Laredo Weekly Times

From Wednesday's Daily.

WHITE SLAVERS BUSY.

According to recent reports, more than forty girls under 18 years of age have disappeared from their homes in Chicago within the last six weeks. That is an average of about one a day. Most of these girls are never heard of again, although occasionally one is located and returned to her home. What the fate of the others may be is only conjectured. The police of Chicago say these girls are kidnapped by an organized gang of white slavers. They are mostly girls of the working class and those who are employed in stores or small factories. They are induced to take auto rides, to attend a "high time" at some roadhouse, and then they disappear. In some cases, as that of yesterday, a girl is boldly picked up and carried away in broad daylight, the gangsters trusting to the lack of time to note their appearance, or the fear of the eyewitnesses to identify them. And if the scoundrels are arrested, there is always the professional bail bond syndicate to secure their release and the lawyer of shady repute to defend them, if the case ever comes to trial, which is rare indeed. Meanwhile, the girls do not want to return home after being kept in slavery for a while. They become outcasts. They are ashamed to go back to their people and finally they join the debased drug addicts of the underworld. Compared with Chicago's millions of population, one girl a day seems a small proportion. But if one girl—not forty or 365—were to be menaced by a wild beast, the entire police force would turn out and kill the jungle denizen at sight. And every citizen would lend his aid to end the menace. The case is different, however. The white slavers are backed up by their patrons: they in turn are backed up by the men in high position who make a fortune out of this terrible traffic, and the police are either warned "hands off" or are paid to close their eyes to the "protected" business of kidnapping young girls. The traffic in Europe is age old. It existed in the times of the Caesars and both Nero and Tiberius had their gangs of kidnappers who kept the royal libertines supplied with some new girls daily. But it never thrived in America until the foreign element to whom the traffic was so well known as to have an established name came in and overwhelmed the native born element in some of our large cities. The people engaged in this traffic are all rotten to a man if they can be called men or foreign-born or of the first generation born in this country. They wear the shoe of men, but that is the only thing that distinguishes them from the brute beasts. That, and the revolver they carry on, for no animal except man would engage in such a business. Bit by bit the traffic has grown until it has reached into the homes of respectable people and made their daughters the victims of the most fiendish traffic that ever was conducted anywhere. Apparently no girl is safe in Chicago from such attacks unless she is accompanied by those who are ready and able to protect her. It may be that some of the police would offer protection if called upon by the victim when kidnapped, but apparently there are no police about when these assaults occur. Some of the victims are in a certain sense to blame, for they accept the attentions of strangers and place themselves in danger by going to questionable places. But still, the girls are entitled to protection, even against their own foolishness, and in the case of those who are boldly carried off in broad daylight, it would seem that the city owes them some defense. Some day a terrible reckoning is going to be paid by those responsible for these conditions, for all Chicago is not immoral.