. Clifford Roe, then
assistant State's Attorney, within one year investigated 348 such cases,
domestic and foreign, and successfully prosecuted 91, carrying on the
vigorous policy inaugurated by United States Attorney Sims. In 1908
Illinois passed the first pandering law in this country, changing the
offence from disorderly conduct to a misdemeanor, and greatly increasing
the penalty. In many states pandering is still so little defined as to
make the crime merely a breach of manners and to put it in the same
class of offences as selling a street-car transfer.

As a result of this vigorous action, Chicago became the first city to
look the situation squarely in the face, and to make a determined
business-like fight against the procuring of girls. An office was
established by public-spirited citizens where Mr. Roe was placed in
charge and empowered to follow up the clues of the traffic wherever
found and to bring the traffickers to justice; in consequence the white
slave traders have become so frightened that the foreign importation of
girls to Chicago has markedly declined. It is estimated by Mr. Roe that
since 1909 about one thousand white slave traders, of whom thirty or
forty were importers of foreign girls, have been driven away from the
city.

Throughout the Congressional discussions of the white slave traffic,
beginning with the Howell-Bennett Act in 1907, it was evident that the
subject was closely allied to immigration, and when the immigration
commission made a partial report to Congress in December, 1909, upon
"the importation and harboring of women for immoral purposes," their
finding only emphasized the report of the Commissioner General of
Immigration made earlier in the year. His report had traced the
international traffic directly to New York, Chicago, Boston, Buffalo,
New Orleans, Denver, Seattle, Portland, Salt Lake City, Ogden, and
Butte. As the list of cities was comparatively small, it seemed not
unreasonable to hope that the international traffic might be rigorously
prosecuted, with the prospect of finally doing away with it in spite of
its subtle methods, its multiplied ramifications, and its financial
resources. Only officials of vigorous conscience can deal with this
traffic; but certainly there can be no nobler service for federal and
state officers to undertake than this protection of immigrant girls.

It is obvious that a foreign girl who speaks no English, who has not the
remotest idea in wh