Traffic In Souls Part 8

Alderman Kelly dropped his head, but gazed at Sawyer's grim face from beneath his heavy brows with a baleful intensity. Then he left the station house.

CHAPTER IV

WHAT THE DOCTOR SAID

Officer Bobbie Burke found the case at the Men's Night Court to be less difficult than his experience with Dutch Annie and her "friend." The magistrate disregarded the pleading of Alderman Kelly to show the "law-abiding" Morgan any leniency. The man was quickly bound over for investigation by the Grand Jury, upon the representations of Captain Sawyer, who went in person to look after the matter.

"This man will bear a strict investigation, Mr. Kelly, and I propose to hold him without bail until the session to-morrow. Your arguments are of no avail. We have had too much talk and too little actual results on this trafficking and cocaine business, and I will do what I can to prevent further delays."

"But, your honor, how about this brutal policeman?" began Kelly, on a new tack. "a.s.saulting a peaceful citizen is a serious matter, and I am prepared to bring charges."

"Bring any you want," curtly said the magistrate. "The officer was fully justified. If night-sticks instead of political pull were used on these gun-men our politics would be cleaner and our city would not be the laughing-stock of the rest of the country. Officer Burke, keep up your good work, and clean out the district if you can. We need more of it."

Burke stepped down from the stand, embarra.s.sed but happy, for it was a satisfaction to know that there were some defenders of the police. He espied Jimmie the Monk sitting with some of his a.s.sociates in the rear of the room, but this time he was prepared for trouble, as he left.

Consequently, there was none.

When he returned to the station house he was too tired to return to his room in the boarding-house where he lodged, but took advantage of the proximity of a cot in the dormitory for the reserves.

Next day he was so white and f.a.gged from the hard duty that Captain Sawyer called up Doctor MacFarland, the police surgeon for the precinct.

When the old Scotchman came over he examined. Burke carefully and shook his head sternly.

"Young man," said he, "if you want to continue on this work, remember that you have just come back from a hospital. There has been a bad shock to your nerves, and if you overdo yourself you will have some trouble with that head again. You had better ask the Captain for a little time off--take it easy this next day or two and don't pick any more fights."

"I'm not hunting for trouble, doctor. But, you know, I do get a queer feeling--maybe it is in my head, from that brick, but it feels in my heart--whenever I see one of these low scoundrels who live on the misery of their women. This Jimmie the Monk is one of the worst I have ever met, and I can't rest easy until I see him landed behind the bars."

"There is no greater curse to our modern civilization than the work of these men, Burke. It is not so much the terrible lives of the women whom they enslave; it is the disease which is scattered broadcast, and carried into the homes of working-men, to be handed to virtuous and unsuspecting wives, and by heredity to innocent children, visiting, as the Bible says, 'the iniquities of the fathers unto the third and the fourth generation.'"

The old doctor sat down dejectedly and rested his chin on his hand, as he sat talking to Burke in the rear room of the station house.

"Doctor, I've heard a great deal about the white slave traffic, as every one who keeps his ears open in the big city must. Do you think the reports are exaggerated?"

"No, my boy. I've been practicing medicine and surgery in New York for forty years. When I came over here from Scotland the city was no better than it should have been. But it was an _American_ city then--not an 'international melting pot,' as the parlor sociologists proudly call it. The social evil is the oldest profession in the world; it began when one primitive man wanted that which he could not win with love, so he offered a bribe. And the bribe was taken, whether it was a carved amulet or a morsel of game, or a new fas.h.i.+on in furs.

And the woman who took it realized that she could escape the drudgery of the other women, could obtain more bribes for her loveless barter ... and so it has grown down through the ages."

The old Scotchman lit his pipe.

"I've read hundreds of medical books, and I've had thousands of cases in real life which have taught me more than my medical books. What I've learned has not made me any happier, either. Knowledge doesn't bring you peace of mind on a subject like this. It shows you how much greed and wickedness and misery there are in the world."

"But, doctor, do you think this white slave traffic is a new development? We've only heard about it for the last two or three years, haven't we?"

The physician nodded.

"Yes, but it's been there in one form or another. It caused the ruin of the Roman Empire; it brought the downfall of mediaeval Europe, and whenever a splendid civilization springs up the curse of s.e.x-bondage in one form or another grows with it like a cancer."

