Cabmen sometimes are known to drive girls to wrong addresses and act as agents for the mistresses of brothels, receiving money rewards, of course, if the ruse is successful.
In every possible guise of respectability these procurers and procuresses are going about seeking for attractive and juvenile women. They must have youth in their business, for men demand it.
Since death flows with a rapid current through the streets of shame, and youth and beauty soon fade, others must be found to fill up the ranks for this lucrative business.
Thus the procession goes on and on from the highest grade of bawdy house down, down, down to the basest hovels, and to the pauper's grave. Men force this upon womankind!
In order to make their houses luxurious, the brothel keepers must spend large sums of money, and must of course retain the most innocent and beautiful young girls to insure popularity with their customers. If a "madame" is adroit she gets her live stock largely into her debt, or, as the girls express it, "their trunks are nailed to the floor". Often the very clothes on the girls backs, and the ornaments they wear, are owned by the proprietress, whose highest interest it is to have them appear luxurious. When they cease to be a sufficient source of revenue they are kicked out with little grace.
"People in Europe speak with indignation of the traffic in negroes. It would be just as well if they would open their eyes to what is going on much nearer throughout the whole of Europe, especially in Germany and Austria, where the exportation of white slaves is carried on on a large scale.
A terrible picture is presented to us of the enforced movement to and fro upon the face of the earth of these youthful victims of human cruelty.
Numbers are embarked at Hamburg, whose destination is South America, Bahia, and Eio de Janeiro. The greater number are probably engaged for Montevideo and Buenos Ayres; others are sent by the Straits of Magellan to Valparaiso.
Other cargoes are sent to North America, some being forwarded through England, others direct. The competition which the traders meet with when they land sometimes constrains them to go farther ahead; they are found, therefore, descending the Mississippi with their cargoes to New Orleans and Texas. Others are taken on to California.
"In the market of California they are sorted, and thence taken to provision the different localities on the coast as far as Panama. Others are sent from the New Orleans market to Cuba, the Antilles, and Mexico. Others are taken from Bohemia, Germany, and Switzerland across the Alps to Italy, and thence farther south to Alexandria and Suez, and eastward to Bombay, Calcutta, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Shanghai.
The Russian official houses of vice draw their slaves in a great measure from Eastern Prussia, Pomerania, and Poland. The most important Russian station is Riga; it is there that the traders of St.
Petersburg and Moscow sort and get ready their cargoes for Nijni Novgorod, and from this latter place cargoes are sent on to the more distant towns of Siberia. At Tschita a young German was found who had been sold and resold in this manner".
The outcast class is recruited from women under the age of twenty one; and one rescue worker has said, "The last 'strange woman' I had to deal with was aged seven years". She could be used for the sexual perverts.
The children of the poor are forced to go out early in life to work, and in their ignorance and immaturity the very qualities that are preyed upon to their hurt they are no match for the scheming destroyer. Girlhood, not mature womanhood, is devoted to this industry, and, as employees, they are too often subject to the control of men who prove anything but their friends and protectors.
If a woman has fallen from virtue there are a score of influences which prevent her rising again. Until lately, society has not been represented by any powerful organizations aiming to reform and lift up the wounded women; but Christian heroes and heroines none other have of late actively begun the life saving work, and have shown a chivalry only possible to the disciples of Jesus, which far surpasses the romantic exploits of paper heroes.
There is a something about the visage and the gait of a woman who has been degraded which hints at her shame, so that her countenance is against her, her own sex is against her, and men are against her. It is because she is an outcast.