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diff --git a/43631-0.txt b/43631-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5d73719 --- /dev/null +++ b/43631-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6072 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 43631 *** + + THE VICE BONDAGE OF A GREAT CITY + + OR + + The Wickedest City in the World + + --By-- + ROBERT O. HARLAND. + + The Reign of Vice, Graft and Political Corruption. + + Expose of the monstrous Vice Trust. Its personnel. + Graft by the Vice Trust from the Army of Sin for + protection. A score of forms of vice graft. + Horrifying revelations of the life of the Scarlet + Woman. New lights on White Slavery. Protected + Gambling and the blind police. The inside story of + an enslaved police department. A warning to the + parents. How to save YOUR GIRL or BOY. + + ALSO remedies to cure the Municipal Evil that in one + city alone fills the pockets of not more than ten + Vice Lords with $15,000,000, annually, made from the + sins of 50,000 unfortunate men and women; an evil + that is blasting our nation's decency and prosperity + and is eating into the very vitals of our Republic. + + Save the growing generation of men and women. + + A book to create public and saving opinion, to destroy + lethargy and inoculate the germ of activity; to enlist + every aid to wipe out the curse of this nation. + + + + + Copyright, 1912, + by + ROBERT O. HARLAND. + + PUBLISHED BY + THE YOUNG PEOPLE'S CIVIC LEAGUE + 301-305 Security Building + Chicago, Ill. + + + + +This book is a recital of sin, crime and graft. It is fact, not fiction. +Commercialized crime, police collusion with underworld power and the +barter of men's and women's souls is going on today. + +The investigation conducted by the Civil Service Commission, which has +resulted in the discharge of several police inspectors and a number of +subordinates, has tended to minimize, temporarily, the vice conditions. + +The vice lords have sneaked away to their lairs, and are waiting until the +brooms of the municipal house-cleaners are stacked away in a corner. + +The "town is closed," to use the vernacular. + +That fact does not detract from the moral value of this expose. + +Why? + +Because the storm will blow over. + +The axe of the Civil Service Commission has hacked deep into the trunk of +the Vice-Graft tree, but the roots from which the sap of crime flows still +live and flourish. + +A few policemen have been thrown into the discard, the victims of the +System that is still unharmed. + +The Temple of Crime, Vice and Graft will be rebuilded. The foundation is +intact. + +The conditions which are exposed in this book flourished until a few +months ago. Their human causes still live, but craven with fear. + +The Vice Trust shall thrive on men's souls and women's bodies again. + +It shall exist until the root of evil is killed--until corrupt and ruling +politics is hounded out of the city--to death! + + + + +CONTENTS. + + + Preface Page 9 + + CHAPTER I. THE VICE TRUST, ITS KINGDOM AND POWER. + + The Story of Chicago's Subjugation to Political and Police + Corruption.--The Corrupt Ballot Box.--The Mechanism of the + Trust.--The Prices of Sin and Vice.--The Horror of Ruined + and Purchased Lives.--The Remedy 15 + + CHAPTER II. THE DEBAUCHERY OF THE BALLOT. + + The Sacredness of the Ballot.--Its Corruption by the Vice + Trust.--Methods of Corruption.--Affidavits Showing + Corruption.--A Cleansed Ballot Box, A Cleansed City 47 + + CHAPTER III. COME AND SEE. A City Defiled. + + The First Step.--State Street and Its Pitfalls.--The Stages + of Sin.--The Borderland of Hell.--The Cafe Evil.--The Rich + Man's Girl Trap.--Crimes that Thrive by Night 63 + + CHAPTER IV. THE "REDLIGHT" DISTRICT. + + Houses of Infamy.--The Feeders of the "Redlight" District.-- + The Life of a Prostitute.--The Big Palaces of Vice.--The + Blood Price.--Hidden Tragedies.--The Polluted Grave 87 + + CHAPTER V. WHAT WILL YOU BID FOR THIS WOMAN? + + White Slavery.--The Trapping of the Prey.--Price of a Body + and Soul.--Hell's Bondage.--The "Cadet" Master.--Death the + Penalty 100 + + CHAPTER VI. VICE AND GRAFT. + + Police Collectors.--The Triumvirate.--Figures that Freeze + the Blood.--Graft that Feeds on Flesh and Blood.--The + Prostitute's Graft Price.--The Kimona Trust.--The Laundry + Trust.--The Criminal Doctor.--The Prostitute and the Beer + Graft.--The Woman and the "Cadet."--Terrible Examples.--Lure + of the Life.--The Pace that Kills.--To the Woman: + Death.--How about Your Daughter? 108 + + CHAPTER VII. SIDE GRAFTS OF THE SOCIAL EVIL. + + The Rent Graft.--Saloon Graft.--Dance Halls and Protective + Prices.--Graft from the Vice Palaces.--The Massage + Parlor.--The Drug Crime.--The Vampire Trust 143 + + CHAPTER VIII. GAMBLING AND ITS GRAFT. + + The Gambler's Fate.--The Handbook.--Other Games of Chance + and Their Protection.--Police Profit.--All Gambling + Crooked.--A Warning 156 + + CHAPTER IX. TEARING OFF THE POLICE MASK. + + A Story of the Hypocrisy of the Police Department.--Its + Neglect of Duty.--Its Protection of Crime.--The Fate of One + Police Official.--The Lost Child that is Never Found.--The + Exposure of Big Crimes.--"Tipped Off" Raids.--Strange + Ignorance of Police.--The Fate of the Honest + Policeman.--Collusion of the Police and Thieves 174 + + CHAPTER X. WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT? + + The Cause of the Great Evils.