Mr. Rockefeller and White Slave Trade

Prostitution had been on the agenda of urban reformers in the late nineteenth century, but the “discovery” of the white slave trade in the early twentieth century changed everything. In the years before the First World War, newspapers, novels, and the new medium of motion pictures portrayed sinister organizations at work to lure women into the sex trade. The “common prostitute” had been seen as a fallen woman, ultimately responsible for her own lot in life. The “white slave” was an innocent victim—a country girl or new immigrant—who had been tricked or forced into prostitution. The plight of the white slave attracted a new generation of reformers in cities across the United States who came to the rescue.Footnote ⁷

In 1909, McClure's magazine published an exposé that portrayed New York City as the capital of the international white slave trade. Under the protection of corrupt politicians, white slavers procured girls from East Side tenements and villages of Eastern Europe for distribution throughout the United States, the Caribbean, and South America.Footnote ⁸ The white slave trade became the pivotal issue in the city elections in the autumn of that year, and in the following January, Judge Thomas O'Sullivan commissioned a grand jury investigation. O'Sullivan charged the members with determining the truth of statements that New York was a “center or clearing house for an organized traffic in women for immoral purposes or what has come to be known as ‘white slave’ traffic.” Some statements, he said, may have been mere sensationalism, but others were purported to be based on investigations by persons with expert knowledge of the facts.Footnote ⁹

To lead the grand jury, O'Sullivan selected John D. Rockefeller Jr. Rockefeller had been stung by accusations that his father's fortune had been acquired through immoral and illegal methods and devoted his life to redeeming the family name through philanthropy. Initially, Rockefeller was reluctant, but he took on the issue with missionary zeal. The grand jury was sworn in January 1910 and continued until June. Working with the office of District Attorney Charles O. Whitman, Rockefeller gathered material from commissions and organizations, including immigration authorities, prosecutors in Chicago, and antivice organizations in New York. Rockefeller also put $25,000 of his own money into covert investigations in which undercover operatives tried to buy women on the underground market. Rockefeller's investigators included two college women who posed as decoys, a private detective with knowledge of French, investigators from Whitman's office, and several “members of the underworld.” To maintain secrecy, the investigation operated out of two private office buildings in the city.Footnote ¹⁰

Rockefeller clarified the scope of his investigation with Whitman. As Rockefeller understood it, the grand jury could only regard sworn testimony as legal evidence. However, the presentment could include findings from outside persons or organizations, provided it was made clear they were not based on legal evidence. The conditions of prostitution in the city could be made part of the presentment even though none of the investigators would appear before the grand jury and none of their findings would be part of the minutes. Although Whitman's office could not pay for collection of information that did not constitute legal evidence, this would not prevent “outside interests financing such investigation.”Footnote ¹¹ Rockefeller agreed that no one should know that he was financing the investigations. In supervising the undercover investigators, the assistant district attorney assigned to Rockefeller was “acting as a private citizen, outside of office hours.” Whitman's office would have no relation to these investigations except to those cases that came to court. Rockefeller and Whitman regarded themselves as two individuals striving to improve moral conditions in the city. However, Rockefeller did not want to surrender the idea that he was providing cases for prosecution. “It is understood that in all of these investigations the object will be to get legal evidence and indictments.”Footnote ¹²

In the end, the Rockefeller grand jury turned up “no evidence” of any organization in the country engaged in the traffic, nor evidence of “an organized traffic in women for immoral purposes.”Footnote ¹³ They found evidence for 54 indictments: 22 for rape, sixteen for abduction, ten for maintaining disorderly houses, and six for compulsory prostitution of women. Further, they concluded that there was some reality to the white slave trade. “A trafficking in the bodies of women does exist and is carried out by individuals acting for their individual benefit,” individuals known to each other, and “more or less informally associated.”Footnote ¹⁴ But, because of the publicity surrounding their work, it was difficult to secure legal evidence against individual traffickers. The investigators obtained agreements from five “self-declared” dealers in women, and completed purchases in two cases: $60 in one and $75 in the other.Footnote ¹⁵

The Rockefeller grand jury reflected the progressive view of law. During the Progressive Era, coalitions of reformers attacked social ills: the power of big business, corruption in government, trade union disputes, child labor, urban poverty, immigrant socialization, and delinquency, not to mention prostitution.Footnote ¹⁶ Alarmed by social changes brought about by market forces, progressive reformers championed government as an alternative. They sought an active, interventionist state and officials who based their policies on social science evidence. They formulated mixed public–private initiatives for regulation and reform. The progressive view of law downplayed individual rights in favor of government action for the public. Progressives did not believe that individual rights should prevent action taken in the name of “public welfare,” “social justice,” and the “common good.”Footnote ¹⁷

