ic that we have just been hearing about, and
the relation of that traffic to the public health, I would like in one
sentence to sum up a parallel between this white slave trade and the
black slave trade that continued from the time of the Colonies to the
memory of many of us present. I believe that we have not yet expiated
and paid the price of that slave trade and it may be many generations
yet before we pay for it. Blood flowing in rivers is a part of that
price, from the hearts of the noblest sons of America. This white slave
trade must be paid for in blood. Who are the primary victims? In most
cases, pure minded girls, ambitious to go out and earn a higher wage and
think they can send home wages to father and mother, and they fall into
these snares that are set for them.

[Illustration: DENOUNCING THE POLITICIANS WHO PROTECT THE DIVES

The author and his band of noble workers fighting the evil in the very
heart of the vice district]

[Illustration: JAMES BRONSON REYNOLDS

Special investigator for President Roosevelt]

But we must not stop there. These poor girls do not live over at the
most ten or fifteen years and a large proportion of them perhaps take
their own lives. But if you could see the line of men that I saw the
other night passing through one of these fifteen-cent lodging houses,
lined up as they passed through to take their couch for the night, where
over two hundred of these men passed by, and a large proportion of these
men showing ulcers and other superficial stigmata of the venereal
diseases! They represent the under world, the under dogs of society, the
men who are down and out, who years ago visited the houses of ill-fame
and got the disease and are now ekeing out their lives, hoping for the
end to come--many of them.

But we can look further for victims. I believe that only a small
proportion of the women who are in the houses of ill-fame--only a small
proportion--make their way there of their own volition, and that small
proportion are of the degenerate class who are born with a screw loose
somewhere. From their babyhood they who are born with this taint--and we
could, perhaps, trace that taint back--but born with that taint, they
gradually go into that life--but they make a small proportion. The rest
of them are either betrayed into that sort of a life, their lives ruined
because they trusted some man, or they are bartered into it through this
nefarious white slave traffic.

All le