--A Warning.--The Duty of + Parents.--Young Girls and Boys Should Know the Truth.-- + Conclusion 190 + + + + +Preface. + + +Seventy-five years have elapsed since Chicago became an incorporated city. + +From a trading post with Fort Dearborn standing guard over its small +population, Chicago has grown until today she ranks among the great +metropoles of the world. + +Today her name is reckoned with in every country. Her industries are the +supply houses of the nations; her manufacturing plants deal with all +peoples; her financial institutions figure vitally in the world's +exchanges. + +Chicago is the most cosmopolitan city on the globe. The children of all +races have been attracted to her because of the thousands of opportunities +in all walks of life. + +We live in a sordid age of commercialism suffering from intense +neurasthenia. We have made our factories and our places of business our +temples. We have enthroned the dollar-god, and fawning, have paid worship +to it seeking its gold and silver in return. + +It has been said by an English philosopher that the optic nerve of the +American people has been paralyzed by the glitter of gold. That is true of +Chicago. It is true that our moral sense has been warped. Morality has +lost its value except as it subserves our financial and material +interests. + +Vice has been co-existent with human consciousness. An abuse of natural +laws affecting the race through the individual, is vice in its broadest +interpretation. In the annals of the world's history we find moral +degradation triumphant on one page and defeated on the next. There seems +to be a constant balancing of the moral and social scale. + +In all ages vice has been, in a sense, commercialized. The vicious have +always lived off it, fattened upon it, and died of its slow insidious +poison. + +It remained for this industrial and much-vaunted age systematically to +commercialize vice. + +Chicago with its 2,000,000 inhabitants, its vicious element of unfortunate +men and women, its haunts of degradation and shame, its wealth and its +poverty, and its democratic form of government, was the experimental place +of a "scientific," systematized commercialization of sin. + +God knows and men are beginning to realize how well the experiment has +succeeded! + +There is no excuse or reason for trumpeting a city's shame if the +conditions are simply the result of isolated vice and terrible social +environments. If that were all, this book would never have been written. + +Tersely, we have come to our task with a solemn duty and moral obligation +in our heart, mind and soul, viz:-- + +To show the world at large that Chicago is today the Wickedest City in +the World, because a small body of men, invested with a sacred power, +political and social, has created a gigantic and ever-growing Vice Trust, +annually becoming richer and more dangerous off the sins and crimes of +degraded men and abandoned women. + +It is our intention to demonstrate to the world the machinations of the +corporation of crime, its political power, its enslavery of 5,000 fallen +women in the segregated districts and twice as many more at large within +the city, its annual earnings from a toleration of vice and crime, its +prostitution of the police department, and its hideous and myriad ways of +trapping new victims to take the places of those whom it had driven to +despair and untimely death. + +The story is shocking to your moral sense; paralyzing to your brain; but +it is the Truth. It should be known. Too long have we groped blindly in +the dark. An hour of awakening is needed. + +Vice might be eradicated if the vast system, whose existence we are about +to describe, could be first obliterated. Unless the root be removed, the +evil will grow rapidly again, despite sincere and persistent reforms. It +is our intention to show by logical narration of facts how the annual +tribute paid to the Vice Trust for protection and nourishment by the +hordes of living demons in the city of Chicago is at least $15,000,000. + +The life-blood of women, bought and sold on the auction block of the Vice +Combine, the innocent girls who barter their lives of purity for a sip of +the poison of the bitter wine of life, the men who drag the shackles of +sin on their limbs, and the hellish fiends who serve Satan on earth, +prostrate before the directorate of the Vice Trust, offer their tribute to +the over lords of the city's degradation. + +This book is not the fantastic, lurid picturing of the shames of women and +the crimes of men. It is an expose of how not more than ten men whom we +call the Directorate of Ten, create, organize, mobilize and lead, and +derive almost fabulous profits from, an army of thousands of unfortunates. + +It is the story of a power wrested from the people at the debauched ballot +boxes and used as the weapon to murder men and women annually. This is not +the dream of an overzealous mind seeking sincerely to right a terrible +wrong. It is a cold, statistical narration of facts. It is the +observations of one who for ten years has studied every phase of the +demoniacal system, who has been intimately associated with the Directorate +of Ten, who has stood by and watched the never-ending procession of the +men and women slaves who have done the monster's bidding and fallen +inevitably into the charnal houses of the dead. + +The