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brothels?" "Is it really true that the authorities have been deceived,
and did not know of this flagrant violation of the Ordinance to
protect women and girls?"
The Matron's face was sadly troubled. She gazed at us a moment
quietly, and then said:
"He told me, Why, of course he knew about those children. There were
scores of them."
"But will he do nothing about the matter?" we exclaimed.
She replied: "He said: 'What can I do? I caught a whole handful
of them once and sent them to the Lock Hospital, and had them all
examined. The doctor pronounced them all virgins, so I could do
nothing as yet, and I let them all go back.'"
We uttered exclamations of horror.
"A handful!"--did he think no more of them than of so many minnows!
And they had gone through the horrible ordeal at the Lock Hospital!
And he must leave them in the brothels yet for awhile,--until
when?--until, Oh pitiful God!--until they were all "deflowered
according to bargain." And then he might consider the advisability of
doing something.
The head reeled. We felt stilled. We must get out in the fresh morning
breeze. Something broke somewhere about the heart. We went out and
got into our jinrikshas, and went away home as in midnight darkness,
calling upon the name of our God all the way. Life on this
hell-scorched earth has never held the same happy delusions for us
since, but there is a city out of sight "whose Builder and Maker is
God." That we will seek.
CHAPTER 16.
SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES.
During the incumbency of a certain Mayor of San Francisco a surprising
condition of things was brought into existence. There was a large
tract of land in the heart of Chinatown owned by an American family,
relatives, it is declared, of said Mayor, the passages entering
which were deliberately blocked by gates, so a
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to find a parallel. Government registration and protection have
favored the growth of this diabolical plague spot, for, strange to
say, this gigantic system of debauchery is under the direction
of the department which is euphemistically entitled "The Chinese
Protectorate," the "Protector of Chinese" at Singapore being also
the Inspector of over 200 brothels, and the Registrar of about
1,800 prostitutes. Many streets of well built three-story houses,
chiefly in one particular quarter of the town, are devoted to this
nefarious traffic, and are thronged every night with Chinamen who
loaf about and gaze into the front rooms and verandahs of the
brothels, for these front rooms open on the street and there
the women and girls are assembled in their best attire for the
inspection of the passers-by. Anything more ostentatiously and
revoltingly public could hardly have been devised, and it is
painful to reflect that the whole arrangement is the product of
Western civilization, such scenes being utterly unknown in China
except in the treaty ports, where public prostitution has also
been introduced by Europeans.
Taking Singapore as a sample of the working of this system of
regulated vice in the Straits Sett
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were available, on which he rendered his decision, but this we do say:
If California has not a law that will not permit the introduction
of slavery into the state, even though Chinese women _consent_ to
slavery, then it needs such a law at once. _Slavery is too formidable
an evil for free Americans to allow its existence on the consent of
enslaved Chinese women._ Age of consent legislation, as applied to the
question of social vice, is one thing, and consent as applied to the
question of slavery, quite another thing. Sir John Smale, in the
Supreme Court of Hong Kong, quoting from Sir R. Phillimore on
International law (vol. I, p. 316), declared that it was not possible
for a human being legally to "become a slave _even by his own
consent_." Had the matter of consent or non-consent of slaves been
consulted as to negro slavery, we have no reason for believing that
the negro would ever have had his freedom. Though prostitution is
entangled with the conditions of servitude, under which Chinese women
and girls groan in California, yet only about half the slaves are as
yet prostitutes, and slavery looms up so large against the western
sky, as compared with the mere consent or wish of a creature brought
up from babyhood in familiarity with vice, that to consult the option
of such an one in determining the existence or non-existence of
_slavery_ in America, is a thing that ought not to be tolerated for a
moment.
We have shown how every Chinese
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efforts made by the Government of the Straits Settlements to
control the Chinese coolie traffic and to prevent a secret form
of slavery have been attended with any success, or are at all
adequate to the requirements of the case.
