# The Girl That Disappears/Chapter 4

IV
WHY THE GRAND JURY'S INVESTIGATION WAS APPARENTLY A FAILURE
THE work of the Rockefeller grand jury was in charge of Judge T. C. O'Sullivan, of the General Sessions Court. Judge O'Sullivan was elected to his position in 1905 on a Tammany ticket. Before that time he had been in turn counsel for the contracting company of Charles F. Murphy, leader of Tammany Hall, a State Senator, a Tammany Assemblyman and an active Tammany worker for years.
The grand jury's work dragged on through the winter and spring. Throughout Judge O'Sullivan insisted that the only point at issue was whether there existed a formal organized corporate body of men who were associated in the business of traf​ficking in women. It had to be a formal organization, not an informal one; the kind that could be got at with indictments, or Judge O'Sullivan would have none of it.
Eventually an effort was made to offer a presentment of the jury's findings so that the jury might be dismissed. Judge O'Sullivan refused to receive the presentment and relieve the jury of its responsibilities. "I will receive nothing but indictments," was his answer to Mr. Rockefeller.
Some weeks later he did receive the presentment, read it, and dismissed the jury with these words:
"Your answer to the main question submitted to you is a merited rebuke to the slanderers of the cleanest and greatest city in the world."
Grand jury presentments are given to the press only after they have been filed. This particular presentment was not filed until the time for publishing it in the evening papers ​was past However, rather than disappoint the reporters, Judge O'Sullivan offered to tell them what the presentment contained. And it was the judge's interpretation, or his summary of the contents of the presentment and not the presentment itself, which was published in the newspapers.
The newspapers blazoned forth to the world the statement that the "Rockefeller Jury Reports No White Slavery," and the news articles read thus:
The presentment exonerated the city of being a clearing-house for organized traffic in leading young women into lives of shame and trafficking in them; it exonerated the New York Independent Benevolent Association by name from any share in such enterprise; it found a surprisingly large number of individuals engaged in leading young women astray and disposing of them to keepers of disorderly houses; a number of recommendations were made for the suppression of vice in the city.
​What the presentment really said was this:
It appears, from indictments found by us and from the testimony of witnesses, that trafficking in the bodies of women does exist and is carried on by individuals acting for their own individual benefit, and that these persons are known to each other and are more or less informally associated.
We have also found that associations and clubs, composed mainly or wholly of those profiting from vice, have existed, and that one such association still exists. These associations and clubs are analogous to commercial bodies in other fields, which, while not directly engaged in commerce as a body, are all as individuals so engaged.
This is how the grand jury "exonerated" The New York Independent Benevolent Association:
After an exhausted investigation into the activities of the association and of its members, we find no evidence that the association, ​as such, does now or has never trafficked in women, but that such traffic is being, or has been, carried on by various members as individuals.
This much was allowed to get into the papers, but the rest of the paragraph was discreetly omitted. Here it is:
We find that the members of this association are scattered in many cities throughout the United States. From the testimony adduced it appears probable that the social relation of the members and the opportunity thereby afforded of communicating with one another in various cities have facilitated the conduct of their individual business.
After citing a trenchant example of the closeness of relationship between the members of this exonerated band of worthies, the presentment goes on to state that by their own confession practically every member of the association is now, or has been in the not remote past, engaged in the operation of dis​orderly houses or in living upon the proceeds of women's shame. The document continues:
They claim, however, that all members who have been convicted of a crime are expelled from the organization when the proof of that fact has been submitted, the offense apparently being not the commission of a crime, but conviction. It would appear that this procedure is for the purpose of protecting the individual if possible, and failing in that, of freeing the association from criticism.
In reading the newspaper's reports of the Rockefeller findings, and comparing them with the original document, I am reminded of the old patent medicine man's system of preparing testimonials. He would receive a letter:
For years I have suffered from rheumatism, stomach troubles, and near-sightedness. I have used four bottles of your Elixir of ​Life. I followed directions carefully and the stuff is no good. I want my money back.
John Jones.
P. S. I poured half of the last bottle down a wood chuck's hole. It worked a perfect cure. The wood chuck never came back.
When the letter appeared among his testimonials it read as follows:
For years I have suffered from rheumatism, stomach trouble, and near-sightedness. I have used four bottles of your Elixir of Life. … It worked a perfect cure.
John Jones.