It is as true as it is lamentable that the beautiful city on the banks
of the Seine, the center of fashion and of art, gained the shameful
reputation of being the capital of the white slave trade, and deserved
it, "by merit raised to that bad eminence."

In recent years the French government and people have felt keenly the
reproach of this condition, and have been foremost in efforts to
suppress the abominable commerce.

WHITE SLAVERS IN INDIA.

In 1893, during my missionary service in India, a clique of white slave
traders was discovered in Calcutta. They were found to be trafficking
not only in European girls whom they could lure to India, but also in
little native girls, as young as nine years. There was great indignation
in the capital and throughout India when these criminals were exposed
and arrested.

The laws of India were at that time inadequate to punish them, but an
old statute was found under which the Viceroy could deport undesirable
aliens. So these wretches, too abominable to be endured in heathendom,
were shipped back to Europe.

Those were the first white slave traders of whom I, a young missionary,
had ever heard. Last year in Chicago a French trader told me that he had
been in India, and I could not but wonder whether he had been deported
from Calcutta or Bombay and made welcome in Chicago. The United States
government soon afterward put him out of his wicked business.

Rev. Dr. Homer C. Stuntz, formerly of Calcutta, now of New York, told me
of a frightened European girl who nervously rang his doorbell in
Calcutta late at night. She had been deceived into going to India by
false promises made to her by the hunters of girls. Learning their real
purpose just in time, she fled from them, and inquiring the way to a
missionary, she was directed to Dr. and Mrs. Stuntz, with whom she was
safe, and thankful a million times.

How many hundreds of innocent American and European girls have been led
away to heathen and Mohammedan lands, on false promises of good
positions as teachers, governesses, or even as missionaries, only the
open books of the day of judgment will disclose.

E. A. B.

CHAPTER II.

THE SUPPRESSION OF THE WHITE SLAVE TRAFFIC.

By William Alexander Coote, Secretary National
Vigilance Association for the Suppression of the
White Slave Traffic, London, England.

Let me first of all greet you as co-workers in a cause which is very
dear to the heart of God, and which is