The Annual Report for the year 1892 on the Chinese Protectorate in
the Straits Settlements which is the department charged with the
control of immigration, was published on the 5th of May, 1893, and
states that of the 122,029 Chinese deck passengers who arrived in
Singapore from China during the year, 111,164 were males, 6,867
women and 3,998 children. The circumstances under which the men
and the women are brought to Singapore are in many respects the
same, but inasmuch as a large number of the women and some of
the children are imported for immoral purposes, this part of the
subject will be dealt with separately. Turning then to the above
mentioned Report, we find as regards male immigration, that out of
the 111,164 who arrived in Singapore 23,647 proceeded direct to
Penang, and 1,798 to Malacca,
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dragged back, rushed her to the Mission. It was the merchant's
young wife. She had been confined in a brothel not two blocks from
the Mission, and often saw the missionary pass by, but had no
means of attracting her attention. The merchant told her one day
that he wished to take her to a cousin to learn a different way of
dressing her hair, and he would leave her there a day or two while
he was away from town on business. The young wife went without
fear, but never to return to virtue until she escaped to the
Mission. She was tied to a window by day to attract custom, and at
night tied to a bed, for she was no willing slave. When rescued
she was horribly diseased. Three days before her rescue, the
Chief of Police and an interpreter had gone through the house
questioning every inmate as to whether they wished to lead a life
of shame or not. She was asked the question in the presence of the
brothel-keeper, the head mistress, and all the girls. She had been
told beforehand, "If you dare say you want to escape, we will kill
you." The Chief of Police had it announced in the papers that
he had made this investigation, and that no slaves existed in
Chinatown. Immediately after his visit, she was re
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immigration to the island, issued, on February 1st and 2nd, 1841, two
proclamations in the name of the Queen, to the effect that there would
be no interference with the free exercise on the part of the Chinese
of their religious rites, ceremonies and social customs, "pending Her
Majesty's pleasure."
Following the custom of all Oriental people, to whom marriage is a
trade in the persons of women, when the Tankas saw that the foreigners
had come to that distant part almost universally without wife or
family, they offered to sell them women and girls, and the British
seem to have purchased them at first, but afterwards they modified the
practice to merely paying a monthly stipend. All slavery throughout
British possessions had been prohibited only a few years before the
settlement of Hong Kong, in 1833, when 20,000,000 pounds had been
distributed by England as a boon to slave-holders.
Hong Kong's first Legislative Council was held in 1844, and its first
ordinance was an anti-slavery measure in the form of an attempt to
define the law relating to slavery. It was a long process in those
days for the Colony to get the Queen's approval of its legislative
measures, so that a year had elapsed before a dispatch was returned
from the Home Government disallowing the Ordinance as superfluous,
slavery being already forbidden, and slave-dealing indictable by law.
On the same day, January 24th, 1845, the following proclamation was
made: "Whereas, the Acts of the British Parliament for the abolition
of the slave trade, and for the abolition of slavery, extend by their
own proper force and authority to Hong Kong: This is to apprise all
persons of the same, and to give notice that these Acts will be
enforced by all Her Majesty's officers, civil and military, within
this Colony."
The "foreigners," by which name, according to a custom which prevails
to this day in the East, we shall ca
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accuses them; then they are treated as criminals.... It will be
clear to you that this law is not for simple healing, as Christ
would have us to heal, caring for all, whatever their character
or whatever their disease. This law is invented to _provide
beforehand_ that men may be able to sin without bodily injury (if
that were possible, which it is not). If a burglar, who had broken
into my house and stolen my goods, were to fall and be hurt, I
would be glad to get him into a hospital and have him nursed and
cured; but I would not put a ladder up against my window at night
and leave the windows open in order that he might steal my goods
without danger of breaking his neck.
