Different still is the work of a man who as an agent lures a girl into a house where she is overpowered, or who, by false stories of profit and perhaps promise of marriage, seduces the girl and then delivers her in her misfortune into the hands of a keeper of a house of prostitution. Work of this kind is done sometimes for sums as low as $15. This, again, may be quite different from a sale into practical slavery, because the girl may in many cases leave the house if she can make a friend outside or has enough independence of disposition to assert herself.

In the investigation of Japanese procurers it was learned that Japanese girls could be secured in Seattle to be taken to houses in Chicago or New York for $400 each, with the understanding that if several girls were taken at one time the price would be somewhat less. One Japanese procurer wished to have a specific contract, and the girls were to understand that they must work out the prices that were paid for them. Japanese girls are frequently placed in houses where their customers are men of any nation. Chinese girls, on the contrary, with very rare exceptions, are placed in houses patronized only by Chinese. Moreover, owing in part to the small number of Chinese women in the United States, and in part to the difficulty of importing Chinese women on account of the Chinese-exclusion act, the prices paid for them range from $2,000 to $3,000, or even more. It is but natural that the importer or purchaser, as a consequence, takes all precautions to lessen the likelihood of his financial loss.

The success or failure of the business depends in large measure upon whether there is a rigid or a lax enforcement of the law. When in New York City, under Police Commissioner Bingham, a determined effort was made to close the houses, the complaints throughout the tenderloin and other disreputable districts were many and loud. Business was poor, fines were frequent and heavy. In consequence, girls by the hundreds were taken or sent by their exploiters to other cities. The agents of the Commission saw in Chicago, Salt Lake City, Ogden, and elsewhere, girls of whom they had not known in New York, and who stated that they had left New York on account of the poor business there. When the rigid enforcement of the law relaxes, the news spreads with wonderful rapidity, and the statement that the city is wide open" means the flocking back of this element from other States, and an increased tendency toward the violation of the laws of importation.

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In shifting girls from one State or one city to another, it is customary for the disorderly-house keeper who is to receive a girl to advance her transportation. The girl has then to make money enough to pay back this loan and her own expenses. If the girl has a pimp, the balance must be sent to him.

All concerned in the exploitation of immigrant women under the system above described seem to share the profits, except the immigrant girl herself. Although she earns the money at enormous cost to her, she is rarely able to retain anything.

Briefly stated, the distribution of the profits derived from the services of alien women in the United States, in violation of section 3 of the immigration act, is directly to the procurer, importer, purchaser, pimp, or disorderly-house keeper, the receivers of fines and license fees, and sometimes the police, and indirectly to the landlords,

boarding-house keepers, restaurant keepers, the police, saloon keepers, physicians, and keepers of other establishments.

During the month of October, 1908, over $5,000 was paid into the police fund in Seattle, Washington, as fines by prostitute womeneach woman being fined $10 a month. A large proportion of these women were aliens. The same custom obtains in many cities.

As a result of the work of this Commission in its investigation into violations of section 3 of the immigration act, fines and forfeited bail were paid into the United States Treasury, through the United States district attorney at Chicago, amounting to $125,000. The pity of it is that the money to pay the fines had been earned not by the worst criminals but by their exploited victims.

INTERSTATE AND LOCAL CONDITIONS.

The importation and exploitation of alien women is doubtless affected very materially by local conditions, economic and administrative. The agents of the Commission learned, for example, that whereas formerly the city of Buffalo was a considerable center for the importation of women from Canada, under the existing administration the laws against the practice of prostitution were so rigorously enforced that that city was no longer a desirable port of entry. In consequence, when women were brought across from Canada at that port, they generally did not stop in the city but went immediately beyond to some interior point.

At the time of the Commission's investigation in New York it was almost impossible for the procurers to find a satisfactory place in any house of prostitution for a woman imported in violation of section 3. The reason for this was that many houses were closed because of raids and fear of investigation; that those still remaining open were run on a small scale, so that the demand for girls was light; and that the houses, especially those where aliens were formerly placed, were continually raided. The effect of this activity upon the houses was that many of the most notorious keepers, especially Frenchmen, had left the city, and were doing business in the cities of the West, where the dangers were not so great; that nearly all of the alien women brought to New York were living with their pimps instead of in disorderly houses; and that a large proportion of these aliens were soliciting on the street rather than remaining in the houses. All of these practices tended to affect quite decidedly the custom of importation, if not its extent.

The continual raiding of the houses in the so-called "tenderloin " and other well-known districts had beyond question scattered the practice of prostitution from these houses into tenement houses and small apartment houses throughout the city.

Some of the clubs at which the procurers stopped on their travel to and from Europe still remained open. One of the best-known was raided as a result of the investigation made by the Commission, and several hundred letters were found there addressed to procurers and pimps throughout the country, letters which had apparently come from all parts of the world. Most of them mentioned facts which indicated that the business between the correspondents constituted a violation of the immigration law.

It is, of course, difficult to prove by specific cases the relation of the police to this traffic and to establish by specific evidence

fact generally accepted that the girls and disorderly-house keepers regularly pay the police for protection; but high police officials, prosecuting officers, and social workers in all quarters assert that in many, if not all, of our large cities much corruption of this kind exists. Most of the girls questioned on this point by the Commission's agents said that payments were made to the police to insure their protection from too frequent arrests. It is, of course, a violation of the law for the police to demand or receive such money; but, according to the persons interviewed, the woman who did not pay for protection was frequently arrested, while the woman who did pay was only arrested when the policeman must "make good " at headquarters. When the women understood this situation they did not complain. When a police officer, a plain-clothes man, was shifted, he naturally felt obliged to make arrests. Under the circumstances he would, of course, arrest the women to whom he was under no obligations. When a house of prostitution was raided, the police usually did not bring the woman practicing prostitution to court. They arrested instead the woman ostensibly managing the house. The real proprietor is comparatively seldom found within reach of arrest, although he pays the fine and furnishes bail.