At the same time, Rockefeller was not the most likely Progressive Era reformer. Above all else, progressive reformers shared a belief that only government, advised by nonpartisan experts, could solve the problems of industrial/urban society.Footnote ¹⁸ Rockefeller considered the idea of a public commission to continue the work of the grand jury, but decided to wage a “private war” instead.Footnote ¹⁹ In 1911, he incorporated the Bureau of Social Hygiene, his own research foundation, to underwrite moral purity organizations.Footnote ²⁰ The Bureau provided financial backing for the American Social Hygiene Association (ASHA), which was formed 3 years later from an amalgamation of several organizations set up to promote public health. The ASHA was one of a number of private organizations that conducted social surveys of vice in leading cities. To break down the collusion between corrupt officials and criminal elements within the city, the investigators used covert methods. Generally, their strategy was to make unannounced visits to boarding houses, dance halls, and massage parlors. The investigators prepared reports, which were then presented to city officials with the understanding that they would be given to the press if the officials refused to act.Footnote ²¹

No one embodied the progressive approach to law more than Roscoe Pound. Pound, who was born in Nebraska, studied botany before turning to law. He graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1888, studied law at Harvard University, then returned to Lincoln where he practiced law and taught at the university. He held professorships in law at the University of Nebraska, Northwestern University, and the University of Chicago before settling at Harvard in 1910 where he served as head of the law school for 20 years. Pound seems to have seen his mission in legal education as inspiring others through ideas, and did have considerable success in doing this.Footnote ²² He achieved a national reputation in 1906 with a speech to the American Bar Association in which he suggested that public disrespect for the administration of justice was deserved. Legislators, judges, and lawyers had not done their duty. He also previewed his theory of law. In a series of articles published during the next few years, Pound urged the legal profession to pursue “sociological jurisprudence.”Footnote ²³ He encouraged lawyers to see the law as a social institution, and proposed the methods of sociology, economics, and politics that should be used to study it. He did not reject the traditional case study method of learning legal skills, but insisted that law schools supplement this by teaching “law in relation to society.” He believed that judges should not limit themselves to the demands of individual cases, but should recognize their responsibility to direct the ends of justice to social interests.Footnote ²⁴

These were the heroic years of American sociology when the new discipline appeared as the most exciting and innovative contribution to the emerging social sciences. Pound conceived of sociological jurisprudence in the tradition of positivist sociology. He read the foundational texts by Comte, Durkheim, Tarde, Spencer, and Weber and cultivated friendships with colleagues in sociology. He joined the American Sociological Society, wrote articles for sociology journals, and taught a course in the sociology of law. Years later, he remarked that he had been “brought up on Comtian positivism” in the 1880s, and turned to “Comtian sociology” after 1900.Footnote ²⁵

Americans in Geneva

During the 1920s, the Rockefeller grand jury investigation became the model for the first intercontinental investigation into the traffic in women. According to Article 23c of its Constitution, the League of Nations assumed responsibility for monitoring compliance with treaties concerning the white slave trade agreed to in Paris and Madrid before the war. In 1921, delegates from 34 nations gathered in Geneva for a conference on the traffic in women. The conference produced a set of resolutions, known as the Final Act, which put into place an organizational structure to carry the antitraffic agenda forward.Footnote ²⁶

The Final Act created the Advisory Committee on the Traffic in Women and Children, a “technical committee” within the League framework. It was composed of representatives from the member states and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The Advisory Committee was placed under the leadership of Rachel Crowdy, head of the Social Section, who had been named Dame of the British Empire for organizing nursing stations during the war. Susan Pedersen refers to the work of these technical committees as a “third” League of Nations because of their disproportionate contribution to what the League actually did. The individuals at the head of these committees proved to be effective “institutional entrepreneurs” who successfully navigated the political agendas of states and the interests of international voluntary organizations (NGOs) with strong records of practical accomplishment.Footnote ²⁷

If the diplomats gathered in Geneva wanted to adopt sociological jurisprudence as a guide their work, they would have had more than Pound's version available to them. There was a “French school” associated with Nicholas Politis, and a German tradition, as well as the work of Austro-Hungarian legal theorist Eugen Ehrlich,Footnote ²⁸ but Pound's version had particular meaning in relation to the traffic in women, given the role of Grace Abbott. Although the United States did not join the League and had no official representative, the Advisory Committee invited the United States to send an unofficial representative. The Harding administration appointed Grace Abbott, head of the Children's Bureau in Washington, DC, and she became the first American to join the administration of the League of Nations. Abbott had become known for her work in Chicago: she took up residence at Hull House, directed the Immigrants Protective League, and taught at the University of Chicago.Footnote ²⁹

