uld do nothing for her. It is
easy to see why it thus becomes part of the business to break down a
girl's moral nature by all those horrible devices which are constantly
used by the owner of a white slave. Because life is so often shortened
for these wretched girls, their owners degrade them morally as quickly
as possible, lest death release them before their full profit has been
secured. In addition to the quantity of sacrificed virtue, to the bulk
of impotent suffering, which these white slaves represent, our
civilization becomes permanently tainted with the vicious practices
designed to accelerate the demoralization of unwilling victims in order
to make them commercially valuable. Moreover, a girl thus rendered more
useful to her owner, will thereafter fail to touch either the chivalry
of men or the tenderness of women because good men and women have become
convinced of her innate degeneracy, a word we have learned to use with
the unction formerly placed upon original sin. The very revolt of
society against such girls is used by their owners as a protection to
the business.

The case against the captors of Marie, as well as twenty-four other
cases, was ably and vigorously conducted by Edwin W. Sims, United States
District Attorney in Chicago. He prosecuted under a clause of the
immigration act of 1908, which was unfortunately declared
unconstitutional early the next year, when for the moment federal
authorities found themselves unable to proceed directly against this
international traffic. They could not act under the international white
slave treaty signed by the contracting powers in Paris in 1904, and
proclaimed by the President of the United States in 1908, because it was
found impossible to carry out its provisions without federal police. The
long consideration of this treaty by Congress made clear to the nation
that it is in matters of this sort that navies are powerless and that as
our international problems become more social, other agencies must be
provided, a point which arbitration committees have long urged. The
discussion of the international treaty brought the subject before the
entire country as a matter for immediate legislation and for executive
action, and the White Slave Traffic Act was finally passed by Congress
in 1910, under which all later prosecutions have since been conducted.
When the decision on the immigration clause rendered in 1909 threw the
burden of prosecution back upon the states, Mr