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the rescuer's hand. She will sometimes fight
at being thrust through the doorway into the street, calling lustily
for help, but whisper to the missionary, "Tell the officer to carry
me out." When once, in spite of the feigned struggle, she is carried
outside, and her pursuers are well behind in the chase, the ruse is
cast aside, and it becomes a race for dear life between the rescuer
and the rescued to make the city of refuge,--the mission home,--and
generally the fugitive gets there first. Once a rescue worker found
her girl secreted with four others in a loft, to which she had been
removed because the brothel-keeper feared an attempt at rescue. She
was so carefully guarded and watched that the poor thing dared not
signify to the missionary that she was the one who wished to be taken,
and all five struggled with equal apparent fierceness against rescue.
What was the missionary to do! She lifted her heart in the despairing
cry, "Oh, God, if ever you heard a human prayer and answered it, for
Christ's sake he

--the quotations I made being up to this time undisputed
    ... what I said was necessary to introduce the expression of my
    conviction ... that none of the elements of the system of _patria
    potestas_ exist in Hong Kong, including of course adoption. It is
    to this conviction that I point as the moral ground for enforcing
    English law against kidnaping and buying and selling human beings.
    The gravamen of all my complaints is, that the pauper kidnapers
    and sellers are punished, while the rich buyers go free. No case
    can come on for trial in this Court except upon an information by
    the Attorney-General. I have called on the Attorney-General of the
    day to prosecute a man against whom there was evidence that the
    boy he was keeping as a servant had been bought by him direct from
    a kidnaper. The then Attorney-General exercised his discretion,
    and did not prosecute." "There are no difficulties in the way of
    carrying out the punishment of kidnaping, and sellers and buyers
    of children, or of keeping children by the purchasers, or in
    selling and buying of women for brothels, or in dealing with
    cases of brutal bondage." "I have spoken from criminal fa

views on these subjects, but as a judge I feel
    it is not for me further to debate them. I expressly retired from
    doing so on the 27th of October, 1879, although I thought it
    necessary in March last to comment on what I thought to be an
    erroneous view of the _patria potestas_."
Later, in response to a suggestion on the part of the Governor, for a
more explicit statement as to wherein his views differ from those of
the Chinese and of Dr. Eitel, the Chief Justice says, among other
things:
    "I do not admit the statements of Dr. Eitel. They do not apply
    to Hong Kong, but they may, and probably do, apply to certain
    respectable classes in China proper, where China family life
    proper exists. What I assert is that family life does not, in the
    proper Chinese sense, exist in Hong Kong, and that although, under
    certain very restricted conditions, the buying and selling, and
    adopting and taking as concubines, boys and girls in China proper,
    is permitted as exceptions to the penalties inflicted by Chinese
    law in China proper, these conditions do not exist in Hong Kong;
    and that the conditions necessary to these exceptions in their
    favor in the Chinese Criminal Code do not exist in Hong Kong,
    and that the penalties would apply, if in China, to all such
    transactions as I have denounced in Hong Kong, of that I have no
    doubt. Dr. Eitel's vindication is of a system as recognized in an
    express exception to the Penal Code in China proper, which may,
    for aught I know, work well in China. What I have said is that the
    practices in Hong Kong do not come within the cases which are only
    the exception to th

called free country.
The statement continues:
    "Since the last few years many Chinese have brought their
    property, wives and families to the place, supposing they would
    be able to live here in peace, and to rejoice in their property.
    ...Chinese residents of Hong Kong have, therefore, been in
    the habit of following all native customs which were not a
    contravention of Chinese statute law [but it seems _this sort_ of
    buying and selling of human beings is contrary to Chinese law.
    This is a misrepresentation]. It is said that the whole increase
    and prosperity of the Colony from its first foundation to the
    present day is all based on the strength of that invitation which
    Sir Charles Elliott gave to intending settlers, and that this
    present intention of applying, all of a sudden, the repressive
    force of the law to both the practice of buying or selling boys or
    girls for purposes of adoption or for domestic servitude is not
    only a violation of the rule of Sir Charles Elliott, but moreover
    will, it is to be feared, not fail to trouble the people."
They speak of infanticide as an evil that
    "must be classed with evils almost unavoidable. Now if the buying
    of adoptive children and of servant girls is to be uniformly
    abolished, it is to be feared tha

