an go abroad alone.
This statement will not, I hope, deceive you into believing that
as a consequence they are really free agents ... such is actually
not the case. A child who strikes its parent is liable to a death
sentence. The girls in brothels are in the position of daughters
to the keepers, and ... call them mother. There is no sense of
freedom, as we understand the term, possible in such a state of
affairs. The women are fearful of the unknown; of what should
happen to them if they should disobey their pocket-mothers, and
are terribly ignorant of everything connected with the Government
under which they nominally live. It is out of the question to
educate them up to the English standard of liberty of the subject.
They stay but a few short years in an English Colony, seeing
nothing but the worst phases of a life of vice and immorality, and
only know of the officers of Government as 'foreign devils' or
'barbarians'."

This is all only too true as regards California also, excepting that
the experiment of educating them by just treatment in the "English
standard of the liberty of the subject," has certainly never been
tried either in Singapore or America. The brothel keepers, however,
have learned to understand that matter of "liberty of the subject"
only too well, and take advantage of the habeas corpus act at every
turn to capture a slave who is trying to escape their clutches.

These words of Governor Smith should be borne in mind and brought to
attention every time our law officers in California put brothel girls
through the farce of asking them if they are desirous of liberty, and
when they say no, proclaim triumphantly to the world that "there isn't
a slave girl in Chinatown." These officers deceive others by these
falsehoods, but they know too well the conditions to be themselves
deceived.

When certain Chinese girls appeared before a committee appointed to
investigate conditions at San Francisco, the members of the committee
were put under promise not to divulge their names or stories, as
"their lives would not be safe for five years to come," if the
brothel-keepers and their former owners knew that they had informed
against them. It is a little difficult to describe the various secret
societies of Chinatown in full, but for practical purposes and as
relates to the welfare of Chinese women, it may be said that the
secret society, or tong, is a so