To Suppress White Slavery

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 8, 1913

To Suppress White Slavery

A school is to be started in the city of Washington, D. C., for the purpose of educating men and women in the best methods of working against the white slave traffic and in reclaiming girls and women who have been caught in the trap of that great evil. The school will begin in May, and it is expected that similar schools will be started in other centers. This work will have the active support of officials of the United States government. At a meeting held in the Foundry M. E. Church, of Washington, Mr. Stanley M. Finch, special commissioner of the Department of Justice for the suppression of the white slave traffic, stated that within the past five years the department had secured the conviction of over 500 white-slavers, who had been given sentences to penal institutions aggregating 800 years. He also stated that there are no less than 25,000 men and women in the United States who are making a business of buying and selling girls and women for immoral purposes, and that in this country alone there are more than 250,000 women and girls in disorderly houses. It is proposed to establish, as an auxiliary to this educational institution, a National White Cross Society, whose members would pledge themselves to proper living and modesty in dress. Mr. Finch traced directly to the door of immodest dress a great deal of the vice and lewdness prevalent throughout the world. It is a terrible arraignment of modern society that in one country alone, and that a country of education and enlightenment and many churches, a quarter of a million women are turned aside from all that womanhood ought to stand for, and are thrown into the hopper of the monster vice mill that their bodies and souls may be turned into money for some one. There is no more heinous transaction than the selling of virtue for a price; and there is no crime that deserves more condign punishment than the crime of selling another against his will for such a business. If Sodom and Gomorrah deserved their punishment from the Almighty for their wicked lewdness, surely the Lord will not hide his anger forever against the nations and the cities that tolerate such a traffic.