The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-04-19

of dire necessity and sold into slavery. The father soon found a purchaser. Now the willy purchaser knew that since the passing of the restriction act, owing to the fewer importations, a girl of fifteen or sixteen years of age has market value of from two to three thousand dollars, if he can only sue ceed in reaching American shores. The Hong Kong purchaser has his agents in this country. So, with pa pers carefully made out, and two ac- complished rogues at either end of the line pulling wires, Goo was able to run the gantlet of the custom officers, and to reach Chinatown in safety. This is the first chapter in the sad life of the little innocent Chinese girl. The moment in which she reached the foul, loathsome cellar that was to be her future home the current of her life changed. The agent on this side of the water was woman, an ugly, pock-marked bag, over-fat from lazi- ness and hideous to look upon in her wrinkled stolidness. From a material standpoint she guarded the new slave girl well, intending to sell her to wealthy merchant for at least three thousand dollars. But weeks dragged out into months and no purchaser ar- rived. Three thousand dollars was a goodly price to pay for a slave. One day last week young white woman succeeded in penetrating the dive
 where Goo lived. She went there to study the slave girls in their unnatural
 4t.. IA
 woman whom Goo had ever seen. The
 little slave girl was pleased. When
 the latter moved to go Goo leaped
 from her height and clung to her
 Tears sprang from her deep, slanting
 eyes. Though no word was spoken by
 either woman during the little visit,
 nevertheless there was an interchange
 of heart yearning, of sympathy, even
 love that neither failed to understand in their strange situation. The white
 woman understood. The next day, at the instigation of the American girl a
 raid was made on the den. Goo was found, released from her prison, and
 amid the agonized cries. threats and heavenly invocations by the celestials she was led out of the den of vice and filth and taken to the Occidental mis- sion In Sacramento street. There are
 hundreds of these little wretches in
 Chinatown. There Is not single fam fly without one. or two or three They
 can be purchased for from fifty to five 1 hundred dollars a head, and they are
 regarded just as good an investment
 as any transferable, marketable per- sonal property. Often the slave girls commit suicide or die of cholera mor- bus, a victim to their terrible sur roundings. Then they face the great unknown alone. To them in their su- perstition 1t is trying. No friend ap- | breaches them. There is no phycician,
 no nurse to wrestle with and thwart | the designs of death. There is no sympathy, no living touch, to take the sting from pain. They die uncared | for, unhonored and unsung. Yet they are human beings. Sunk deep in the | sand dunes of the Golden Gate, their graves are unmarked and forgotten. | Only the wall of the wind in unison with the moan of the mighty Pacific sings an everlasting funeral dirge.
 The need of further legislation in re- | stricting the immigration of women
 and in uprooting the slavery evil is
 urged upon congress by the women ot
 San Francisco.