"You will see clearly, also, the cowardliness and unmanliness of
this law, inasmuch as it sacrifices women to men, the weak to the
strong; that it deprives the woman of all that she has in life, of
liberty, character, law, ev
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and which in his evidence before the Commission on the 3rd of
December, 1877, he defended on the ground of its necessity in
detecting unlicensed houses, but which your Lordship [Lord
Kimberley, Secretary of State for the Colonies] has now justly
stigmatized as a revolting abuse. On another point the Attorney
General also seems not to appreciate fully what he must have heard
Sir John Smale saying from the Bench in the Supreme Court. It
would be a mistake to think that the Chief Justice had not before
he left the Colony, realized the public opinion of the Chinese
community on the subject of kidnaping. In sentencing a prisoner
for kidnaping, on the 10th of March, 1881, Sir John Smale said he
was bound to declare from the Bench that, to the credit of the
Chinese, a right public opinion had been growing up, and on the
25th of March, 1881, (the last occasion when Sir John Smale spoke
in the Supreme Court of Hong Kong), he said, in a case in
which the kidnapers had been convicted--This case presents two
satisfactory facts first, that a Chinese boat woman handed one of
these prisoners to the police, and that afterward an agent of the
Chinese Society to suppress this class of crime caused the arrest
and conviction of these prisoners. These facts are indicative of
the public mind tending to treat kidnaping as a crime against
society, calling for active suppression. On the same occasion, in
sentencing a woman who had severely beaten an adopted child, Sir
John Smale said, 'In finally disposing of these three cases, with
all their enormity, sources of satisfaction present themselves in
the fact that, in each of these cases, it has been owing to the
spontaneous indignation of Chinese men and women that these crimes
have been brought to the knowledge of the police.' The Governor
clo
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that, and form a profitable investment to a Chinese gentleman.
If not so eligible, they are sold for any, even the worst
purpose,--brothels, according to my experience in the Criminal
Courts of Hong Kong. If the former, it may be that they do well;
but if the latter, no slavery is worse. This as to females. And
as to males, the purchaser holds them until they can redeem
themselves, and, according to my experience, generally never.
Again, the Chinese gentlemen allege that if the adoptive parent or
master does not do his duty the actual parents have their remedy.
The answer is, so far as Hong Kong is concerned, the far greater
number of actual parents are far away in China, have entirely lost
sight of the child, and are far too poor to seek a remedy in Hong
Kong. They would have a remedy, if they were present and knew it,
but they do not know that there is a remedy. They had their remedy
from the first in China proper. Well, a remedy in the Mandarin
Court, where the longest purse prevails, and into which a poor man
seldom dares to enter a complaint."
"Lastly, it is said that the lot of these children is far happier
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convicted of infanticide, Chinese custom would be no protection,
and, unless I am grievously mistaken, the presiding judge would
have no alternative but to sentence the perpetrator to death ...
the one custom is tolerated just as the other custom is tolerated,
and both alike or neither must be claimed as sanctioned by
Governor Elliott's proclamation. All remedies which ever existed
by common law or by statute in England up to 1845 against
ownership of human beings, against every form of slavery, extend
by their own proper force and authority to Hong Kong; and, if
that were not enough, all English laws applicable to Hong Kong,
including those against ownership in human beings, were by express
Ordinances 6 of 1845, and 12 of 1873, embodied into the laws
of Hong Kong, whilst the worst forms of slavery are especially
punished by Ordinance 4 of 1865, and 2 of 1875. I am bound by
my most solemn obligations to enforce all these laws. I must,
therefore, without fear, favour or affection, discharge this duty
to the best of my ability."
CHAPTER 10.
NOT FALLEN--BUT ENSLAVED.
The Report of the Commission affords the following instructive
account of the difference in the moral and social status between the
prostitute of the East and West:
"In approaching the subject of prostitution, as it is found in
Hong Kong at the present day, it is absolutely necessary for a
full and just comprehension of it, to keep in mind two distinct
considerations. One is the almost total identity of the whole
system of prostitution, which since times immemorial is an
established institution all over the large empire of China. The
other point to be kept in mind is t
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General, and he set himself to the task of trying to right some of the
wrongs of the Chinese women.
The case last mentioned in the previous chapter related to a woman
by the name of Tai-Yau, whom an informer humbled "against her will,"
which led to his being rewarded and her being fined $100, to pay which
she sold her little boy. This seems to have been the only way open for
her to escape a life of prostitution. To make this point clear, we
will here insert the explanation of conditions given by Dr. Eitel in
a communication for the information of Governor Hennessy at a little
later period than the incident we are about to relate. He speaks of
Chinese women who secretly practiced prostitution [but, as we have
shown, many respectable Chinese women suffered also], as
"preyed upon by informers paid with Government money, who would
first debauch such women and then turn against them, charging them
before the magistrate under the Ordinance 10, 1867, before the
Registrar General as keepers of unlicensed brothels in which case
a heavy fine would be inflicted, to pay which these women used to
sell their children, or sell themselves into bondage worse than
ordinary slavery, to the keepers of brothels licensed by the
Government. Whenever a so-called sly brothel was broken up these
keepers would crowd the shroff's office [money exchanger's office]
of the police court or the visiting room of the Government Lock
Hospital to drive their heartless bargains, _which were
invariably enforced with the weighty support of the inspectors of
brothels_,[A] appointed by Government under the Contagious
Diseases Ordinance. T
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be 80 blows. If in the third degree, 70 blows. If in the fourth
degree, 60 blows." "The master or the relations of a master of a
guilty slave may ... chastise such slave in any degree short of
death, without being liable to punishment. Nevertheless, if
a master or his aforesaid relations, in order to correct a
disobedient slave or hired servant, should chastise him in a
lawful manner on the back of the thighs or on the posteriors, and
such slave or hired servant should happen to die, or if he is
killed in any other manner accidentally, neither the master nor
his aforesaid relations shall be liable to any punishment in
consequence thereof."