Abbott was originally from Nebraska. Before moving to Chicago, she completed her degree at the University of Nebraska and enrolled in a graduate course in law taught by Roscoe Pound.Footnote ³⁰ She maintained correspondence with Pound throughout her career, sought his advice on child labor litigation, and would be considered a member of his network of “progressive-pragmatists.”Footnote ³¹ Abbott arrived in Geneva in 1923 with an ambitious proposal. She urged the Advisory Committee to conduct an inquiry to establish the “facts of the traffic”: whether there was an international traffic in women for prostitution, to learn the methods traffickers used in procuring and transporting women, and to weigh the effectiveness of national measures to eliminate the traffic. Skilled investigators would need to visit cities suspected of being key sites of the traffic. It would be difficult, even dangerous, but absolutely necessary to quash sensational exaggerations in the press and to establish an “intelligent basis” for international cooperation.Footnote ³² Further, Abbott suggested that the study could be paid for by a private source. She was on the executive board of Rockefeller's Bureau of Social Hygiene and she felt sure that it would extend substantial assistance to the traffic investigation.Footnote ³³ When the Bureau confirmed that it would provide $75,000, the Council agreed to Abbott's proposal with only slight amendments.

Although the Council insisted that the investigation should be led by a committee of experts, to be selected from names submitted by member states to the Secretariat, it accepted the appointment of Dr. William Snow to preside over the committee. Snow, a trained physician, was a professor of preventive medicine at Stanford University. He was also head of ASHA, a situation that was less than ideal from Abbott's point of view, as the inquiry would “not seem to the outsider to be quite such a detached job.”Footnote ³⁴ To manage the fieldwork, Snow appointed his colleague at the ASHA, Bascom Johnson. Johnson had completed his law degree at the University of Pennsylvania in 1903 and practiced in Philadelphia. Later, he became secretary of the Recreation Committee of New York City, and in 1913, joined ASHA as assistant legal counsel. During the First World War, Johnson served with the United States Commission on Training Camp Activities. He campaigned with Snow to close down red light districts adjacent to military training camps along the Mexican border, and in cities of the western United States, including San Francisco.Footnote ³⁵

Johnson deployed eight investigators, most of whom had worked on ASHA investigations in New York and elsewhere, to conduct “on the spot” inquiries. Mostly, he relied on the ASHA's chief undercover operative, Paul Kinsie. Kinsie, who attended the University of Kentucky, became an investigator for ASHA in 1914 and worked with Johnson on the wartime campaign to discourage prostitution at military bases. Over the years, he developed an impressive portfolio of cover stories and false identities. Snow and Johnson relied on him for knowledge of “the underworld,” which they considered to be an essential counter balance to official statements by government officials. So, while Johnson and his translator conducted formal interviews with immigration, police, and welfare authorities, Kinsie and other undercover operatives visited clubs and cafés, cabarets, and music halls. Kinsie would make his observations, then write out narratives with an enviable level of detail. These were then typewritten and handed to Johnson to compare against official statements.Footnote ³⁶

Pound did extend his thinking to international law. In a lecture given at the University of Leiden in 1922, he argued that international law did not present a separate form of law, and that international lawyers had made so little progress because they conceived of international law as a “closed metaphysical system.” He encouraged international lawyers to borrow concepts from the social sciences and to take up active social engineering.Footnote ³⁷ As David Wigdor pointed out, although Pound's reputation continued to grow after the First World War, he had exhausted his fund of new ideas. Although he applied his theories more widely, he failed to think them through more deeply. Unable to move beyond the vision he had articulated before the war, his interwar theory echoed earlier answers.Footnote ³⁸ If sociological jurisprudence could move beyond the American context to the international context, it would depend upon the efforts of lawyers such as Johnson, and non-lawyers such as Abbott and Snow working for the Advisory Committee on the Traffic in Women and Children.

Trouble in Panama

The Advisory Committee on the Traffic in Women and Children was convinced about the threat to women presented by employment at overseas theaters, music halls, and cabarets. Sidney Harris, the British representative, said it was “not an uncommon practice” for women to accept theatrical engagements overseas with very unfavorable contracts that left them stranded abroad, where they drifted into immorality.Footnote ³⁹ Despite the growing popularity of cinema after the First World War, venues for variety artistes continued. Music halls, cabarets, and jazz clubs became seen as a source of low-grade entertainment, associated with sexual danger, narcotic drugs, and foreign criminality. The narrative of the innocent girl trapped into white slavery fused with the narrative of drug addiction. The venues for nighttime entertainment became, as Catherine Carstairs phrases it, the “gateway to the underworld,” where innocent young women descended into a dark cellar of drug addiction and sexual slavery.Footnote ⁴⁰

In an early draft of the Report of the Special Body of Experts on the Traffic in Women and Children, Johnson identified the “special risk” to women who earned their living as singers and dancers. There was a great demand for women artistes throughout the Atlantic World and troupes constantly moved about music halls, cabarets, and jazz clubs. Using bogus newspaper advertisements, white slave traffickers lured would-be singers and dancers to foreign locations where they became trapped in immoral lives. Music hall owners supplemented their profits with prostitution by requiring the artistes to drink with patrons. The artistes enticed young men into a sexual encounter, either by prostituting themselves after hours or by referring the young men to professionals waiting nearby. Because of the influence of alcohol, drugs, and dancing, women who started on the stage found themselves among those walking the streets.Footnote ⁴¹

