One Slave Per Year

Fifteen quietly dressed young women and an old one richly clad created a terrific furore in Berlin's big Lehrter Station last week, merely because they insisted on taking the train for Hamburg.

"You old She-Devil!" screamed the mother of one of the young women at the richly dressed old woman. "You Vampire! Trying to make white slaves out of honest girls! I won't let you take my Gretchen to Buenos Aires!"

"My good woman," said the richly dressed one, "My good woman, please control yourself. Porter, my bags!"

Cried apple-cheeked Gretchen: "Please, mother! Please, Please, PLEASE!! You don't understand. We're not 'white slaves' or anything so silly. We're going to Buenos Aires to dance in the best cafe, and we've all got contracts! It's perfectly all right."

But parents, relatives and friends of seven of the 15 girls would not believe that everything is all right. "Help, help, police!" they cried, but they got no help, and with a derisive toot the locomotive began to puff and chuff. Gretchen and the other young women waved goodbye, and the richly dressed old woman sprinkled eau de cologne on her handkerchief, dabbed her forehead. At Hamburg, like the watchful and virtuous chaperone of a bevy of schoolgirls, she shepherded her 15 charges aboard the spick-and-span steamer Eubee.

"We are Helpless!" In Berlin the police did not, could not have interfered with the departure of the 15 because they knew all about them, knew that each girl is of age and legally competent to decide where she will go with whom.

"We are helpless!" exclaimed the Argentine Consul General at Berlin. "At the request of these young women's parents we have refused them visas to enter the Argentine. We have cabled our consuls at the ship's ports of call to stop them if possible. We have desired the police of Buenos Aires to prevent them from entering the city. What more can we do?"

What Is a White Slave? Not since the distinguished French journalist, A. Londres, wrote The Road to Buenos Aires in 1928 has the White Slave situation in the Argentine been authoritatively reported. But at 341 Calle Lavalle, Buenos Aires, The National Vigilance Association continues its rescue and prevention work under the direction of Mrs. Lighten Robinson.

She reports that during 1929 it was possible to rescue and send home to France one young woman, a seamstress, who considered herself a White Slave, considered that she had been lured out to the Argentine and put to the most dreadful of trades against her will.

All the other young women who constantly arrive as "dancers" or "entertainers" were either kept from knowledge of Mrs. Lighten Robinson, and so could not apply to her for rescue, or do not consider themselves White Slaves.

Economic Facts. In advising anyone, white or black, slave or free, male or female who expects to go to Buenos Aires the important thing to stress is the terrific cost of living, higher than almost anywhere else. This economic fact is really the basis of the White Slave traffic. Young women are promised and young women are paid for dancing, sums which would be "big money" in Europe, but in the Argentine they are so meagre that the dancer becomes the hostess and the hostess the common or uncommon daughter of joy.

"Some of them," said a Buenos Aires police official recently, "go back to Europe in the first class with ropes of diamonds around their necks."

Persons who know the ropes in South America predicted that the 15 German girls who left Berlin last week will land at Montevideo, Uruguay, whence they will be smuggled across the border into Argentina, and will then start dancing in Buenos Aires at one of the Bix Six cafes: Ta-Ba-Ris, Armenonville, Casino Pigall, Maipu Pigall, American Dancing and Folies Bergere. Of these the first two are comparatively high class, with champagne obligatory at $13 per pint or $23 the bottle; but at the last four mere "drinks" are obligatory at between $2 and $3 each, the hostesses gulping colored water and male visitors raw alcoholic abominations.

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