"All slaves who are guilty of designedly striking their masters
shall, without making any distinctions between principals and
accessories, be beheaded.
"All slaves designedly killing their masters, or designedly
striking so as to kill their masters, shall suffer death by a slow
and painful execution.
"If accidentally killing their masters, they shall suffer death by
being strangled.
"If accidentally wounding, they shall suffer 100 blows and
perpetual banishment to the distance of 3,000 li (1,000 miles).
"Slaves who are guilty of striking their master's relations in the
first degree ... shall be strangled.... All slaves who strike so
as to wound such persons shall ... be beheaded."
The "painful execution" which is the penalty of killing a master,
means execution by slicing the criminal into 10,000 cuts. Foreigners
who have witnessed it say it is too horrible to recite.
It is under such slave laws as these that the young girl is trained
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sell their children, or sell themselves into bondage worse than
ordinary slavery, to the keepers of brothels licensed by the
Government. Whenever a so-called sly brothel was broken up these
keepers would crowd the shroff's office [money exchanger's office]
of the police court or the visiting room of the Government Lock
Hospital to drive their heartless bargains, _which were
invariably enforced with the weighty support of the inspectors of
brothels_,[A] appointed by Government under the Contagious
this buying and selling of human flesh went on at the very doors
of Government offices."
[Footnote A: We italicise this to call attention to the active part
officials took in encouraging slavery.]
We can then readily imagine Tai-Yau as sentenced to pay her fine of
one hundred dollars, and nothing to pay with. The money exchanger's
office next the court room was crowded with slave-dealers, waiting to
offer to pay the fines of such unhappy creatur
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THE MAN FOR THE OCCASION.
Consistency demanded that either the brothel system at Hong Kong
should be abolished, or domestic slavery and so-called "adoption"
should be tolerated. No other courses were open. In his perplexity,
the Governor asked his learned Chinese interpreter, Dr. Eitel, to give
him further light as to this domestic slavery and "adoption" prevalent
among the Chinese. This request was granted in a document entitled
"Domestic servitude in relation to slavery." Dr. Eitel's main points
were:
Slavery as known to the Westerner "has always been an incident of
race." "Slavery, therefore, has such a peculiar meaning ... that
one ought to hesitate before applying the term rashly" to Chinese
domestic slavery. Slavery in China grows out of the fact that the
father has all power, even to death, over his family. The father,
on the other hand, "has many duties as well as rights." Therefore
his power over his family "is not a mark of tyranny, but of
religious unity." "Few foreigners have comprehended the extent of
soci
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delighted than the respectable Chinese themselves, who are now left in
a state of terror for their own lives from the highbinders, and who
often dare not bring over their lawful wives from China, to live in
the midst of this reign of terror, at the mercy of slave-traders
and women-stealers. Then Chinese criminals would seek safer shelter
elsewhere, and respectable Chinese family life would take the place,
in our Chinatowns, of a combination of criminal men and slave women.
And Chinese men of weak character, separated far from home influences,
would not be met on every hand by temptations of the most potent sort.
Such is the real worth of the sort of Chinese character that one meets
in other parts of that country from those vitiated by familiar contact
with foreign profligates, that the presence of such could not but be
a benefit to us, and would afford peaceable, thrifty, useful Chinese
settlements in our midst, of which we would feel justly proud.