Knowledge of these behaviors was representative of what Pound said was essential to understanding law in action. As Pound explained in 1912, the main problem to be solved by sociological jurisprudence was “to take more account, and more intelligent account, of the social facts upon which law must proceed and to which it is to be applied.”Footnote ⁴² The “social fact” was a foundational idea in sociology. In the late nineteenth century, Emile Durkheim taught that individual behavior could only be understood in its social context. Social facts had an independent existence, apart from the interpretation of the observer, as well as from the consciousness of the observed. Through statistical trends and inductive reasoning, the sociologist could gather objective information that would reveal the fundamental organizational categories of civilization.Footnote ⁴³ Establishing the “facts of trafficking,” was, as Grace Abbott explained to Crowdy's Advisory Committee, the primary purpose of the League's investigation, but Abbott did not anticipate, and Pound never imagined, how difficult this would be.

When Kinsie stopped in Panama for a few days in August 1924, on the return trip from South America, he took a peek at the musical theatre.Footnote ⁴⁴ Kinsie reasoned that Panama City and Colon were “places of demand” for prostitutes, particularly during those times of the year when the Atlantic and Pacific Fleets of the United States Navy were in port. During these visits, officers and crews spent much time ashore. The cities and towns attracted all kinds of undesirables: prostitutes and souteneurs, some from as far away as Paris. At first, Panamanian officials denied that trafficking took place, but when pressed, Kinsie reported, they modified their statements to say: “If there is any, it is very little.”Footnote ⁴⁵

In Panama City, Kinsie toured the Coconut Grove, the main vice district since construction of the canal. Most of the women he saw were “natives and negresses,” along with some middle-aged white women, all of whom had been in Panama for many years. The remaining prostitutes occupied two-room houses, scattered throughout the city. They sought to attract passers-by, “white, colored or yellow” who could afford 25¢. Most of these women were Panamanians. The foreign prostitutes were French, Italians, and Spanish, none under 25 years of age. All “old time prostitutes,” they had practiced in cities across Central and South America; they had come to Panama in the hope of making money from the sailors. The cluster of houses around Calle Street was known as the “three way section” because all the prostitutes “indulge in pervert practices.” Customers made their selection from menus of indecent photographs of preferred encounters priced from 50¢ to $2. All of these areas were “out of bounds” for sailors and soldiers. On the streets, sanitary and military police made regular patrols. But when, on August 14, the battleship USS Henderson arrived, the commander granted shore leave without restriction, and Calle Street was so crowded that prostitutes from across the city set up in temporary rooms to meet demand. Kinsie had heard that it was like this every time a ship arrived.Footnote ⁴⁶

One afternoon, 2 days later, Kinsie went to Kelly's Cabaret on the Avenida. In a conversation with a “colored waiter,” he said that he was a theatrical manager returning to the United States after touring clubs in South America. He went back to the cabaret the following day, and the waiter introduced him to “a nice little American girl.” Maurissa Camick stood 5 feet, 7 inches (1.7 meters), and weighed 140 pounds (63.5 kilograms). She was 21 years old but appeared older. She had bobbed brown hair, and brown eyes set in a wide face with even, white teeth. She wore a black dress, trimmed with white brocade, and a straw hat. She said she had been born in Russia and had come to the United States as a small girl. She had gone on the stage at 18 years of age. It was from Camick that Kinsie first learned of the man to become the notorious 18-R. Given the significance of their conversation later on, it is worth quoting exactly what Kinsie said was said.

The conversation gradually changed, Kinsie said, and Camick offered to spend the night with him for $20. She said she could not leave the premises until closing, but that they could get a room at the International Hotel. They could not go upstairs, she explained, because Mr. Kelly did not allow the singers to use the rooms. Kinsie noted that during the course of the conversation, she stated that before she had come to Panama she had not prostituted herself. During the next 2 days, Kinsie met all of the women artistes at Kelly's cabaret; there were eight altogether. He learned that all of them practiced prostitution. He also learned that Harry Walker had made it clear to them before sending them to Panama that “plenty of extra money can be picked up” in the cabarets. All of the girls had been prostitutes prior to coming to Panama with the exception of Camick.Footnote ⁴⁸

While in Panama City, Kinsie also visited the Hotel Metropole, which operated a cabaret featuring jazz. The singers mingled with the guests, danced with them, and encouraged them to buy drinks. Most of the guests were commissioned officers stationed in the Canal Zone. All of the girls came from New York; all had been sent by Harry Walker. According to the banjo player, Jack Reed, the women had it “pretty soft” and received a “good salary.” The owner counted on them to go to bed with customers otherwise the hotel would not have been able to attract the officers. “You see,” Reed said, “this place and Mr Kelly's are the only two places where a fellow who is a little particular can get himself a piece of tail. The other cabarets usually have niggers and there ain't a real joint in town.”Footnote ⁴⁹

In November 1926, Kinsie called at the Harry Walker Theatrical Booking Agency in New York City: Room 205 at 1674 Broadway. Kinsie told a story about his plans to set up a cabaret in Panama City with a partner there. He knew Walker handled all the business at Kelly's cabaret and wanted to find out if he would supply his new business as well.

