Traffic in Shame:

"White Slavery" in early 20th Century Chicago & Beyond

The term White Slavery was coined in early 19th century London and refers to women sold into permanent sexual slavery and servitude. In many documented cases from the early 1900s, impoverished young women—principally from southeastern Europe—were lured to the U.S. by the promise of employment in big cities like Chicago or New York through an unsavory network of traffickers in the U.S. and abroad, only to be sold into forced prostitution in brothels or to individual men.

A narrative might run like this: Shortly after disembarking from overseas the victim was abducted, having their immigration documents and whatever money they had taken. After being held captive for a period of time they were then “placed” with the client who paid for her or forced to become prostitutes in brothels, assignation hotels, or “dance halls.” Their treatment would have been brutal in every sense, with little hope for escape; if they did, they would have no money, no one to turn to, no identification, and most likely problems with language. Other methods of entrapment included blackmail, outright kidnapping, drugging, or elaborate confidence tricks. Such methods are not dissimilar to contemporary stories of human trafficking.

In contrast to other Progressive era public health campaigns to combat the “immigrant menace,” the evils of alcohol, and other "social hygiene problems," the White Slavery scare has largely been forgotten. However, during the first two decades of the 20th century it was the subject of numerous newspaper and magazine articles, pamphlets, books, feature films, public demonstrations, and a sizable amount of federal, state and local legislation.

              pages from a "madam's" account book

Chicago was seen as the epicentre of this “great hideous business” for a variety of reasons.

Viewed by many progressives as “the wickedest city in the world,” Chicago was certainly rife with both political corruption and social depravity during the early 20th century. The city's population had doubled between the years 1890 and 1910 to over two million, largely by attracting poor immigrant labor and through the great rural migration from the American south. But this surge in population—while playing a critical role in the economic expansion the city—came with a heavy price. The so-called Levee District—around 22nd and Dearborn—had become the defacto segregated vice district for all of Chicago.

Poverty, worker exploitation (vis-à-vis the padrone system), racial and ethnic prejudice, unscrupulous businessmen, organized crime, and a sometimes corrupt police created a vicious circle that coincided with the rise of women in the workforce. A 1916 Illinois Senate Vice Committee report concluded that between 16-20% of Chicago's 100,000 working women were "adrift," i.e supporting themselves and living on their own. Therefore—the report surmises—now with money of their own, their workdays spent mingling with men, and their nights free, women (when seeking entertainment) were subject to the temptations of the dangerous "dance halls," an apparent venue for much of the city's prostitution. Because of low-wages, working girls were being "pressured into becoming immoral." Another way into white slavery.

Around the same time, however, Chicago also produced a number of religious charities (chiefly Christian missions), civil organizations, and settlement houses (i.e. Hull House) to combat the city's vices; their campaign against white slavery and prostitution in general quickly turned into a crusade. The friction created by these opposing forces are perhaps what attracted so much attention to Chicago.

The extent of this problem in the early part of the 20th century is open to debate. Muckraking journalists across the country penned sensationalist diatribes—the Chicago Tribune was no exception—that painted a wide spread conspiracy set to destroy the country unless stopped. Books, articles, and pamphlets (frequently employing the octopus as metaphor) no doubt overstated the severity of the issue, but various levels of government took the issue seriously and eventually legislated accordingly.

After several years of debate and then a large-scale federal investivation in 1907, the U.S. Congress passed the White Slave Traffic Act of 1910, better known as the Mann Act. Among its various tenets, it banned the transport of women across state lines for "immoral purposes," a measure which was thought to curb trafficking. The act has been amended a few times over the years, but is still in effect. It was authored by James Robert Mann, a Chicago-based attorney and later U.S. Representative from Illinois who had worked for years in Chicago combating the problem.

The Mann Act was viewed by many at the time as a success, though most of it's notariaty comes from it being used to ensnare celebrities (Jack Johnson, Frank Lloyd Wright, Charlie Chaplin, Chuck Berry, etc), instead of actual "white slavers." Overall, trafficking was reduced but certainly not eradicated and as a consequence driven even further underground.

In 1911 the Chicago Vice Commission produced a massive study (The Social Evil in Chicago) that in part investigated the trafficking aspect to Chicago’s prostitution and concluded that many of the city’s 5000+ full-time prostitutes—who serviced over 5 million men each year—were immigrant victims of trafficking. However, more recent studies have concluded otherwise, cutting these numbers in half and minimizing the trafficking aspect. What remains clear though is that there was public and governmental outcry that in some ways gave the issue more prominence than it has today.

Trafficking in persons tragically showed a huge resurgence in the latter part of the 20th century that continues to this day and Chicago is still involved.

Louis Takács
International Documents Librarian
l-takacs@northwestern.edu

This display includes federal, Illinois and Chicago government publications from GovInfo, materials from United-Seabury library, NUL-Main, and Special Collections.

Materials used in the exhibit:  http://www.library.northwestern.edu/govinfo/display/materials.html

Last updated:7 February, 2008