In order to see that the entrance of Chinese to our country from China
is not made a cover for this dreadful slave trade, there is an urgent
need of coöperation between rescue workers of the California coast
and rescue workers in all the open ports of China. Chinese men are
constantly returning to China to "marry," in duly prescribed form, and
then return with their wives and reënter the United States, merely to
put the women into the brothels. Any man who is willing to run the
risk of detection can thus get a trip home to China to see his lawful
wife and family, and make it a profitable business trip besides,--with
all expenses more than paid by the importation, and sale of a slave.
Chinese women are constantly returning to China to bring "daughters"
to put in the slave pens. No woman (even lawfully m
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eight by twelve inches, set upon the table toward one end, with
a list of fifty names on it, and a Chinese man, who talked fair
English, explained it thus: 'These are the names of singing and
dancing girls who come here; a man looks over the list and calls
for a girl to sing or dance; then he chooses his girl.'
"We then went to a third place on the same side of the street.
Here there was a wild confusion as we reached the top of the
second flight of stairs and entered the front room, and several
young girls were hustled out through the other door and into the
little back rooms, and the list of girls' names was hurried out
of sight. The Chinese men were evidently much frightened. A bold
little girl, very smartly dressed, was put forward, who answered
our questions in a loud, brazen manner. One of our party asking
her if she could sing, she thought the statement was made that she
was not 'sixteen' (the age under which girls are supposed to be
'protected' from going into prostitution by British rule), and
shouted, 'I am _seventeen_.' We stayed only a few minutes, but
were informed that they provided opium and intoxicating liquors
here."
We told our hostess one day that we desired jinrikshas that we might
be conveyed to the Protectorate to interview the Chief Inspector,
having heard that he desired an interview. As we were leaving the
house she detained us a moment to say, timidly:
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is only an effect of which the existing system of Chinese
prostitution is the cause. Get rid of that, and there is an end of
kidnaping."
Again the nail had been struck on the head. _Licensed brothel
slavery_, as it exists at Hong Kong, was put forward by the Chinese
merchants as something to be dealt with before British officials
could consistently lay violent hands on the more trivial offenses of
_domestic slavery and so-called "adoption." Brothel slavery_, says
Mr. Francis, must be dealt with _as slavery_ before the practice of
_kidnaping_ can be put under control. This lesson was learned long
ago. What did all the laws against man-stealing and slave-trading ever
accomplish so long as the slave owner was allowed to keep his slave?
As soon as slave-holding was declared impossible in the United States,
there was no more trouble with slave-traders. Traders go to a market
where they can dispose of their goods, not to a place where their kind
of goods are a drug on the market.
Says Mr. Francis b
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are accustomed to dealing with women as chattels, there will be the
peril from a debased American manhood. Men cannot live in the midst of
such slavery as this, tolerate it, defend it, make gain through it,
patronize it, without losing all respect for woman and regard for her
rights.
And then, the slave business is fast becoming a vested interest of
large dimensions to American men as well as to Chinese. There are
fully as many (probably more) Japanese slaves as Chinese in the United
States, and at the moderate reckoning that they are worth three
thousand dollars each, that represents six million dollars in capital;
and at the present time the Japanese traffic is more threatening
to the United States than the Chinese, with which alone this book
deals.[A]
[Footnote A: When we undertook the task of writing this book we
intended to include in it also a representation of the Japanese
slave-trade, but have been obliged to desist for want of space.]
In these latter days, when everything in the business line tends to
take on the form of trusts and combines, bent on defeating all law and
exploiting the common people for gain, it casts a shadow of gloom over
one's spirits to think of
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she killed me. When she was having her hair washed and dressed I
ran away. I had heard of the Mission, and inquired the way and
came to it. A white man brought me here. I am very happy now."
While being brought to the Mission by this gentleman, she laid
hold of his coat, and would not let go until she was safely
inside. It is significant that in this case and the following,
methods of punishment allowed even unto death by Chinese law, are
administered by the mistresses of slaves in America.
No. 2. "One day I was playing in the street near my home in
Canton, and a man kidnaped me. He said: 'Come with me; your mother
told me to take you to buy something for her, and you are to take
it back.' I have never seen my father and mother since. In 3 or 4
days I was taken to the Hong Kong steamer. I dared not cry on the
street, but on board the steamer I cried very much. The kidnaper
said: 'Don't you cry, or you will have the policeman after you,
and they'll take you off to the foreign devils' prison.' At Hong
Kong he sold me to a woman, and after staying at her house a few
days she brought me to California. I had a yellow paper given me,
but I don't know what it was. The woman told me I must say I was
born in California. I came here last winter. I am 11 years old.