The conversation took place in a small office next to a waiting room for entertainers and others, Kinsie noted. There were about 15 girls, between 20 and 25 years of age, and about five young men. Walker spoke very loud and did not bother to close the door. He was an American, 37 years of age, with dirty blonde hair parted to one side. He spoke through tobacco stained, crooked teeth, in a loud and fast voice. Kinsie thought Walker came across like a hawker at a fairground side show. He did not think Walker was a white slave trafficker.Footnote ⁵¹

Kinsie took his reports to the ASHA office in New York to be typewritten, then sent them to Johnson with a cover letter. “I may as well confess that I was very backward about following the original lead on the Harry Walker case.” Although he worried that it would be a hard case to break, he found it one of the easiest cases he had dealt with. Walker was very busy. The interview was only 20 minutes, but effective, because as soon as he asked a question, Walker answered and anticipated just the information he wanted. Regarding “underworld conditions,” Kinsie admitted to Johnson that the information was rather general. “But I am sure that the persons I interviewed knew what they were talking about, and if there was or is a possibility of girls being brought into or taken out of the United States for immoral purposes, I am sure that none of the persons interviewed would be pursuing their present semi-professional vocations.”Footnote ⁵²

Unlike Kinsie, Johnson believed that Camick had been trafficked by Walker. The difference was not the facts as revealed in her interview with Kinsie, but in how Johnson interpreted these in light of his belief in the link between music halls and sexual exploitation. Johnson did not offer statistics to support his theory, but concluded that the “facts obtained in this survey” indicated that women were being taken from Europe to South and Central America for prostitution “in considerable numbers.” Governments needed to regulate girls employed as entertainers in cabarets because advertisements in newspapers amounted to “thinly veiled methods of inducing girls to enter an immoral life.”Footnote ⁵³ Camick was by definition a trafficking victim. There were wide national differences in conceptualization of traffic in women, and a “somewhat legalistic interpretation” active in parts of Europe. The on-the-spot investigation, Johnson said, set aside the “narrow definition” of “traffic,” which had included an age of consent. Johnson stressed that no woman, even an experienced prostitute, could “possibly understand and therefore consent in advance” to the “virtual slavery” that she would be subjected to in a foreign country.Footnote ⁵⁴

Further, Johnson decided to include the case of 18-R in the final report, Report of the Special Body of Experts on the Traffic in Women and Children distributed to the press. It said that the research extended across 112 cities in 28 countries in Europe, the Mediterranean, and North and South America. Investigators conducted 6,500 interviews, including 5,000 with prostitutes, pimps, brothel-keepers, and other figures involved in the sex trade. Although the investigation could not produce statistics, judging from the numbers of foreign prostitutes in cities such as Buenos Aires and Cairo, trafficking in women was extensive. It also said, in the part of the report concerning the United States, that the manager of a cabaret in Panama told an investigator that a certain theatrical employment agent in New York, 18-R, had furnished him with all the American girls he used in his establishment. The cabaret encouraged the artistes to drink with customers and accompany them to hotels afterward. The investigator subsequently called on 18-R in New York, and, posing as a businessman thinking about setting up in Panama, asked about acquiring girls for a music hall. Johnson reported that 18-R claimed to have “sent over 300 down there.”Footnote ⁵⁵

Searching for 18-R

Pound called for the production of sociological knowledge of the law and for the diffusion of this to the public. He urged those responsible for the legal system, especially judges, to incorporate social science knowledge in their decision making. It was essential for legal professionals not to isolate themselves along the lines of “legal monks,” but to engage the public. But beyond sharing his dreams, he did not specify how this should be accomplished. “It ought to be someone's duty to advise the people of the progress of juridical science and to make its results public property.”Footnote ⁵⁶ He imagined laboratories to examine the application of sociological principles to state and municipal life, and to study scientifically how to make legislation more effective. “There are no laboratories dedicated to legal science whose bulletins shall make it possible for the scholar to obtain authoritative data and for the lay public to reach sound conclusions.”Footnote ⁵⁷

