Three men went out one summer night, No care had they nor aim, And dined and drank--"Ere we go home We"ll have," they said, "a game."
Three girls began that summer night, A life of endless shame; And went through drink, disease and death, As swift as racing flame.
Lawless and homeless, foul they died; Rich, loved, and praised the men; But when they all shall meet with G.o.d, And Justice speaks--What then?
--Stopford A. Brooke.
E. A. B.
CHAPTER x.x.x.
HELEN CHAMBERS, SOME OTHER GIRLS AND "DAISY."
This is the story of Helen Chambers as told in a special dispatch from Kansas City, Missouri, to the Republican of Joliet, Illinois, and published in that newspaper August 5, 1909. Drink, drugs and debauchery hurried this winsome and respected girl to her coffin before nineteen years had pa.s.sed over her head. She is one of thousands who perish similarly every year in this beautiful land of churches and colleges.
FIRST DRINK SENDS GIRL TO HER RUIN.
Died a Drug Fiend.
Kansas City, Mo., Aug. 5.--On last New Year"s eve Helen Chambers, daughter of a respected family of Aurora, a girl not yet 18 years old and still a student in the high school, with a girl companion went to Chicago. There in a cafe Helen Chambers took her first drink. She took several drinks, and before the night was over was enjoying to the fullest the fascinations of a life that she had never known before.
After a lapse of several months Helen Chambers died at the general hospital this morning of a reaction following an operation. Her system had been too weakened by dissipation to recover from the shock. A mental and physical wreck, she had gone to the hospital in the vain hope of relief.
Lives Two Weeks on Absinthe.
Within seven months Helen Chambers, the simple Aurora girl crowded events into her life that would have been good measure for as many years. From the simple drinks that she indulged in on her first night, which marked the pa.s.sing of the old year, she went in for the stronger ones. For two weeks prior to being taken to the general hospital she virtually lived on absinthe, and at the last she began using morphine. A message to her mother, still living in Aurora, received no response and the girl, with her life slowly ebbing out, dozed restlessly through weary and tortuous minutes until the end came.
"I was just quitting high school," she said yesterday, when asked to tell her story. "On New Year"s eve I went to Chicago with another girl.
We met two boys and went to a cafe, where the New Year"s celebration was just starting. I didn"t know what it was like, but I found out.
Everything was in order, but I noticed that the girls seemed to drink as much as the men.
"Every one drank freely and soon it seemed as though every one was intoxicated. I took my first drink because every one seemed to be drinking and to be happy as well. The minutes pa.s.sed quickly and my brain grew numb.
Decides to Leave Her Home.
"I don"t know exactly how I got out of the cafe or the events leading up to it. But when I awoke the next morning I felt disgraced. That was the beginning, this is the ending of it.
"I then decided to run away from home. I decided it would be best. I came to Kansas City about April 1. I fell in with bad a.s.sociates, but finally married. I went to Dallas, Texas, with my husband. There we quarreled and he returned to Kansas City without me, but I soon followed. We made up here, but quarreled again and separated, and then I started anew, and the rest you know. I slept in a cheap rooming house last Sunday night. Monday I came here, hoping that there might be some relief, but it seems all up with me."
Both Miss Chambers and her parents are well known to many Joliet residents.
VETERAN MINISTER PROTESTS AGAINST THE VICE TRAFFIC.
The Rev. Dr. Duncan C. Milner, a veteran of the Civil War and a veteran in the wars of the Lord, published the following warning against the white slave traders in the same issue of the Joliet Republican, which told the tragic story of Helen Chambers.
Systematic Traffic in American Girls.
There has been much said in the public press about the "White Slave Traffic." Some people suppose that this is only one of the sensational inventions of yellow newspapers. There is undoubted evidence that young women are made articles of merchandise for vile purposes and that the business of supplying the market has a.s.sumed vast proportions.