"But medicine is learning to cure the cancer. Can't it help cure this?"

"We are getting near the cure for cancer, maybe near the cure for this cancer as well. s.e.x-bondage was the great curse of negro slavery in the United States; it was the thing which brought misery on the South, in the carpet-bag days, as a retribution for the sins of the fathers.

We cured that and the South is bigger and better for that terrible surgical operation than it ever was before. But this latest development--organized capture of ignorant, weak, pretty girls, to be held in slavery by one man or by a band of men and a few debauched old hags, is comparatively a new thing in America. It has been caused by the swarms of ignorant emigrants, by the demand of the lowest cla.s.ses of those emigrants and the Americans they influence for a satisfaction of their l.u.s.t. It is made easy by the cra.s.s ignorance of the country girls, the emigrant girls, and by the drudgery and misery of the working girls in the big cities."

"I saw two cases in Night Court, Doc, which explained a whole lot to me--drunken fathers and brutal husbands who poisoned their own wives--it taught that not all the blame rests upon the weakness of the women."

"Of course it doesn't," exclaimed MacFarland impetuously. "It rests upon Nature, and the way our boasted Society is mistreating Nature.

Woman is weaker than man when it comes to brute force; you know it is force which does rule the world when you do get down to it, in government, in property, in business, in education--it is all survival of the strongest, not always of the fittest. A woman should be in the home; she can raise babies, for which Nature intended her. She can rule the world through her children, but when she gets out to fight hand to hand with man in the work-world she is outcla.s.sed. She can't stand the physical strain thirty days in the month; she can't stand the starvation, the mistreatment, the battling that a man gets in the world. She needs tenderness and care, for you know every normal woman is a mother-to-be--and that is the most wonderful thing in the world, the most beautiful. When the woman comes up against the stone wall of compet.i.tion with men her weakness a.s.serts itself. That's why good women fall. It's not the 'easiest way'--it's just forced upon them.

As for the naturally bad women--well, that has come from some trait of another generation, some weakness which has been increased instead of cured by all this twisted, tangled thing we call modern civilization."

The doctor sighed.

"There are a lot of women in the world right now, Burke, who are fighting for what they call the 'Feminist Movement'. They don't want homes; they want men's jobs. They don't want to raise their babies in the old-fas.h.i.+oned way; they want the State to raise them with trained nurses and breakfast food. They don't see anything beautiful in home life, and cooking, and loving their husbands. They want the lecture platform (and the gate-receipts); they want to run the government, they want men to be breeders, like the drones in the beehive, and they don't want to be tied to one man for life. They want to visit around. The worst of it is that they are clever, they write well, they talk well, and they interest the women who are really normal, who only half-read, only half-a.n.a.lyze, and only get a part of the idea! These normal women are devoting, as they should, most of their energies to the normal things of woman life--children, home, charity, and neighborliness. But the clever feminist revolutionists are giving them just enough argument to make them dissatisfied. They flatter the domestic woman by telling her she is not enough appreciated, and that she should control the country. They lead the younger women away from the old ideals of love and home and religion; in their place they would subst.i.tute selfishness, loose morals, and will change the chivalry, which it has taken men a thousand years to cultivate, into brutal methods, when men realize that women want absolute equality. Then, should such a condition ever be accepted by society in general, we will do away with the present kind of social evil--to have a tidal wave of l.u.s.t."

Bobbie listened with interest. It was evident that Doctor MacFarland was opening up a subject close to his heart. The old man's eyes sparkled as he continued.

"You asked about the traffic in women, as we hear of it in New York.

Well, the only way we can cure it is to educate the men of all cla.s.ses so that for reasons moral, sanitary, and feelings of honest pride in themselves they will not patronize the market where souls are sought.

This can't be done by pa.s.sing laws, but by better books, better ways of amus.e.m.e.nt, better living conditions for working people, so that they will not be 'driven to drink' and what follows it to forget their troubles. Better factories and kinder treatment to the great number of workmen, with fairer wage scale would bring nearer the possibility of marriage--which takes not one, but two people out of the danger of the gutter. Minimum wage scales and protection of working women would make the condition of their lives better, so that they would not be forced into the streets and brothels to make their livings.