Publicity was very important to the Advisory Committee's strategy. Although the Advisory Committee expected to receive the consent of governments that had signed treaties, they also engaged in “normative projects”—as Stephen Legg has put it—that appealed to domestic populations. Publicity conveying a language of trafficking was essential to creating the League's authority.Footnote ⁵⁸ Johnson and Snow prized newspaper coverage in getting their message across and naïvely believed they could control the timing and content of stories. Originally, the plan was to prepare two reports. The first, for circulation to journalists, would offer general conclusions along with an overview of the findings and recommendations. To avoid creating difficulties for undercover investigators and their informants, it would be anonymized along the lines what had been done in American cities. Proper nouns would be replaced with Kinsie's coded system of letters and numbers. The second report, to remain confidential, would contain all the identifying information, including persons and places, obtained from the field studies. Officials who had questions, or needed to be convinced, would be shown this information. Rockefeller had provided a vault specifically for this purpose for his grand jury inquiry.Footnote ⁵⁹

Release of the first report, Report of the Special Body of Experts into the Traffic in Women and Children, generated tremendous interest and it was decided to anonymize the second report and release it as Part 2. Part 1 appeared in February 1927 and Part 2 appeared in December of that year. Governments were allowed to see the information in Part 2 before it became public, which led to considerable speculation about the reasons for the delay in releasing it. Newspaper editors, delegates to the League, leaders of women's organizations, and political leaders charged that the report had been sanitized to protect political sensibilities, and urged release of the “complete” findings. The French Foreign Minister, Aristide Briand, objected to publication of material that could not be substantiated. Much of the information had been “received by unauthorized agents” and not by “members of the White Slave committee themselves.” Most of the findings came from statements made by those engaged in exploitation of women or others with equally dubious morals. The report “conveys a general picture which does not in the least represent the truth.”Footnote ⁶⁰

In New York, the trouble started in December 1927. The New York World announced a series of articles about the white slave trade that would reveal what had been suppressed by governments.Footnote ⁶¹ The editorial position followed the views of the Democratic Party, including support for the League of Nations, but the World, which had been built up in the nineteenth century by Joseph Pulitzer, also had a reputation for sensationalism. Arthur Sweetser at the League Secretariat's Public Information Office alerted Rachel Crowdy to the seriousness of the situation. Part 2 had generated great public interest in the United States because of “gross misrepresentation” by the World. The claim that aspects of the traffic had been suppressed by guilty governments with the connivance of the League proved disconcerting to friends of the League in the United States. Sweetser also contacted Grace Abbott, and she assured him that she put “absolutely no confidence” in the World's statements. Combined with Johnson's statement, they had “a complete denial” of the stories. But, Sweetzer emphasized, “it goes without saying a report like this when printed does a great deal of harm not only to technical investigation, but also to the general status of the League and to the understanding between the United States and Europe.”Footnote ⁶²

The fourth article in the series ignited the furor. The published version of Part 2 had said that the United States, although faced with difficult geographic and social challenges, “had made a determined stand against the traffic.” But the original version, the World emphasized, had identified a number of problems, including that of theatrical engagements. Girls were found to have left New Orleans and cities in Florida for cabarets in Tampico, Mexico City, and Havana. An agent working with a New York theatrical agency, referred to in the report as 18-R, had boasted to a League investigator that he had sent many girls to Panama. The article quoted Walker's boast about the “swellest flock of blondes.”Footnote ⁶³

In response to the allegations reported in the World, Charles Tuttle, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced his own inquiry. Tuttle, a graduate of Columbia Law School, had spent 25 years with a firm of Wall Street lawyers. He chaired the Republican Committee for the county and had become a spokesperson for Republican Party in recent campaigns. President Coolidge had appointed him to the post of federal prosecutor in March 1927. Tuttle had created an image for himself as a man who sacrificed a lucrative career on Wall Street to become a humble public servant committed to ferreting out corruption.Footnote ⁶⁴ Tuttle appointed Assistant United States Attorney Henry Gerson to investigate the claims about the New York theatrical agent. Tuttle said he did not know the identity of 18-R as mentioned in the League's report.Footnote ⁶⁵ When Gerson asked for the real name of 18-R, Johnson refused.

In response, Tuttle demanded a copy of the full report, the version with the names of cities, establishments, and people written in. Johnson protested that the information had been used with code names because it was confidential. Names of cities, establishments, and persons remained with the Secretariat in Geneva. He said that he had been acting in an official capacity for the League and that all requests for information had to be put to the League Secretariat. Further, he did not turn over the report to Gerson because he did not think it would be of use; it did not contain sufficient information to warrant prosecutions; also, 18-R's theatrical agency was no longer operating in New York City. Tuttle said it made no difference. If the government could establish that crimes had been committed and that they were still punishable (under a statute of limitations), he would issue subpoenas and make arrests. If the investigation required formal statements from girls in Panama, then they would be returned to New York City to give such statements.Footnote ⁶⁶

