om one day in June when an observer counted 130 men who entered a
resort on Corning street between the hours of seven and twelve in the
evening.
A well-defined White Slave trade is difficult to discover in a short
time in any city. Citizens of Boston have not yet unearthed it. They say
it is not there. They tell of an isolated case which happened a long
time ago. Boston and other New England cities have all the elements
which make a traffic in girls quite certain. By going to the very bottom
and getting information from those "who know" the business from the
ground up, who live in it, and work in it, some very reliable facts have
been gathered.
Walking down Washington, Tremont or Boylston streets in Boston at night,
from say eight until ten o'clock, scores of girls are seen picking up
fellows. Some are professionals, while others flirt just to have a good
time, probably. In Providence, R. I., where Miss Margaret H. Dennehy has
revealed a White Slave traffic, conditions are just as bad in regard to
girls publicly displaying themselves as in Boston. This is the first
symptom of something wrong which any visitor cannot help but see. Now
let us look about the city a little and see what we can find. In Hayward
place, one-half block from Washington street, the main shopping street
of Boston, under the very nose of one of the largest retail stores, are
the H---- and the E----, two places such as would only be tolerated in
the lowest red light district of any city. Girls, and many young girls,
too, sit at the tables and solicit men. On Beach street, one-half block
from Washington street, is the D----, a similar place, owned by a
Frenchman. The P---- G---- on Sudbery street is much worse than any of
the others. The first three are within two blocks of Boylston and
Washington streets, the principal corner in Boston.
One has but to pick up the telephone book and find the numbers there of
at least two hundred houses of ill-repute. Chicago, one of the
acknowledged centers of vice, does not tolerate that; nor can you find
such places in the principal shopping districts of Chicago as those I
refer to in the above paragraph. One of the most glaring examples of
disorderly places--which the good citizens there overlooked--in the
business district is the B---- house of prostitution on Bulfinch street,
almost within a stone's throw of the State House and Capitol of
Massachusetts.
Taking the biography of one hundred girls in disrepu
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