in Canada, and more in accord with the
dictates of ordinary humanity and English ideas of the liberty of
the subject.

Among the Chinese at Singapore the women number less than
one-fifth of the population, and at Penang the proportion between
males and females is practically the same. In the immigration
...

and groaning amongst the girls up-stairs. I have not heard
any beating, but the girls were constantly crying. The crying was
annoying to me and the other people in the shop. The people living
in the neighborhood have, together with myself, suspected that the
girls were bought and sold to go to California." Another neighbor
deposed to knowing the third defendant as "in the habit last year
of taking young girls of various ages, from 10 to 20, about the
Colony for sale. I knew this defendant wanted to sell the girls,
as she asked me if I knew any woman who wanted to buy them. She
comes from Canton." A girl from Wong-Po found in No. 71 brothel,
told of being taken to Canton at eleven years of age and sold by
her sister as a servant to the Lam family. After being in this
family three or four years, her mistress and the second defendant,
Tai-Ku, a relation of her mistress and daughter to the first
defendant (A-Neung, keeper of the brothel), took her to a
"flower-boat," and the next day by steamer to Hong Kong, and she
was taken to the house of A-Neung. Her mistress stayed in the
house three days, and sold her to the first and second defendants
(mother and daughter) for $120. She added: "This was in the tenth
month last year.... I was never allowed to go out. I have never ...

title "Protector" has held for certain persons, as applied
to the male sex! "Man, the natural protector of woman." Forsooth, to
protect her from what? Rattlesnakes, buffalo, lions, wildcats no more
overrun the country, and why is this relation of "protector" still
claimed? Why, to protect woman from rudeness, and insult and sometimes
even worse. But from whence comes that danger of rudeness and insult
or worse from which man is to protect woman? From man, of course.
Man is, then, woman's natural protector to protect her from man, her
natural protector. He is to set himself the task of defending her
from his injury of her, and he is charmed with the avocation. He will
protect her as Abraham protected Sarah when he took her into Egypt.
"Do so-and-so," said Abraham to Sarah, "that it may be well...

was gladly welcomed, and Malays, East Indians and
Chinese all turned informers, and money was not only given them with
which to open the way for debauchery, but awards upon conviction of
the women with whom they consorted. "The Chinese used for this work
were chiefly Lokongs, [native police constables], Inspector Peterson's
servant and a cook at No. 8 Police Station. The depositions show
that in at least five cases the police and their informers received
rewards. Three times their exertions were remunerated by sums of
twenty dollars, although in one of these instances the evidence was
apparently volunteered. Arch and Collins [Europeans] once got five
dollars each, and Chinese constables received similar amounts." In
many of these cases the immorality on the part of the informers who
brought...

And here sat the Inspector,
telling us this story, of which we knew so much, (and learned more at
Canton later), as an instance of the "rescue work" of his office!

Almost the last day of our painful work at Singapore had come. We had
gathered much evidence, and had good hope that something could be
done with it in London. "This is my birth-day," one of us said to...

out of it in the matter of
provisions for the "protection", of women. We asked, in reference to
his remark that the Protectorate was a Rescue Society, if it did not
look after men, too. He replied, "Oh yes, the coolies; all are brought
here, but the men go to the other side of the building; the women come
here." We asked if all the women came before him; he said, "Before the
Protector; but in his absence before me." We pondered on the thought
of this "rescue work" carried on by this particular Protector of whom
we had heard that he had been almost unspeakably vile from boyhood
up. He showed us a book which contained a list of all deck-passengers
coming to Singapore, who had been passed under review at the
Protectorate; they were listed by families. He then showed us a
separate list of women and girls who came alone, without families. He
had underscored with red ink the names of those in the list who had
gone into brothels. He said that suspicious cases either went to the
Protectorate Refuge, or those under whose charge they went to live
were obliged to give bonds or securities, 500 Mexican dollars was the
usual amount of the security in the cases recorded. He also showed us
the form of these bonds, both blank forms and some that had been made
out; these bonds required that the girls named therein should not be ...

had given $60 for a young girl aged 13 years, to one of the
kidnapers, and he took her away beyond the reach of her distracted
mother under circumstances from which he must have known that the
child had been kidnaped. But although the facts were known at the
Police Court, and this man remained exceeding ten days afterward
in the Colony, no charge was ever made against him. After passing
sentences at this time, I made some observations on the '_patria
potestas_' [power of the father] theory. Dr. Eitel having painted
this condition in China in what I thought too favorable colors,
I quoted from Doolittle's 'Social Life in China,' unquestioned
testimony as to what _patria potestas_ was in China before the
controversy now raised, and from Mr. Parker, Her Britannic
Majesty's Consul at Canton, as to its present state in China.
After these quotations, I simply asked, Can greater tyranny, more
unchecked caprice, be described or even conceived as inexcusable
over wife, concubine, child, or purchased or inherited
slave?'--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 ...

them can read,
and it would be more to the purpose if the Government ordered the
removal of the bars from the doors and windows of the brothels.
The fact is that these precautions against illegal detention are
practically useless, and this is admitted even by the editor of
such a paper as the _Hong Kong Daily Press_, who some time ago
discussed the question _apropos_ of the suicide of a Hong Kong
prostitute who was desirous of being married. The man who wished
to marry her offered the pocket-mother a sum of $2,000, but she
demanded $2,300 and refused to part with the woman for less;
whereupon she hung herself. The following comments on this case
are from the _Hong Kong Daily Press_:

are classed as
'paid passengers,' and 9,118 as "unpaid passengers received into
depots." With the former class the Chinese Protectorate has
nothing more to do, unless they come to the Protector to sign a
Government labour contract with planters or other employers
of labor, but with the 'unpaid passengers' the case is very
different. These men are brought to the Straits to the number of
about 15,000 a year, under what is spoken of in the Report as
"the much objurgated depot and broker system," and the facts as
presented below will speak for themselves as to whether the
objurgations are warranted or not. The brokers are all China men,
and are admitted to be men of the worst character. They have their
assistants or partners in the chief ports of China, who scout
the country round in search of men and are known to be not very
particular as to the means they employ in obtaining them. Nothing
is required of the recruit except a willingness to hand himself
over with his scanty outfit to the tender mercies of the broker,
who pays his passage and provides him with food and such things as
he considers needful. While the vessels, however, with their decks
crowded with emigrants, are leaving the Chinese ports, it is a ...

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,
and in countries where Chinese women are cheap, that this mortgaging
of the person takes place. Such conditions do not surround Chinese
women in America, so that this form of service in houses of ill-fame
must be correspondingly rare, and this is according to the testimony
of the missionaries. For this reason, therefore, we may rule out the
temporary servitude, and assert without fear of contradiction from
those who understand the situation, that practically all the Chinese
prostitutes in the United States are literal slaves. Some are
_willing_ slaves, some _unwilling_; and a small fraction of the
unwilling slaves have managed by stroke of good fortune, and because
of unusual courage, to get a request conveyed to a mission, and thus
in some instances they have secured their freedom. But not all who ...