# The New York Times/1912/12/03/How Rose Livingston Works In Chinatown

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Rose Livingston in the New York Times on December 3, 1912.
How Rose Livingston Works In Chinatown.
Free Lance Missionary's Worst Enemy Is Mayor Gaynor, Metropolitan Temple Audience Hears. Needs Only A Dollar A Day. Threats of Death Will Not Deter Her. Watching 350 White Girls There Now.
Mrs. Rose Livingston, the battling free lance missionary of Chinatown, left her work among the white girls there last night long enough to journey through the rain to the Metropolitan Temple at Fourteenth Street and Seventh Avenue to stir an audience of men and women with a few chapters from her experiences. Her friends and patrons, Mr. and Mrs. James Lees Laidlaw, were there to present her as one who by her personal service had rescued 300 girls from " living death." Mr. Laidlaw said: You can judge Rose Livingston and her work pretty well by seeing who her friends are and who her enemies are. District Attorney Whitman and his assistant, Frank Moss, have been her best and strongest friends. Her worst enemy — I am sorry to have to say it — is our Mayor, William J. Gaynor." This reference to the Mayor was received in surprised silence, but Mrs. Livingston could be seen nodding her head in vigorous assent, and when she got to her feet she did not let the matter rest. I am glad Mr. Laidlaw said what he did about Mayor Gaynor. If you only knew all the meanness that man has done to me you would understand. Just let me tell you." And she plunged right into an account of what happened one night last Spring in the dark hall of a still darker Doyers street when she had charged to the rescue of a girl and had come face to face with that girl's cadet, who was waiting for her, knife in hand. She emerged from that encounter with a splintered jaw and seven teeth gone, and had felt very despondent for a while. As a consequence, a petition for better police protection in Chinatown for workers like Mrs. Livingston had gone in to Mayor Gaynor. What The Mayor Said. "And do you know what that man said? "Mrs. Livingston asked." He said, Well, if Mrs. Livingston is not safe in Chinatown, let her stay out. She got drunk down there and got into trouble. That's the kind of help I've had from Mayor Gaynor and that's the kind of man he is. "Perhaps some or you people have an idea of writing to the Mayor and asking for better police protection. Now take my advice. Save your postage and buy bread for some poor family. That might do some good." Mrs. Livingston did not tone down her speech to make things easier for her audience. She, in none of the euphemisms so common in social evil discussions, but kept her talk homely and sharp with the vernacular of the gutter. Her own kind of missionary work, she explained, was not the soft kind. "I don't go in to visit these girls and give them a tract and say 'God bless you,' and invite them around to take tea with me. That's not my kind of work. There are some girls that it's nighty hard to help, but there are some little, fresh young things that have just been brought to Chinatown, and that you can sometimes reach in time to save them. Sometimes you can get there before the harm is done. There are 350 white girls in Chinatown now, by friends. I got thirty-seven of them out last year. I once rescued a little bit of a girl who was only 10 years old. That's the sort of work it is. "I don't get much help. It seems as though as soon as a cop in Chinatown shows himself to be honest they move him to some other part of town. They don't want honest cops down there. I don't know whose fault it is — Gaynor's or Waldo's or whose — but it makes it mighty hard sometimes. Sometimes they tell me these are bad girls and there's nothing I can do for them. They try to tell me that these girls could escape if they wanted to, but that they don't want to. I tell you it isn't true. I saw a girl running away from a cadet, and she ran almost into a policeman's arms. I was over there in a jiffy. 'Officer,' I said, 'won't you protect this poor girl from this fellow?' and, would you believe it. that policeman just knocked her back into the cadet's arms and watched while he beat her up." Served the Warrant Herself. Then she told of a girl dragged by the hair till her scalp "stood up," and kicked brutally in the stomach, and of how she, Mrs. Livingston got a warrant and served it herself when the police would not. And of how that man was now serving out more than two-years in the penitentiary. Mrs. Livingston said that those back of her were asked to provide only her room and washing and a dollar a day for carfare and the like. "I trust to the Lord for the rest," she explained, "the Lord and Mrs. Laidlaw's cook. I'll keep the work going because it's worth doing, and though they've put a price on my head, I'll keep it up until they kill me. I hope I'll be working at least until the women get the vote and some of these conditions can be remedied. Don't think it's so far away from you. It may be that some day I'll have a chance to save your own daughter or your own sister. You can't tell in a city like New York." This view of the omnipresence of the danger was emphasized by Mr. Laidlaw. "I know the Arnold family well," he said. "I knew Dorothy Arnold since she was a little bit of a girl. You all know of her disappearance. Well, her own family realize that the worst may have happened to her, and their only hope is that she has teen killed, that she is no longer alive. I tell you no home in this city is absolutely safe."
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
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