The women arrested for practicing prostitution or for soliciting on the streets and brought into the magistrate's court in New York City soon learned to know, or their men did for them, the temper of each magistrate. For example, they knew that one magistrate would release all women without fines, another would place them on probation, a third would send them to the workhouse, a fourth would fine them $2, and a fifth would invariably fine them $10. It was a matter of common knowledge when a certain magistrate would be sitting. The severe judge had few cases-women paid more to the police or kept out of sight when he was holding court-and the lenient one had his court room filled every evening. In the latter case women were arrested frequently, sometimes twice in one month. It was a common occurrence for women to be placed on probation, even though they had previously served several times in the workhouse. So quickly were cases disposed of that many women within ten minutes after being brought into the court were placed on probation and had disappeared, not to be heard from until the next time they were arrested. Sometimes from 50 to 100 of these cases were disposed of in one night.

RESULTS OF THE TRAFFIC.

This importation of women for immoral purposes has brought into the country evils even worse than those of prostitution. In many instances the professionals who come here have been practically driven from their lives of shame in Europe on account of their loathsome diseases; the conditions of vice obtaining there have even lowered the standard of degradation of prostitution formerly customary here. Unnatural practices are brought largely from continental Europe, and the ease and apparent certainty of profit have led thousands of our younger men, usually those of foreign birth or the immediate sons of foreigners, to abandon the useful arts of life to undertake the most accursed business ever devised by man. This traffic has intensified all the evils of prostitution which, through the infection of innocent wives and children by dissipated husbands and

through the mental anguish and moral indignation aroused by marital unfaithfulness, has done more to ruin homes than any other single

cause.

Of those women who are already prostitutes when they enter the country, a very large percentage are diseased.

Those who are not physically diseased when they enter the life usually soon become so. This means suffering and a shortening of life to them and the transmission of the disease to others. The best experts in this field have no hesitancy in saying that as a source of physical degeneration alone these diseases are to be guarded against even more than tuberculosis, typhoid, or any other of the infectious diseases. While these diseases are common with all prostitutes, those coming from abroad contrary to law are new sources of infection.

The economic loss, from this shortening of life and from the expenditure of the large sums of money in all the multifarious ways of vice, which can not be considered even indirectly productive economically but which rather are mere waste from practically every point of view, is great.

It is unnecessary to comment on the ruinous influence of prostitution upon domestic and social life, or on its horrible effects which come alike to the guilty and the innocent. But the horrors of the evil are accentuated and its practices made more terrible in their results by the importation of women for purposes of prostitution, with its attendant system of brutal degeneracy and cruel slavery. The women who come into the country innocent, and are placed in this business, either against their will or otherwise, enter upon a life of such physical ills and moral degradation that relatively few find it. possible to regain any status of respectability or comfortable living. Here and there the agents of the Commission have found one and another who have been rescued from the slavery, others who have gladly abandoned the life, and a few who have married, but these cases are rare. The usual history is one of increased degradation until death.

Both from the investigation of the Commission and from those of the Bureau of Immigration, it is clear that there is a beginning, at any rate, of a traffic in boys and men for immoral purposes. The same measures employed for the restriction of the traffic in women should be applied with even greater rigidity, if possible, in the case of men.

The need of checking this importation is urgent. The vilest practices are brought here from continental Europe, and beyond doubt there have come from imported women and their men the most bestial refinements of depravity. The toleration with which continental races look upon these evils is spreading in this country an influence perhaps even more far-reaching in its degradation than the physical effects which inevitably follow the evils themselves.

SOME TANGIBLE RESULTS OF THE INVESTIGATION.

It has been a source of satisfaction to the Commission to know that while the purpose of the investigation was primarily to secure a knowledge of conditions on which to base legislation, nevertheless it was possible so to use these facts that justice could be meted out to

some of the nefarious offenders and results be secured of substantial value in correcting evil conditions which had been discovered. In many instances when information had been secured it was necessary to delay the presentation of the facts to the prosecuting officers in order to prevent the checking of the progress of the investigation which would have resulted from a discovery of the Commission's agents by the criminals. Later, however, both to test the reliability of the evidence secured and to bring offenders to justice as soon as it could properly be done, the evidence was laid before the proper officials in order that they might institute proceedings. In the city of New York one of the most unscrupulous and successful importers and harborers, as the result of information supplied by the Commission, plead guilty and was sentenced to prison, while several other cases were prosecuted by the district attorney, resulting in the breaking up of the houses and the discontinuance of the business, even though in two or three instances, in spite of favorable charges by the presiding judge, conviction was not secured on account of disagreement of the jury.

In Seattle a score or more of arrests were made and prosecutions instituted with which the Commission's agents had a more or less close connection, while in Chicago the United States district attorney, Edwin W. Sims, goes so far as to give credit to the agents of the Commission for the remarkable success of numerous prosecutions instituted by him on their information. In a letter to a member of the Commission under date of February 3, 1909, Mr. Sims says:

Information and data furnished us and the assistance given to us by the special agents of the Commission were invaluable. The cooperation of the Commission made possible the institution and successful prosecution of many of the cases brought in this district. I have always felt that without the aid which the Commission was able to give it would not have been possible for us to have accomplished what has been done.

An interesting fact in this connection is that in one case alone the district attorney collected in forfeited bail and fines enough money to pay twice over the cost of the Commission's entire investigation of the subject.