lished, some rich man may buy her for his first,
second, third or fourth wife. If she is homely some honest working man
may take her. Or she may sing or play an instrument and thereby add to
her earnings until she can buy her own freedom, if dissipation and
disease have not killed her first.

The mortgaged girls are often such as have sacrificed their own to their
family's honor, according to the Chinese and Japanese notion of filial
piety. The money thus advanced by the keeper is thought necessary to
rescue the girl's family or some member of it from calamity or ruin. One
Japanese man is quoted as saying that such sacrifice on a girl's part is
"Christ-like." He should hear the voice of Christ, saying of all these
sins, "which things I also hate." Revelation, 2:6.

YELLOW SLAVES IN AMERICA.

The terrible system of Chinese and Japanese brothel slavery has been
imported into San Francisco, Oakland, and other cities of California.
Americans and Europeans have invested money and devoted business ability
to this enormous iniquity, because it pays well. Apart from the horrors
of Chinatown, one thousand Japanese women are held in this form of
slavery in California. The San Francisco Chronicle said of this
statement: "There is not the slightest doubt of the truth of the
assertion, disreputable as it may seem."

The police will generally say after investigating, that these women are
willing to remain in their present condition. Doubtless this is true of
most of them, but they are slaves, none the less, literal and actual
slaves, bought and paid for and acknowledging the ownership. In a letter
of Abraham Lincoln, written before the war, he tells of a company of
negro slaves that he saw on a boat on the Ohio and he never saw such a
happy company of people in his life. When John Brown made his raid into
Virginia and captured 200,000 stands of arms at Harper's Ferry, he hoped
that the thousands of negro slaves in that region would join him and
fight for their freedom. He could only get six or eight negroes to join
him, and those at the point of the bayonet. One was shot rather than
seek his liberty. At the beginning of the Abolition movement a petition
from slaves was sent to Congress in favor of slavery! Women terrorized
by such laws as are quoted at the beginning of this chapter, and further
terrorized by all the brutal treatment and threats of the slave traders,
are not likely to say to the police that they desire liberty. B