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HAUNTS OF THE WHITE SLAVE TRADER 71
All organisations which have for their
aim the uplifting and protection of girls
and women demand very especially our
sympathy and practical aid. It is quite
within reason to suppose that some of these
very girls who are now so happily working
might quietly have heen shipped off to some
house of infamy across the seas. These
things are happening every day.
The men
who trade in women do not go to the quarters
which are inhabited by the well-to-do and
the protected, they prowl about among those
who are poor and those about whom least
fuss would be made if they disappeared.
You can see the cunningness and devilry of
these creatures who try to sell human
bodies and souls. Then the girls who are
trapped, after drifting about from one place
to another, and sinking lower and lower, are
taken to those fearful hells of which we set
out to tell in this book the places where
they are sold to Chinese coolies and natives
of the lowest classes. The rich natives will
not look at them any more, once they are
old-looking and drunken and diseased.
Very few girls are taken direct to Singapore
or Hong-Kong for immediate use in the
native houses. They are not given over to
the coolies and the riff-raff of the population
until their monetary value has diminished
very sadly. But that our own girls can
be found in Chinese houses of infamy in
Shanghai and Hong-Kong, and in native
dens in the Straits Settlements, is beyond all