671 



THE BOOK OF THE MONTH. 



THE WHITE SLAVE TRAFFIC AND ITS REMEDY.* 



The author of tliis remarkable book was a mother- 

 less child, brouglit up by a Quaker fa.ther, a sen- 

 sible, wideminded man, who was ready to answer 

 his little daughter's questions, training her mind and 

 inspiring her soul. He taught her that some abstract 

 questions were be\ond understanding ; the thing that 

 Ml ittered was "not to pretend to understand what 

 1 don't understand, and be always honest inside 

 \..urself whatever happens." Miss Addams. has set 

 herself to understand the Ancient Evil of prostitu- 

 tion, and especially that branch of it known as " the 

 white slave tratTic' that sheer human degratlation 

 on which a new conscience is being aroused. Her 

 book is an exposure of this foetid .sewer and the 

 sources which till it, together with a passionate 

 praver to her own and other countries to b«\Tr a 

 \.diant part in the crusade against this social e\i!. 



MISS ADD.AMS' QUALIFICATIONS TO SPEAK. 



Miss Addams was about thirty-two when .she 

 settled down in a Chicago slum, after her researches 

 in London and on the Continent for the best metliods 

 ' prfx'e'lure. 



Hull House was an old country house huilt for the 

 Hull familv, which now stands in Halstead-slreet, 

 Chicago, a street which is thirty-two miles in length. 

 The present King of the Belgians declared that he 

 '-id never seen such a street in all Europe. It is in 



1 • mid.st of a congeries of foreign colonies, the 

 Mveated centre of industrial Chicago. This was 

 the centre from which she gathered her facts, and 

 which, in this l>ook, she now presents to the world. 



WHY THE BOOK' WAS WRITTEN. 



The object of the brok is thus .set forth by Miss 

 Addams : — 



I venture to hope that 1 may also serve the need of 

 u rapiilly uroninn piililic when I .set dawn for ratioiKil 

 consicloriuioii tlic ti-iiiptations surrouiidiiifj nitiltitudcs 

 of young people, and when 1 a«senil)le, as Ih-kI I may, 

 thw many indication.^ of a new conscience, wliicJi in 

 various directions i.-* hlowly RatherinK strength, imd 

 which we may sohcrlv hope will at last Kiiccc.ssfully 

 array itself agaiii-Kt tliis incredihle'social wrong, an- 

 cient thoiiKli it may l>e. 



" In evry large city throughout the world," she 

 says, " tlionsand« of women are set a«idi> a.s outcasts 

 from decent soci<>ty that it is con.nidered an impro- 

 priety to speak tdie very word which designates them. 

 Lecky calls tliis typi' of woman ' the mast mournful 

 and the most awful figure in hi.story ' ; he siiy.s lliat 

 ' hIio remain.s. wlnle creeds and civilisation.s rise and 

 1 ill, the eternal sacrifico of humanity, blasted for the 

 ins of the pi-ople.' " 



nil', MISTORV OP A WHITE SLAVE. 



It will l>e well to Ix'gin with the history of a 

 ;;irl, which will give a good idea of the methods 



*'• A New rVin.Hciciicc and an Ancient Evil." By Mi»g 

 Jane Addams. (Macinillan. 4/6 net.) 



who carry on the white slave traffic. It 

 Iv illuminaliiig in its sheer human degr.ida- 



of those 

 is horril 

 tion : — 



Mario was a Uroton peasant girl at her convent 

 school when her parents took her away, at the age 

 of twelve, to send her to work in Paris. There was 

 just this excuse for them— they were as wretchedly 

 poor in pocket as in spirit. Slie worked as a scullion 

 and sent all her earnings home. Tiien one fine day a 

 smart gentleman made up to her in the street, and 

 offered lier an engagement in 'a theatrical troupe" 

 for -Vmerica. She went, tempted by the promises of 

 a golden harvest; and when she reached her destina- 

 tion found tliat she had been entrapped into a den 

 of prostitution. Slic was without friends, without 

 knowledge of the language, without a sou. More- 

 over, there was a heavy debt against her, the debt 

 for her passage money. Marie became a white slave. 

 She now earned fifty pounds a week, and had to give 

 it all to her employers. She was rescued at last and 

 married, though apparently to a poor man. The one 

 abiding loyalty of her life was to the distant home. 

 It waM discovered that when there was not enough 

 money to make good the remittance, she sneaked out; 

 from her husband's home to earn it by her old trade. 

 Thousands of girls trapped in this way are still trua 

 to loyalties of this kind. 



children's ignorance the slave trader's 

 opportunitv. 



The slave traders, with their network of agencies, 

 their countless subterfuges and methods of avoiding 

 obstruction, find their greate.st aid in the appalling 

 ignorance of the essentials of life amongst young 

 girls and boys. I'^fTicient education of the young 

 would do more than anything else to check this great 

 and shameful .sotMal evil. 



Miss -Addams holds that not tlie slave-de.ders 

 only are guilty, but the parents of the children them- 

 selves are wrong in their attitude of callous indiffer- 

 ence to entrenched' evils. In Chicago, the largest 

 woman's club in the city has established normal 

 courses in sex hygiene, attended both by teachers 

 and mothers; Germany has also led tiie way in this, 

 as in so many other educational movements. The 

 Bishop of I,ondo;i .some time ago gathered together 

 a number of influential people, and laid before them 

 his conviction that the root of the social evil lay in 

 so-called "parental modesty." 



LOW wages and UNEMPLOYMENT ALSO CAUSES. 



Miss .\ildams contends th.it in .\nieric.i, as in 

 I'lngland, another great factor in this crying evil is 

 the low rate of payment for labour and the long 

 intervals of unemployment wliich so often occur 

 under our present economic conditions, and amongst 

 other anecdotes she tells of tin- girl who first yielded 

 to temi)t.ition, when she had become utterly dis- 

 roiir.iged, because she hat! tried in vain for seven 

 months to save enough mone\ for a pair of sho<'s. 

 .She habitually spent two dollars a week for her 



