nese women should be removed from the brothels,
wherever these exist, consent or no consent, placed in houses of
detention, instructed as to the condition of liberty of the person in
which she _must_ live, and then, if she _prefers_ a slave's life,
he deported to China,--a land in which slavery is permitted. Every
Chinese man who attempts to interfere with this radical treatment of
the situation, should be imprisoned or driven from the country. These
"Watch-dogs," who are perfectly known to the police, both by name and
by face, should be put behind bars and in stripes, for a long time to
come. This is not prostitution, _merely_,--Oh, how tenderly men are
inclined to deal with the male harlot! but for once the libertine
has not a shadow of a shade of defense,--the patrons of _slaves_ are
something worse than fornicators; they are guilty of as many offenses
of criminal outrage as they are guilty of visits to the slave-pens
stocked with Chinese girls, and they deserve a prison sentence for
every such visit.
Girls are afraid to come out of Chinese brothels until they have
earned their freedom. This is because powerful Chinese societies have
been formed that will either kidnap such a girl or kill her. So she
declares in court that she consents freely to be returned to the
brothel, and an extraordinary misconstruction of the doctrine of the
"liberty of the person," leaves the judge with nothing to do but to
deliver the girl over to compulsory voluntariness. Again, Chinese
young men do not wish to marry liberated Chinese girls, but they go,
rather, to the brothel and buy a wife; and for much the same reason.
If a man marries the liberated slave of a brothel keeper, the
high-binders will teach the lesson that he has stolen another man's
property, by watching their chance and assassinating him. Why are not
these societies broken up, root and branch? Cannot? Nonsense; the
officers of the law have not made the attempt with any degree of
earnestness as yet.
For years, the "Protectors" at Singapore and at Hong Kong have
summoned the slaves into their offices and informed them that they
were free, and asked them if they freely consented to going into a
life of shame, before putting them there? But to what purpose? Let the
Police Magistrate, H.E. Wodehouse, reply, as he did concerning a
case of suicide: "When registering her name she said she had no
pocket-mother, that her parents were both dead, and that she became a
prostitute
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