.

THE WHITE SLAVE TRAFFIC. [Per Press Association.) GISBORNE, March 6. The outstanding feature of to-day’s session of the 'Women’s Christian Temperance Union was an address by Mrs Field, of Nelson, on tho " White Slave Traffic.” “ I wonder,” said Mrs Field, “does the history of tho world hold anything worse? In all we read of its savagery and cannibalism, its brutalities and inhumanities, can anything equal tho white slave traffic of this twentieth century? After two thousand years of Christianity, in the most Christian country of the world thousands and thousands of young girls are stolen, and bought and sold into the most unlawful slavery of which the world has ever heard. Young and often refined, delicately nurtured girls are entrapped and held in bondage so horrible and so degrading that they can never again hold up their heads. A suggestion will como before us in the form of a resolution from the Nelson _ Union asking us to consider the advisability of appointing a superintendent for this subject,' to gather information and also to suggest preventive measures. Whatever is decided on I hope no woman will go from this Convention feeling that this is a thing that does not concern her. It concerns us all, ami we have it on fairly good authority that already this traffic has reached our shores, that over twenty girls have disappeared.” Mrs Field road the following extract from a letter she had received : “ Yes, girls are being stolen from New Zealand in connection with this infamous traffic. One of their agents pu-porting to be with .a ‘company’ married a girl recently in the Bay of Islands and that is the last that has been seen or heard of her. Frankton Junction seems to be the hot place. A man and - bis wife in that district are on tho track of girls. There have been eases in Auckland that leave scarcely a shadow of doubt, but it is extremely difficult to trace the ‘ cadets ’ and so one can do but little publicly.”