brothel slavery
has grown out of the application of the wrong remedy, not out of a
difficulty in controlling the Chinese. These cases of trading in human
flesh have generally been treated in the courts as though coming under
the laws against ordinary prostitution. To illustrate:
Within the past month, three Chinese girls were captured by a rescue
worker. They were cooped up, with a man who had charge of them, in
a tiny closet scarcely sufficient to hold the four, which had been
entered by a panel door which was securely nailed up and bags of rice
piled against it. The rescuer pulled away the bags, pried open the
door of the secret receptacle with her hatchet, and drew out the
girls, dripping with perspiration and panting for breath, in
consequence of the two hours' confinement, while the brothel was being
searched for them. They were conveyed to the mission home, and were
very happy, and expressed their eager wish to remain. A Chinese
woman came to call at the mission home, in the absence of the
superintendent, and, unfortunately, was allowed to get access to an
acquaintance of these girls, and she conveyed to them a promise that
if they would come back, in a very little while they would all be
given their liberty. After that the girls said they wished to go, and
for the following reasons: They could not dwell in safety among their
Chinese people, if in debt to a brothel-keeper, for he would be always
on their track, and if he could not capture them and they would
not return, he would certainly secure their death 

a matter which certainly stands on a different footing,
    and is one in which the Government has a deep interest."
The Report goes on to state that the Commissioners do not endorse the
views of Mr. Smith as to the amelioration of the condition of
the inmates of brothels, through Governmental registration and
supervision, and states:
    "Young girls, virgins of 13 or 14 years of age, are brought from
    Canton or elsewhere and deflowered according to bargain, and, as
    a regular business, for large sums of money, which go to their
    owners.... The regular earnings of the girls go to the same
    quarters, and the unfortunate creatures obviously form subjects
    of speculation to regular traders in this kind of business, who
    reside beyond our jurisdiction. In most of the regular houses, the
    inmates are more or less in debt to the keepers, and though such
    debts are not legally enforceable, a custom stronger than law
    forbids the woman to leave the brothel until her debts are
    liquidated, and it is only in rare cases that she does so." "As to
    the brothel-keepers, there is nothing known against them, and they
    are supported by capitalists. Mr. Lister speaks of them as 'a
    horrible race of cruel women, cruel to the last degree, who use an
    ingenious form of torture, which they call prevention of sleep,'
    which he describes in detail.... It seems that although the
    Brothel Ordinances did not call into being this 'horrible,'
    'cruel,' and 'haughty' race of women, they have armed them with
    obvious powers, which they would not otherwise have possessed,
    and there is consequently reason to apprehend that Government
    supervision accentuates in some respects rather than relieves the
    hardships of the servitude 

temperament, sought for a way to invest their
earnings, and quite naturally, could think of nothing so profitable
as securing women and girls to meet the demands of the foreigners.
Marriage having always been, to the Oriental mind, scarcely anything
beyond the mere trade in the persons of women, it was but a step from
that attitude of mind to the selling of girls to the foreigner, and
the rearing of them for that object. The "protected women," being of
the Tanka tribe, were well situated for this purpose, for they had
many relations of kindred and friendship all up and down the Canton
river, and the business of the preparation of slave girls for the
foreigners and for foreign markets (as the trade expanded) gradually
extended backwards up the Canton river, until many of its boats were
almost given over to it. "Flower-boats" were probably never unknown to
this river, but, besides their use as brothels, they became stocked
with little girls under training for vice, under the incitement of an
ever-growing slave trade. These little girls were bought, stolen or
enticed from the mainland by these river people, to swell the number
of their own children destined to the infamous slave trade. Chinese
law forbids this kind of slavery, but, as we have seen, the Tanka
people were sort of outlaws, the river life facilitated such a
business, and Hong Kong was near at hand.
In later years Dr. Eitel, Chinese interpreter to the Governor, stated:
"Almost every so-called 'protected woman,' i.e. kept mistress of
foreigners here, belongs to the Tanka tribe, looked down upon and kept
at a distance by all the other Chinese classes. It is among these
Tanka women, and especially under the protection of these 'protected'
Tanka women, that private prostitution and the sale of girls for
concubinage flourishes, being looked upon as a legitimate profession.
Consequently, almost every 'protected woman' keeps a nursery of
purchased children or a few servant girls who are being re

of all California women, and later of all
American womanhood.
In considering the life history of the Chinese woman living in our
Chinatowns in America, therefore, we are studying matters of vital
importance to us. And in order to a clear understanding of the matter,
we must go back to the beginning of the slave-trade which has brought
these women to the West.
Four points on the south coast of China are of especial interest to
us, being the sources of supply of this slave-trade. These are Macao,
Canton, Kowloon and Hong Kong, and the women coming to the West from
this region all pass through Hong Kong, remaining there a longer or
shorter time, the latter place being the emporium and thoroughfare of
all the surrounding ports.
The south coast of China is split by a Y-shaped gap, at about its
middle, where the Canton river bursts the confines of its banks and
plunges into the sea. The lips of this mouth of the river are everted
like those of an aboriginal African, and like a pendant from the
eastern lip hangs the Island of Hong Kong, separated from the mainland
by water only one-fourth of a mile wide. From the opposite or western
lip hangs another pendant, a small island upon which is situated the
Portuguese city of Macao. The mainland adjoining Hong Kong is the
peninsu