nd to render assistance in case
of necessity.' This society is, in reality, an association of gamblers,
procurers and keepers of disorderly houses, organized for the purpose of
mutual protection in their business. Some of the cafes, restaurants and
other places conducted by the members are meeting places for those
engaged in the business of importation. The organization includes a
membership of about one hundred residents of New York City, and has
representatives and correspondents in various cities of the country,
notably in Pittsburg, Chicago and San Francisco."

The commission has not in the report given very much of the detail of
the working of this Association, but Collier's Weekly in speaking of the
dismissal of General Bingham as police commissioner of New York, says:
"He has been police commissioner for three and a half years. Under his
strong, rough hand the disorderly houses which flourished so
prosperously three years ago, imprisoning helpless immigrant women, have
gone out of business. There were one hundred of them running at full
speed between 23rd and 69th Street and 6th and 9th Avenue. There are
scarcely twenty now and they are only operating for old time patrons.
The stranger inside the city walls will not find the easy welcome for
his licentiousness which 1906 and 1907 could have given him. The
profession of ruining, selling, and renting out girls has been reduced.
That organization known as the New York Independent Benevolent
Association has had its wings clipped. The gentlemen who run this
association have been checked from their vile trade by the strict regime
of Bingham. For two years they have had to turn to honest or semi-honest
professions instead of squeezing blood money out of little foreign
girls, raped by their agents and locked up in their chain of disorderly
houses in the old and new Tenderloin. They have almost forgotten the
dark tragedies hidden just a fathom underground in their burial lot in
Washington Cemetery--the poor murdered women, the infants one span
long."

While the immigration report and Collier's Weekly enter into little
detail concerning the ramifications of this Association, it is not
because they have no further information regarding it, but because many
of the details are so vile they could not be written.

It can be said, however, that the 126 members of this Association have
operated in Newark, N. J., Philadelphia, in Pittsburg, in Chicago, St.
Louis, New Orleans, S