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Bessie Cushman, "Another Maiden Tribute," Feb 1887
Document 8: Bessie V. Cushman, "Another Maiden Tribute," Union Signal, 17
February 1887, pp. 8-9.
Introduction
In 1885, British journalist William T. Stead arranged to buy a young English
woman from her parents and subsequently published an account of "white slavery"
in England's Pall Mall Gazette. Although Stead had sent the child to safety, he was
arrested on a charge of abduction and was sentenced to three months in prison. His
martyrdom stirred the British conscience and led to a mass movement to abolish
white slavery and protect young womanhood through raising the legal age of
consent for girls to sixteen. American purity reformers watched carefully and were
shocked to discover that the age of consent in most of the United States was even
lower than that in England. American reformers attempted to garner the same
public support as Stead had been able to do, and Bessie Cushman even borrowed
the name of Stead's article in her attempt to expose the system of prostitution in
effect in lumber camps in Michigan. Her article, however, failed to provoke the kind
of response that Stead's exposé had in England.[9]
ANOTHER MAIDEN TRIBUTE.
_________
The modern Babylon is not limited by geographical site or
boundary. "For by the wine of the wrath of her fornication all the
nations are fallen." A few days ago the wires grew hot under the
following dispatch relative to the female slave trade carried on between
the lumber districts of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and American
and Canadian cities.
"In the new settlements the trade in young girls seems to be an
established business. Advertisements cunningly devised, are used in
coaxing working girls from their homes. The girls are kept in rough
board shanties or tents. There are a dozen or more in each place. A
system of fines is in vogue by which the poor wretches are kept
constantly in debt to the overseers.
"Dogs are kept to guard against the girls running away. In one
case, which has been fully investigated, a girl escaped, after being
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