I don't remember the name of the steamer. The woman sold me to
another woman. I had to work as cook, and nurse her little
bound-foot
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rejected the alternative proposal of notification with compulsory
treatment, by sixteen votes to one. In reporting on the Conferences
held in Brussels, the _Independence Belge_ said, in a leading article:
"Regulation is visibly decaying, and the fact is the more striking
because the country that instituted it (France) is at present the one
that meets it with the most ardent hostility."
CHAPTER 4.
MORE POWER DEMANDED AND OBTAINED.
In 1866 the Governor of Hong Kong, Sir Richard Graves MacDonnell,
determined upon the repeal of Ordinance 12, 1857, in order to
inaugurate "a more vigorous policy of coercion," (says the
Commission's report): "The key note of the new regime was struck by
the Governor's first minute on the subject, dated 20th October, 1866,
in which he wrote he was 'anxious early to introduce to the Council an
amended Brothel Ordinance, conferring _necessarily_ almost despotic
powers on the Registrar General." ... Be it said to the honor of
Attorney General (now Sir Julian) Pauncefote, that in the face of this
he urges the most weighty objections to the policy of "subjecting
persons to fine and imprisonment without the safeguards which surround
the administration of justice in a public and open court." But these
objections were not allowed to prevail.
It app
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Thus she described in a few simple words the tragedy of her life
with tears in her eyes; her training for vice; her sale; her hopes
of marriage; her desertion; the outcome, her consignment to a
Government-licensed brothel. She was but one of the tens of
thousands at Hong Kong. We asked, 'How would a girl have to do in
order to live in this house?' They said, 'She must be registered
at the Lock. Hospital, and would have to go to the Court and Mr.
Lockhart (the Registrar-General) would ask her questions; whether
she had a father and mother; how old she was; _where the money
went to that was paid for her_; and whether she wanted to be a
prostitute or not.' We asked, 'If a girl should say that she _did
not_ want to be a prostitute what would be done?' They answered,
'No girl would _dare_ to say this _when she had been bought_.' We
asked the girl who talked English over again about this, and she
said the same.
"All the places of infamy reserved for the use of Europeans which
we visited in Hong
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settlements in our midst, of which we would feel justly proud.
In order to see that the entrance of Chinese to our country from China
is not made a cover for this dreadful slave trade, there is an urgent
need of coöperation between rescue workers of the California coast
and rescue workers in all the open ports of China. Chinese men are
constantly returning to China to "marry," in duly prescribed form, and
then return with their wives and reënter the United States, merely to
put the women into the brothels. Any man who is willing to run the
risk of detection can thus get a trip home to China to see his lawful
wife and family, and make it a profitable business trip besides,--with
all expenses more than paid by the importation, and sale of a slave.
Chinese women are constantly returning to China to bring "daughters"
to put in the slave pens. No woman (even lawfully married to a
Chinaman), should be allowed to take a ticket at Hong Kong or any of
the open ports of China for the United States, whose case has not been
thoroughly investigated by days of acquaintance with a woman inspector
in a house of detention, if necessary, on the other side. And no
Chinese woman should be allowed to enter on this side of the water,
until she has passed the second time under such surveillance in a
house of detention. And such rescue workers should have the Government
authority signified by a policeman's star.
The evil to be combated should be met with the right remedy. "Fitches
are not threshed with a thresher, neither is a cart wheel turned about
upon the cummin; but the fitches are beaten out with a staff, and the
cummin with a rod." Much of the failure to control brothel slavery
has grown out of the application of the wrong remedy, not out of a
difficulty in controlling the Chinese. These cases of trading in human
flesh have generally been treated
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Our hearts grew heavier and heavier as we talked together. The
Matron, said: "Why, I thought when I came here it was to do a regular
Christian work for these girls. That was my purpose, but the more I
inquire into the matter, and study over the things I am expected to do
and ask no questions, such as sending girls over to the Lock Hospital
at the Chief Inspector's request, the more I feel that I am being
worked for purposes of which I cannot approve. I cannot stay here."