In January 1928, Sir Eric Drummond, Secretary General of the League of Nations, received a letter from William R. Castle, Assistant Secretary of State in Washington, DC. Castle requested, on behalf of Charles Tuttle, the name of the theatrical agent referred to in Part 2 of the report as 18-R, as well as any information on which this statement was based. There was “considerable pressure” on Tuttle to indict this man, Castle explained, and if the League did not agree to make this information available, Tuttle was determined to obtain it by a different method: Snow and Johnson could be subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury.Footnote ⁶⁷

Tuttle versus the League

Tuttle's grand jury threat pressed the question over what authority the League actually had to conduct its investigation. Stephen Legg referred to the League of Nations campaign against human trafficking as its “technical interventions into the lives of individuals, rather than simply its work as an international security organization.”Footnote ⁶⁸ It is an important point. The Advisory Committee wanted to intervene in actual trafficking cases. Near the time that the investigation got underway, stories appeared in the press about white slave rings transporting hundreds of girls from Europe to South America. The committee could not afford to ignore these: Rachel Crowdy emphasized that the League's antitraffic work would have no credibility if trafficking appeared to continue on an industrial scale. She urged the Advisory Committee to create a system for responding to such claims in time to save the intended victims.Footnote ⁶⁹

In February 1928, Dr. Snow cabled Geneva with the news: the United States State Department wanted the name of 18-R, wanted the field reports on which the published report was based, and wanted Johnson to appear before a grand jury.Footnote ⁷⁰ Snow would claim that a “definite procedure for consulting source material” had been established: representatives of governments should apply to the Secretariat in Geneva. Snow hoped that the State Department would not authorize any other access to these documents not available to other governments, but, because Johnson and others involved in the League's investigation happened to be American citizens, Tuttle had the power to require their testimony before a grand jury. Snow explained that Johnson had with him in New York “certain draft notes” on which the League report was based. He hoped that this material would not become available to Tuttle, as it represented “material which belongs to the League.”Footnote ⁷¹

Meanwhile, Drummond made his position clear. The material collected by Johnson and the other investigators stood on a “very special footing” because it could only be obtained through facilities of the League of Nations, and with the permission of states in which the investigations were made. Divulging this information would “create justifiable complaints” from governments who permitted the investigators to work in their territory, and make further such investigations much more difficult. “It would not be right for an investigator to make public information received as an international official and regarded as confidential…” Drummond wrote. “Mr Johnson, we think, is not entitled, and ought not be forced, to disclose in any kind of public proceedings information not contained in the published report.” Nor should Johnson be entitled to reveal any “secret discussions which took place in the Committee of Experts.”Footnote ⁷² In Rachel Crowdy's view, Dr. Snow's cable raised “a question not only of principle but possibly of politics.” She was not happy about Snow's offer of access to “source material,” but she did not think that the League could refuse to allow someone from the United States State Department to see it if they wished to do so. She was inclined to tell Snow that someone from the State Department could examine the “source material” at the League's offices in Geneva, but that this material could not be copied or sent to Washington DC. She did not think that Johnson should give testimony before a grand jury, as it would involve revealing information to a government (that was not a member of the League), which had been kept secret from League member states on the whole.Footnote ⁷³

To avoid being drawn into legal proceedings in New York, Drummond decided to give Tuttle what he wanted: the identity of the notorious white-slave trafficker known as 18-R. Drummond said he had “no objection” to Tuttle knowing that 18-R was Harry Walker.Footnote ⁷⁴ But he asked that this information be regarded as what the English police referred to as information received; that is, avoiding public disclosure about the source from which the United States authorities had obtained the name. Some of the information about Panama resided with Johnson in the United States, but Drummond was happy for someone from the American Consulate in Geneva to inspect the material at the Secretariat to make notes for use by the United States secretary of state, on the understanding that this would not be used as evidence in any public proceedings.Footnote ⁷⁵

Tuttle paid no attention. In March 1928, he made clear what he thought of Johnson and his inquiry: the claims in the Report of the Special Body of Experts on the Traffic in Women and Children had “no foundation in fact.” The statements attributed to “the investigator” (Paul Kinsie) amounted to conversations that he had had with managers and dancers at cabarets in Panama, and with the manager of a booking agency in the city. Part 2 amounted to a summary of a report by the investigator lent to the League's investigation by ASHA. Johnson did not personally make any investigations in Panama. The facts contained in the field report were “not sufficient in themselves and without corroboration” to warrant an indictment, especially because they were conversations that had occurred in August 1924. “Thus, upon investigation, the League of Nations' report published in December 1927 comes down to the uncorroborated statements of an investigator … that in August 1924…he had from certain persons, some of whom could not be identified, certain verbal admissions, which, inevitably, such persons would deny, and, so far as we have been able to reach them, have denied.”Footnote ⁷⁶

It may be that Tuttle's own investigation failed to find trafficked women because he never really tried. Gerson pursued a limited inquiry that certainly did not involve investigators of Kinsie's caliber. Harry Walker contacted Tuttle to deny that he was engaged in the white slave traffic to Panama. He had sent women under contract to Kelley's cabaret in Cristobal, which he insisted was a reputable establishment. He offered to furnish Tuttle's office with a list of all the girls shipped to Panama; Gerson was welcome to look at their records. Tuttle said he would take up the invitation to review the records and continue with his investigation.Footnote ⁷⁷ Gerson found a woman who was familiar with the musical theater in the Panama Canal Zone. She said she had referred several girls to Walker for engagements in Panama. Kelly's was a reputable establishment that gave special attention to the welfare of the entertainers.Footnote ⁷⁸

However, there is reason to believe that Johnson's investigation was not highly regarded among those involved in the antitraffic campaign. One of the people to have read in the New York newspapers about Tuttle's investigation was Olive Whitin. She worked for the League of Nations Non-Partisan Association in Geneva and was married to Frederick Whitin, Executive Director of the Committee of Fourteen in New York. In correspondence with his successor, Olive Whitin said that she could not understand why Johnson refused to give Tuttle a copy of the Report of the Special Body of Experts on the Traffic in Women and Children. She took the article to Rachel Crowdy and urged her to send a copy of the report to Tuttle directly. She was worried about Tuttle's investigation on “Dame Rachel's account” because of what she thought of Johnson. “I should not want to tell her [Rachel Crowdy] how shaky we consider some of BJ's [Bascom Johnson's] investigation to be and if Tuttle should push the matter it might get quite serious. It happened to be a weak spot and the matter would be brought out in investigation.”Footnote ⁷⁹

The League's investigation revealed a larger issue: an issue concerning a basic idea on which sociological jurisprudence had been built. Classical jurisprudence—the sort that Pound rejected—had been based on the law–fact distinction. From the last decade of the nineteenth century, James Bradley Thayer and Christopher Columbus Langdell maintained that “questions of law” had to do with choosing competing rules, and that all other issues were “questions of fact.” Because they viewed law as permanent, any material subject to change amounted to fact. In this way, they preserved the view of the law as founded on fixed principles. Pound insisted that questions of law were inextricably woven into questions of fact, and that the failure realize this undermined the value of legal decisions. Judges had to understand that legal systems had to grow, and that legal principles were not absolute, but had to be adjusted to time and place. The law–fact distinction was a judicial fiction, and sociological jurisprudence dealt in facts, not fictions.Footnote ⁸⁰

Tuttle's inquiry may have been little more than political posturing, but he forced Johnson to concede a fundamental difference between a legal inquiry and a social inquiry. In an effort to reduce the damage, Johnson drafted a statement that he hoped Tuttle would issue. Johnson told Tuttle to say that he realized that the League's investigation “was not designed to secure legal evidence” that would be “sufficient to insure successful prosecution of criminals.” It was designed to “determine between what countries and in what manner women were transported for the purpose of prostitution.” Tuttle was to say that he had learned of 18-R's activities too late to proceed with prosecution, but that the evidence on which they were based—statements of cabaret managers, of several girls who worked in the cabarets, as well as 18-R's own statements, all made to one of the League's investigators—would have been enough. “These admissions” Johnson told Tuttle to say, “if it were possible to have them reported before a jury by persons alleged to have made them, would in my judgment, be sufficient to convict under our criminal laws.”Footnote ⁸¹ Johnson maintained that his interviews produced facts that would stand up to legal test, if required, but as he had already drawn a distinction between social and legal inquiry, he had just sawn off the branch he and Pound were sitting on.

Tuttle's threat raised particular concerns behind the scenes. The executive director of the Bureau of Social Hygiene, Leonard Dunham, was dismayed to read Tuttle's conclusion that the alleged white slave conditions in Panama could not be substantiated. “I realize the difference between getting facts with regard to a situation on the one hand and on the other getting legal evidence for presentation to grand juries and a trial court.” But Tuttle struck him as a “pretty high class man” and ASHA should “use a considerable amount of conservatism and be pretty sure of the ground upon which they stood before making allegations that might be publicly interpreted as charging the existence of white slave traffic on a substantial scale in any given locality.” He brought his concerns about Johnson's work to Dr. Snow. Snow felt that Tuttle was “unfair,” because the information was not gathered “in a legal form.” At the same time, he felt that nothing Tuttle said about the specific case “disproved” the general conclusions.Footnote ⁸²

Years later, Kinsie emphasized the relevance of legal definitions of traffic in women that Johnson had ignored. In a presentation about the ASHA's approach he prepared in April 1957, Kinsie reiterated the importance of “undercover surveys” in fact-finding investigations. He described the qualities investigators should possess and the ruses they should use (such as posing as potential customers), and stressed that they needed to know “what constitutes evidence, direct as well as hearsay.” Investigators had to be “well-informed about existing legislation against all phases of commercialized prostitution.”Footnote ⁸³