# The Girl That Disappears/Chapter 20

XX
THE SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM
HAD I remained at the head of the New York police six months longer I would have segregated the social evil there. I had my plans all worked out. I intended to divide the city into four districts, North, South, East and West. In each of these parts of New York there is now a portion given over to buildings that are used mostly for prostitution. If there are decent families among them it would be better for them to move. I would have had them moved, and there would have been border lines established beyond which the women of the under-world would have been prohibited to go. Eventually I would have instructed the policemen detailed to this district, to stop strangers entering it, and to tell them where they were going. Then, if ​the man wanted to continue on his way, he would be allowed to do so. But the thing would have been made as unattractive as possible. There would have been no bright lights, and none of the glamour that surrounds certain phases of the evil in New York City now.
This would not have stamped out the social evil, but it would have reduced it to a minimum.
It would have removed the low-priced prostitute from the tenement house. At the present time, in almost every large tenement house inhabited by from twenty to forty or more families, you will find at least one woman who follows the calling in her dwelling. In the same house you will find many young girls and boys to whom her presence is a menace, and frequently a contagion. Of the agencies which tend to break down among the poor the natural feeling against the evil, the presence of these flashily dressed women ​of the streets as neighbors is of terrible importance. The prostitute invariably is better dressed than her neighbors. In fact, she is, in the parlance of the slums, "a swell dresser." She can spend her days idly in her home. At night she is supposed to frequent public places of amusement and to have "a good time of it." Her life is one of ease, luxury, and enjoyment, in the eyes of her neighbors. Creature comforts count for much with most of us. To the very poor, especially the very poor shopgirls who work in the big stores with all their atmosphere of spending and pleasure, the urge of life is particularly keen. And it would have done away with white slavery, for where the protector cannot hold over a woman the fear that she is doing something that lays her liable to immediate arrest, he cannot keep her in his clutches. I would have been criticised, and I expected it. I will be criticised for this book, and I expect that; but I found ​that there were enough people really willing to think about a problem of this sort to make me feel that I would have the support of those brave enough not to be hypocrites.
I believe there is another thing we should do in this country, and, it, too, is a step immediately following clearing away the cobwebs of Puritanism. We should have in Europe a spy system modeled in a way after the customs spy service of the United States Government. It would not need to be so extensive as the customs service, and it could be maintained at an expense that is slight when compared with the cost in human misery of our present indifference; but a few alert men could discover and prevent many of the cases where girls are shipped from the London "breaking in ground." At least they could diminish the traffic by getting the evidence necessary to deport the girl when she arrives in the United States and send her back to her home. Of course, the societies ​that watch over the immigrant do a great deal of good along this line; but the procurers have become wise as time has passed. They no longer send their women in the steerage. They are dressed well and they travel second class. Often a woman ally of the procurer, fashionably gowned, meets them on the dock to give a look of regularity to the story that the girl has come to serve as maid or companion in a well-to-do family.
Then there should be more coöperation between immigration officials and the police. Time after time I found that when we in the police department in New York got on the trail of women being imported, and reported the facts to the officials at Ellis Island, the women would get into the country in some mysterious way despite our efforts. The hearing would be set for one day, and would be held sometime previous without the Police Department being notified, or some one of a dozen other ruses would be used.
​And don't you see, my reader, this all comes back to you. These things would not be possible if it were not for the hypocrisy that surrounds the social evil with secrecy. If you become alive in the situation mayors will have to support their chiefs of police, and I don't think there is a head of a police department in the United States who would not rejoice in an opportunity to do his share to crush the evil. When you look at it this way, when you see the thing as I do, it is not a problem. It is only a question: Do you want to face this phase of our life as a fact, see it handled as a fact, frankly and openly, and remedied as a fact?