According to an article titled “Film Crusade Against Social Evil” in the 20 Dec 1913 Motion Picture News, “the motion picture is now being used as a weapon to fight the ‘white slave’ traffic by preventative rather than curative means. Among the first of the pictures of this kind, and probably the most authoritative, as it shows actual scenes in the underworld of New York, New Orleans and Denver, is ‘The Inside of the White Slave Traffic,’ a film running a little more than 4,000 feet, which has been on exhibition for a week at the Park Theatre, New York City, to crowded houses, and also in Troy, New York. The scenario from which this film was produced was written by Samuel H. London, who knows whereof he writes. Mr. London headed the investigated work done at the instigation of John D. Rockefeller when the Rockefeller Commission was probing the ‘white slave’ traffic. Before that, he was head of the branch of the Government Secret Service which has to do with ‘white slavery.’ For seven years he had made a study of the subject all over this country and in several foreign countries. The picture was produced by the Moral Feature Film Company … and will be handled by the Sociological Research Film Company.” Mr. London said he wanted the film to be seen by factory girls. “I have found this class of girls the most frequent sufferers from the evil which we are fighting.” The article explained further that the film was produced in New York, New Orleans, LA, and Denver, CO, under the direction of Frank V. Beal. Former Lubin actor Edwin Carewe played the lead procurer and Virginia Mann the innocent immigrant girl. Other actors listed were Jean Thomas, Ninita Bristow, and Elinor O. Peterson.
       A six-page article in the Dec 1914 Motion Picture Magazine, called “Saving Immigrant Girls with ‘Movies’,” explained how several film studios were documenting, in fiction, the then current problem of young immigrants, particularly women, being trapped by white slavers. In one instance, while actors were shooting a scene at Ellis Island, New York, police held off several spectators who tried to save the young woman being “kidnapped.” The title of that particular film is not known.
       According to the 27 Dec 1913 New York Clipper, “The epidemic of white slavery which has infected various branches of ‘amusements,’ under the guise of teaching a moral lesson, received a hard bump night of Dec. 19, when Sergeant Quinn, acting under instructions from Deputy Police Commissioner Newburger, forbid the exhibition of ‘The Inside of the White Slave Traffic’ motion pictures, closed the theatre, arrested the house manager, and ordered Samuel H. London, who promoted the picture, to court.” A general crackdown began on the mostly independent films purporting to take on the white slavery problem. The 27 Dec 1913 Reel Life reported that John D. Rockefeller had issued the following statement: “My attention has been called to the fact that moving picture shows dealing with vice have been advertised as ‘based on the Rockefeller report’ and that the impression has been deliberately created that the Bureau of Social Hygiene is favorable to such exhibitions. May I say with all possible emphasis that no films have been based on our work with our approval or consent; that we have not endorsed any moving picture shows or plays dealing with this subject now being produced in our city; that the use of my name in any such connection is absolutely unauthorized, and that I and those associated with me in this work regard this method of exploiting vice as not only injudicious but positively harmful.” As noted in the 26 Dec 1913 Variety, the Motion Picture Exhibitors’ Association of Greater New York—claiming that The Inside of the White Slave Traffic, The Traffic in Souls, and other similarly-themed films were made by “random speculators” rather than “respectable film business concerns”—condemned “all films using any form of sex vice as basis for its characters, scenes or stories, and that the organization shall at all times stand together to aid the suppression of all such films and the prosecution of their promoters.” Blocked from specifically screening The Inside of the White Slave Traffic, New York City’s Bijou Theatre replaced it with a foreign four-reel film titled The Exposure of the White Slave Traffic. Elsewhere, the film did good business. “This week ‘The Inside of the White Slave Traffic’ is being shown at Trenton, Philadelphia, Allentown, Pa., and Schenectady, N.Y., without interference by the authorities,” according to the 2 Jan 1914 Variety.
       Modern sources have reported that the New Orleans red-light district footage was actually covertly shot in El Paso, TX.
       Roughly half of the film has survived. See also Traffic in Souls (1913).