SLAVE MARKET IS RUN BY JAP OUTLAWS

Band of Criminals That Murdered Yokio Live off Earnings of Forty of Countrywomen in Seattle.

Police investigation of the murder of Chickichi Yokio, the Japanese who last week was done to death by two hireling murderers belonging to a band of Japanese outlaws, has brought to light the fact that this band of mercenary assassins live off the earnings of Japanese slave women herded together in the southern part of he city when the revenue from robberies, burglaries, murders and assaults fail to supply sufficient money for them. The forty women are not only forced to supply the assassins with their earnings but they are sold as slaves whenever their masters need more ready money than they can earn.

Any attempt to protest any appeal to the police for protection or any recital of their sufferings to Americans is visited by the member of the gang of outlaws who own them with physical torture worthy of the Inquisition days. Police officers whose duties have carried them among these slave women have caught glimpses of the horrible lives of these slaves who make Seattle their place of bondage; but the police can do nothing for them. The women fear that death would follow any protest to the authorities and refuse to supply the necessary testimony to prosecute their masters.

Could be Deported.

These women were all brought into the country for immoral purposes in defiance of the immigration laws and the police believe they could all be deported if proper steps were taken. With the slave women in Seattle the police have little hope of finally crushing the band of Japanese outlaws who in the past have committed numerous robberies and assaults, and who only last week added murder to their catalogue of crime.

The women, the police believe, furnish the motive for the existence of the organized band. With the women out of the city there would be crimes committed by individual Japanese, but the police would have little trouble in ferreting out the offenders and punishing them. Respectable Japanese, of

whom there are many in Seattle's colony, would then willingly come to the aid of the officers of the law.

Now they fear to do so. Their one hope when they see one of the outlaws commit a crime or learn that one has done so is not only not to aid the police, but to take care that no member of the bands even suspect them of doing so. In either case they know that their lives, property and persons are not safe. Once they are marked by the band of outlaws for punishment they know that the police cannot protect them. Nowhere are they safe.

Bound Together by Crime.

The forty slave women in Seattle are the ropes that keep the gang of outlaws bound firmly together. The criminal band is a protective organization. The women must be kept in constant fear; the slave market must not be interfered with; a man must be protected in his ownership of his slave or slaves; he must be able to give a bill of sale when he needs to part with the chattel. The band of outlaws furnishes this protection. It inspires fear in the women and terror in respectable Japanese. It prevents the women from withholding their earnings from their masters; from attempting to run away; it makes certain that the members of the band will respect each other's property rights in the girls and pay the full purchase price when they purchase a slave from another; it keeps Japanese outside the folds of the outlaws who would wish to help the girls or give information to the authorities from doing so. Murder, assaults, robberies, and other crimes puts the slave business on a safe and business-like basis.

Many times police officers have secured tips that led them to the girls' lodgings to find them badly bruised and suffering pain from wounds inflicted upon them for disobeying their masters. Few arrests ever take place, as the police know they are useless. No testimony can be wrung from the woman, for she fears death if she opens her lips to accuse her master and the other Japanese know that it is not safe to interfere. In this way the slave women have lived for years in Seattle. From time to time the public hears of some deed committed by the band of outlaw organized slave herders, but they rarely learn much. No prosecution follows. The criminal's associates prevent any evidence being secured.

Taniaka Succeeds Gonda.

For years Gonda, a Japanese, now in Portland, wsa the largest slave owner and was chief of the outlaws. Now from the investigation of the recent murder the police believe this office has fallen to Ben Tainaka, who engineered the recent murder. The murder of Yokio has laid bare the workings of the slave mart as no other crime has. It has turned the light of publicity on the outlaws and their slaves and, the police hope, will result in the expulsion of the women by the immigration officials.

As already told Yokio was murdered because he misappropriated $300 belonging to George Osuma. Five hundred dollars had been paid by Osuma for a slave girl. After the sale she returned to her former master, Osuma's money was returned to him through Yokio. The latter kept part of it and Nakayama and Hayasha murdered him and threw his body into the street because he violated the ethics of the ring of slave owners. So much fear the respectable Japanese have of the band of outlaws that H. Onishi, editor of The North American Times, a Japanese paper, kept the knives with which the murder was done in his possession for days before he dared tell the police.

The murder of Yokio attracted more attention than any crime committed by the gang of outlaws, but their crimes, as the police know, have been numerous. In the last decade the outlaws have maintained a reign of terror among the Japanese.

Last spring the police deported two members of the gang, but in a few months one of them returned to Seattle and the other to San Francisco. For a time the deportation decreased the volume of crime but in a few months the Japanese malefactors went about their business with their customary audacity. The police see no way of putting an end to the horrible condition of affairs but the expulsion of the women by the immigration officials.