"Why, Burke, a magistrate who sits in Night Court has told me that medical investigation of the street-walkers he has sentenced revealed the fact that nine of every ten were diseased. When the men who foolishly think they are good 'sports' by debauching with these women learn that they are throwing away the health of their wives and children to come, as well as risking the contagion of diseases which can only be bottled up by medical treatment but never completely cured; when it gets down to the question of men buying and selling these poor women as they undoubtedly do, the only way to check that is for every decent man in the country to help in the fight. It is a man evil; men must slay it. Every procurer in the country should be sent to prison, and every house of ill fame should be closed."

"Don't you think the traffic would go on just the same, doctor? I have heard it said that in European cities the authorities confined such women to certain parts of the city. Then they are subjected to medical examination as well."

"No, Burke, segregation will not cure it. Many of the cities abroad have given that up. The medical examinations are no true test, for they are only partially carried out--not all the women will admit their sinful ways of life, nor submit to control by the government. The system prevails in Paris and in Germany, and there is more disease there than in any other part of Europe. Men, depending upon the imaginary security of a doctor's examination card, abandon themselves the more readily, and caution is thrown to the winds, with the result that a woman who has been O.K.'d by a government physician one day may contract a disease and spread it the very next day. You can depend upon it that if she has done so she will evade the examination next time in order not to interfere with her trade profits. So, there you are. This is an ugly theme, but we must treat it scientifically.

"You know it used to be considered vulgar to talk about the stomach and other organs which G.o.d gave us for the maintenance of life. But when folks began to realize that two-thirds of the sickness in the world, contagious and otherwise, resulted from trouble with the stomach, that false modesty had to give way. Consequently to-day we have fewer epidemics, much better general health, because men and women understand how to cure many of their own ailments with prompt action and simple methods.

"The vice problem is one which reaps its richest harvest when it is protected from the sunlight. Sewers are not pleasant table-talk, but they must be watched and attended by scientific sanitary engineers. A cancer of the intestines is disagreeable to think about. But when it threatens a patient's life the patient should know the truth and the doctor should operate. Modern society is the patient, and death-dealing s.e.x crimes are the cancerous growth, which must be operated upon. Whenever we allow a neighborhood to maintain houses of prost.i.tution, thus regulating and in a way sanctioning the evil, we are granting a sort of corporation charter for an industry which is run upon business methods. And business, you know, is based upon filling the 'demand,' with the necessary 'supply.' And the manufacturers, in this case, are the procurers and the proprietresses of these houses.

There comes in the business of recruiting--and hence the traffic in souls, as it has aptly been called. No, my boy, government regulation will never serve man, nor woman, for it cannot cover all the ground.

As long as women are reckless, lazy and greedy, yielding to temporary, half-pleasant sin rather than live by work, you will find men with low ideals in all ranks of life who prefer such illicit 'fun' to the sweetness of wedlock! Why, Burke, s.e.x is the most beautiful thing in the world--it puts the blossoms on the trees, it colors the b.u.t.terflies' wings, it sweetens the songs of the birds, and it should make life worth living for the worker in the trench, the factory hand, the office toiler and the millionaire. But it will never do so until people understand it, know how to guard it with decent knowledge, and sanctify it morally and hygienically."

The old doctor rose and knocked the ashes out of his briar pipe. He looked at the eager face of the young officer.

"But there, I'm getting old, for I yield to the melody of my own voice too much. I've got office hours, you know, and I'd better get back to my pillboxes. Just excuse an old man who is too talkative sometimes, but remember that what I've said to you is not my own old-fas.h.i.+oned notion, but a little boiled-down philosophy from the writings of the greatest modern scientists."

"Good-bye, Doctor MacFarland. I'll not forget it. It has answered a lot of questions in my mind."

Bobbie went to the front door of the station house with the old gentleman, and saluted as a farewell.

"What's he been chinning to you about, Burke?" queried the Captain.

"Some of his ideas of reforming the world? He's a great old character, is Doc."

"I think he knows a lot more about religion than a good many ministers I've heard," replied Bobbie. "He ought to talk to a few of them."

"Sure. But they wouldn't listen if he did. They're too busy getting money to send to the heathens in China, and the n.i.g.g.e.rs in Africa to bother about the heathens and poor devils here. I'm pretty strong for Doc MacFarland, even though I don't get all he's talking about."

"Say, Burke, the Doc got after me one day and gave me a string of books as long as your arm to read," put in Dexter. "He seems to think a cop ought to have as much time to read as a college boy!"