TRAFFICKING IN HUMAN SOULS
By Editor
DURING recent days, the New York papers have been describing a beautiful young woman about twenty years of age who suddenly dropped out of sight. Her picture has appeared in the papers, so that individuals who might chance to see her could identify her. Her parents, it is needless to say, are both frenzied and heartbroken. Presumably this young woman of refinement has been seized by one of those venomous creatures in human form who make their living by capturing girls and selling them to a life of infamy in the brothels. Every year, there are thousands of young women who drop out of sight in this way, and are never heard from again. The question has been agitated; and strong men and women, in strong organizations, have endeavored to break up these dens of white slave traffickers, and to make it safe for our young women to traverse our city streets. But regardless of all these efforts, the infamous work goes on. The men and women engaged in that sort of traffic can make money out of it, and they are so calloused that their hearts cannot be touched by the piteous cries or the suffering of an innocent girl who is dragged from a home of refinement into a life of such indescribable debasement and horrors. God has said that the love of money would make the last days perilous (see 2 Tim. 3: 1-3); and when we think of the combinations of men that are promoting war in order that they may make money; that are promoting the liquor traffic, with all its degrading, degenerating tendencies, in order that they may make money; and of the other men who are even trafficking in the lives and the chastity of innocent girls in order that they may make money; who are willing, through graft, robbery, murder, and all the rest of the criminal and fraudulent methods of the time, to crush out every sacred tie of life just merely to make money,—who can doubt that we are in the time that is indeed perilous because of the satanic greed and sensuality that have gripped the souls of men? How can men who recognize the conditions in our world at the present time think that it is growing better? Why can11they not see that God's word is true when it says that "evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse"? A just and merciful God cannot look much longer upon such Heaven-daring infamies as the traffic in women and the other crimes that are cursing this generation. He must soon arise to strike it down; and happy will be the men and women in that time who have foreseen what was coming, and have forsaken their evils, and who stand with God and Christ upon the side of righteousness, mercy, and truth.