White Slaves | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Nov 24, 1909

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 36, No. 46.

“White Slaves”

A few days since, this term was applied to the case of two sisters who were found in evil resorts in Chicago. Arrests and investigation had disclosed the fact that the young women came from one of the smaller cities of Illinois. The older sister left home because she was dissatisfied. After some experience in Chicago she influenced her sixteen-year-old sister to join her, who claimed that she left home because her mother “did not treat her right.” Both were called “white slaves” in the newspaper account of the incident. But the judge before whom the girls were brought was of the opinion that this kind of slavery called for punishment of the victims as well as of the young men involved in the case, and he sent the younger to a reform school, which has locked doors and barred windows.

And the judge was right. These girls were “white slaves” simply and solely because they volunteered to become such. They lived in a college town, full of churches, Sabbath-schools, and wholesome influences. The mother who “did not treat them right” probably objected to their loitering around the railroad stations or staying out until midnight. She also, no doubt, thought it better for them to keep in good company. The daughters resented such restraint, and it was not difficult to slip into a train and land in Chicago. Once in the great city, it was easier to fall into evil surroundings than to do honest work. To call these girls white slaves is to wrest language from its ordinary and reliable use.

But it is to be feared that this is the beginning or history of the greater part of the “white slavery” of which we now hear so much. Recruits for this kind of slavery land in Chicago every day. Evil resorts are continually supplied with them. They come of their own free will, and they come because they have been lurking in the shadows of the streets of their home towns when they ought to have been at home in bed. Hence, the “white slave” evil will not be cured simply by arresting the keepers of evil resorts, altho the more such offenders are arrested the better. The remedy must begin further back. It must be applied to the moral life of the smaller cities and towns which furnish so much of the population of the larger cities. There must be less scouting at Puritan morals, less rose-water treatment of sin in the pulpits, less criticism of parents who endeavor to be firm with their children, less punishing of teachers who try to restrain their pupils, less making the child “it” and the parent an old fogy, less of the idea that young America is bound to come out all right anyhow. For young America can get into the wrong place as easily as other flesh and blood.—Advance, Congregationalist.