The evil is by no means confined to the great city. While Chicago may be the headquarters for this traffic in human flesh in this part of the country, the smaller cities and the rural districts are involved. Edwin W. Sims, United States district attorney, has prosecuted a number of cases against the white slave traders and has also by his articles in "The Woman"s World" given to the public the results of investigation.
Mr. Sims said he had to "put aside personal feelings against appearing in print in connection with a subject so abhorrent," because he wanted fathers and mothers to know the perils of their daughters.
The extent of this evil can only be judged by the statements of such men as Mr. Sims, his a.s.sistant, Mr. Parkin, Clifford G. Roe, a.s.sistant state"s attorney of Cook County, and by a number of judges of the courts.
It has been said by investigators that 20 per cent voluntarily enter such a life, and that 80 per cent are led into it or are entrapped and sold. A small per cent of these are from foreign countries, but two-thirds of them are from our country and largely from farms and smaller towns and cities.
This systematic traffic in girls from American homes is carried on by male parasites, who live lives of luxury from their gains from this work as procurers and panderers. Women are also used to beguile other women for the trade.
These infamous creatures sometimes go as agents for books, gramophones, or machines. A woman now in the penitentiary said she canva.s.sed communities to sell toilet articles, for the purpose of finding girls.
Victims are looked for in railroad depots, and trains are watched for young women traveling alone.
General deliveries in post offices are watched where young women call for letters.
Recruiting stations are found in dance halls, in the cities and amus.e.m.e.nts parks with drinking places as attachments. Ice cream parlors and fruit stores sometimes serve as spiders" webs for entanglement.
The villainous men engaged in this work a.s.sume the guise of friends and sometimes will even talk to parents about getting fine positions for their girls. They are promised places in stores and laundries and in a number of cases theatrical positions, with large pay. Sometimes the procurer professes to have fallen in love and marries his victim and then sells her in the market. Several of the runaway marriages on the boat excursions and at summer resorts have been shown in the courts as of this fraudulent order.
After girls are caught in the net and drawn into a vile resort various plans are made to complete their ruin and hold them in absolute bondage.
Their street clothes are taken away, they are not allowed to write letters to their friends, and some are confined under lock and key.
Their owners keep them in debt for clothes, charged for at exorbitant prices, their wages are often paid to the parasite who has claims upon them and often these ties of debt and vice so fasten the bonds of slavery that they become broken and desperate. All of these things and many more unprintable details of these cases have been made matter of court record and show that this systematic traffic in American girls is not a fiction.
To show the tremendous financial gains of the traffic, one couple gave a bond of $26,500 and immediately ran away and forfeited their bond.
To combat this wide spread evil a National Vigilance Committee has been organized and a number of states including Illinois, have formed state societies, "to suppress traffic in women and girls." The Chicago Law and Order League, of which Arthur Burrage Farwell is president, has done active work in aiding to prosecute cases. Chicago has also The Midnight Mission of which R. S. Simmons, an attorney of high standing is president, and Rev. Ernest A. Bell is superintendent. Street meetings are held in the "Red-light" districts and work is done to spread the teachings as to the penalties of vice and the blessings of purity, and appeals are made from legal, sanitary, moral and spiritual motives for men and women to be saved.
Judge Mack of Chicago and Judge Ben Lindsey of the Juvenile Court of Denver, with noted physicians and ministers have spoken and written words of warning to parents and also have sent out pleas for wise instruction of children for their protection from the evils of s.e.xual vice.
It is not enough to simply prosecute the monsters who are part of this vile traffic, but there should be a campaign of education in all communities, city and county, with better laws and more strict enforcement of those we now have.
Duncan C. Milner.
Many ministers might well follow Dr. Milner"s example and write articles for the newspapers to whose columns they have access, instructing, warning and alarming parents and brothers of girls and the girls themselves against the enemies of every home in the world.
AMERICAN GIRLS IN MOST DANGER.
An able investigator, a lady whose name we cannot divulge, comparing virtuous immigrants and American girls, writes: