Dillingham Commission Report

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

Reproduced here is an excerpt from an affidavit (a sworn statement given by a “deponent,“ or one who makes a statement on oath) from an unnamed agent of the U.S. Immigration Commission who had investigated violations of Section 3 of the Immigration Act during the years 1908 and 1909. The agent had previously worked for a detective agency and was familiar with “disorderly houses“ (houses of prostitution) and had encountered the unfamiliar faces of women he “felt sure had only been in the United States a short time.“ During his investigation for the commission, he collected evidence of sixty-eight violations of Section 3. He “talked with a great many of the immigrant women and with a large number of the procurers and the persons responsible for the bringing in of these girls.“ Additionally, he states that he “learned the stories of their importation, the way in which they were placed into the life of a prostitute, the manner of that life, the amount of money derived from the services of such immigrant women, and, in some cases, the condition of slavery in which the women lived.“ The agent then describes several specific cases. One involved a sixteen-year-old Japanese girl who was brought to the United States presumably to marry a Japanese man. Shortly after the wedding, the man abandoned the girl, who was forced into prostitution first in Washington and then in Alaska. A second case involved a seventeen-year-old Polish girl, admitted to the United States as the “wife“ of her procurer, who then took her to Montana and later Seattle, where she was compelled to work as a prostitute. Additional cases involved French girls, still in their teens, who fell under the control of procurers, were passed from one procurer to another, and were denied money and other necessities. Overall, the affidavit presents a picture of young women suffering the worst kind of exploitation by predators bringing them to the United States on the strength of false promises and keeping control of them through economic exploitation. His stories would have convinced people at the time that the nation’s immigration policies were failing to keep out “undesirables“ and those who would live by immoral means.