At last we got to ask her about her talk with the Inspector. "What
did he say when you told him what we discovered the other night--that
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A license of an evil is never proposed excepting upon the mental
acquiescence in that evil.
British officials who licensed immoral houses at Hong Kong did not
wish the libertine to be disturbed in his depredations. The Chinese
merchants were able to see this fact if those officials were not ready
to admit it even to themselves. They knew how to throw a stone that
would secure their own glass houses. Hence they said in their memorial
to the Governor:
"From 80 to 90 per cent of all these prostitutes in Hong Kong were
brought into these [licensed] brothels by purchase, as is well
known to everybody. If buying and selling is a matter of criminal
character the proper thing would be first of all, to abolish this
evil (connected with the brothels). But how comes it that since
the first establishment of the Colony down to the present day the
same old practice prevails in these licensed brothels, and has
never been forbidden or abolished?"
It is to be noted that none of the officials at Hong Kong accused the
Chinese merchants of slander in saying that from 80 to 90 per cent of
the thousands of prostitutes in the Colony were absol
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various sorts, such as of stealing. It is significant that, with rare
exceptions, the policemen seem not to have been trusted with definite
information as to the place about to be searched or raided, when told
off to accompany a rescue party, lest word be sent ahead, allowing a
chance to spirit away the girl for whom search is instituted. American
men are said to go all the way to Hong Kong to get girls and smuggle
them into the country, as better able to cope with the strict
immigration laws than Chinese. Sometimes they go a long way around to
get a girl into San Francisco,--by Victoria, B.C., through Mexico
and El Paso (Texas), and by other routes. But the price paid for the
slaves assures a good profit to the traders. Since the laws against
Chinese immigration became more stringent, the market price of these
slaves has risen to three thousand dollars, while the more beautiful
ones bring a much higher price. Judges, lawyers, seafaring men,
hirelings of the Immigration Bureau, Chinatown guides, "Watch-dogs,"
officials and policemen, have all been accused of having imbrued their
hands at different times in the slaughter of the virtue of Chinese
women through this wretched slave business, besides the white patrons
of the Chinese slave-pens. But probably none are so guilty of
complicity as the property-owners, who build the places for housing
the slaves, and make enormous profits in the business.
There seems to be a misapprehension as to the status of these Chinese
prostitutes, to which the mind recurs again and again, in spite of
careful explanations. Some imagine that only those who are rescued,
or at least those who have managed to convey word to the missionaries
that they desire to be rescued, are the literal slaves, and that those
left behind are free. Such is not the case. We have already shown that
nearly all the Chinese prostitutes at Singapore and at Hong Kong are
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statements were absolute falsehoods, as proved by statements made by
the same officials elsewhere. Since these officials are proved to have
been so untruthful after the passing of the Ordinance, we can put no
reliance on their statements previous to its enactments, and the
more so because the statistics for Hong Kong in its early days are
hopelessly confused with the general statistics for all China,
wherever British soldiers or sailors were to be found. Therefore they
are unavailable for citation. But as to statements made after the
passage of the Ordinance, we append a compilation, as set forth by Dr.
Birkbeck Nevins of Liverpool, England.
SHAMELESS AND YET OFFICIALLY-SANCTIONED FALSEHOOD IN PUBLISHING
OFFICIALLY UTTERLY UNTRUE STATISTICS IN FAVOUR OF THE C.D. ACTS IN
THE BRITISH COLONY OF HONG KONG WITH THE SANCTION AND AUTHORITY OF
THE COLONIAL GOVERNOR.
"Referring to the Colonial Surgeon's Department, we feel bound
to point out that those portions of the _Annual Medical Reports_
which refer to the subject of the Lock Hospital _have, in too many
instances, been altogether misleading_." (Report of Commission, p.
2, parag. 2.)
"In 1862 (five years after the Act had been in force) Dr. Murray
was '_completely satisfied_ with the _incalculable_ benefit that
had resulted to the colony from the Ordinance of 1857'"[A]
[Footnote A: An extreme form of C.D. Acts, without parallel in any
other place under British rule.]
"In 1865 (after eight years' experience) he wrote, 'the _good_ the
Ordinance does _is undoubted_; but the good it might