stringent, the market price of these
slaves has risen to three thousand dollars, while the more beautiful
ones bring a much higher price. Judges, lawyers, seafaring men,
hirelings of the Immigration Bureau, Chinatown guides, "Watch-dogs,"
officials and policemen, have all been accused of having imbrued their
hands at different times in the slaughter of the virtue of Chinese
women through this wretched slave business, besides the white patrons
of the Chinese slave-pens. But probably none are so guilty of
complicity as the property-owners, who build the places for housing
the slaves, and make enormous profits in the business.
There seems to be a misapprehension as to the status of these Chinese
prostitutes, to which the mind recurs again and again, in spite of
careful explanations. Some imagine that only those who are rescued,
or at least those who have managed to convey word to the missionaries
that they desire to be rescued, are the literal slaves, and that those
left behind are free. Such is not the case. We have already shown that
nearly all the Chinese prostitutes at Singapore and at Hong Kong are
literal slaves, the only exception being, in fact, a small percentage
(estimated at 10 per cent by the Chinese merchants at Hong Kong),
composed almost entirely of women who have mortgaged their own bodies,
or who have been thus mortgaged by relatives, for a limited time
in payment for a debt, and who, at the end of the stated time, are
generally set free, though sometimes they find themselves in a trap
from which there is no escape. It is through the misfortune of debt,
an