textThis paper seeks to explore the role evolving masculinities played in the Progressive Era's white slavery panic through one of the period's most popular films: George Loane Tucker's Traffic in Souls and its ensuing novelization by Eustace Hale Ball. In my argument, I hope to make visible the film's discussion of masculinity neglected by earlier critics, and demonstrate how the film's decision to structure police officer Burke's heroism as an internal trait and then Ball’s decision to attribute Burke's heroism to an ascribed set of classist, racist, and sexist properties anticipate the distance between two of the most iconic male characters of the age: Nick Carraway and Tom Buchanan in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.Englis