average Chicago man or woman knows of the thousand and one forms of +vice that flourish in Chicago, but he or she does not know that the entire +vice system works in harmony like the most delicate piece of mechanism. +The voters do not know that vice is more perfectly organized in Chicago +today than any corporation in existence. The writer has set out to show +in the glaring, white light of truth the real causes of the present +social evil. + +The social evil today does not find its ultimate reason in unrestrained +passions, human viciousness and weakness; it finds its reason in the +commercialization of debased creatures and the enslavement of them in +profitable labors to their masters, until death. + +The Vice Trust to increase constantly its profits has a thousand lures for +the unwary. The masters of these infamous pitfalls are the lieutenants of +this monstrous trust. The writer knows of all these chasms and has studied +the horrifying details of the men and women traps. He has attempted to set +them forth and nail the sign of warning above them. + +The wages of sin is Death! If once a woman or a man is enslaved in any one +of the traps set by the Vice Trust then death lies at the end of a short +path. Yearly, thousands of young and pure girls and ambitious and clean +young men, come to Chicago as to the city of dreams, pleasure and glory. +Yearly, thousands are trapped and soon pay the awful penalty. The city boy +and the city girl are not immune. Many of them meet similar fates. If the +writer can stem the rush of these young souls to the fires of living hells +he will feel well rewarded for his task. He has endeavored, by placing the +responsibility for the social evil on corrupt politics that has created a +grafting, robbing, and murdering Vice Trust, to put the subject in a new +and interesting light. To the men and women who sleep not, because their +children, young and undefiled, are growing up within the reach of an +insatiable monster, does the writer particularly appeal. He has attempted +to show that the Vice Trust, the secret cause of municipal degradation, is +the monster that must be annihilated. + +The Chicago police department is an inefficient and corrupted body today, +that is protecting vice and not destroying it, because a majority of its +members are enslaved by the Vice Trust. Every vice, every sin, every crime +has its price of toleration. This is the reign of the triumvirate of vice, +graft and political corruption. + +To all men of character and worth, to every father and every mother with +the welfare of their children at heart, the writer appeals in the battle +against this hideous evil. + +One soul saved, one man helped, one woman turned from the pathway of hell +will give this volume a human value. The author in conclusion asks a +thorough consideration of the facts related and hopes that all to whom +this book may come, may feel its message of truth and join the ranks of +the army of righteous men and women who have pledged their lives to make +Chicago a city after man's highest conception, a place where our children +may grow to maturity imbued with the spirit and character that make true +American men and women. + +[Illustration: LOST OPPORTUNITIES OF HISTORY. + +By Courtesy of The Chicago Daily News. + +WHAT DANTE MISSED.] + + + + +CHAPTER I. + +The Vice Trust, its Kingdom and its Power. + +The Story of Chicago's Subjugation to Political and Police Corruption--The +Corrupt Ballot Box--The Mechanism of the Trust--The Prices of Sin and +Vice--The Horror of Ruined and Purchased Lives--The Remedy. + + +Seventy-five years ago a body of pioneer souls who dared death for the +dream of individual liberty, wealth and happiness, founded a city, and +after the manner of the times, adopted an Indian name and called it +Chicago. + +The city grew, prospered, flourished; likewise did the inhabitants. Nature +seemed to bless all who settled within her boundaries. Resources undreamed +of were discovered. + +The lake breezes fanned the tiny flame of future greatness and the sun +warmed the ambitious blood of the early inhabitants. She became the golden +gate to the unexplored West. She became the cosmopolitan and central point +of a world power. Chicago was talked of, considered, bargained with from +East to West, and North to South. + +With vastness came power; with power, abuse; with abuse, vice; with vice, +crime; with crime, graft. + +It is of CHICAGO, TODAY, we write. + +Truth sears, eats, destroys that which is but veneer and golden covering. + +Chicago has blinded herself to the hideous truth. She has hidden her head, +closed her eyes and cried out: + +"I will not see!" + +Vice, like some slimy, hideous, mephitic, green-eyed monster from the +deepest abyss of Hell has crept, sinuous and noiseless, on an unsuspecting +people. + +It has battened upon red, pure life-blood. It has fattened on white flesh. +It has destroyed virginal purity, public morals and political honesty. + +The monster has been insatiable. Satan, king of the damned dead since the +Beginning, urged on the monster Vice. + +His political minions kneeled and offered sacrifice to the incarnate Evil +of the World. To save themselves they fed him of the rich and sacred +stores of the city. They took their portion. + +They are still taking their share. + +They still feed the monster. They are its slaves; they, appointed by the +people to safeguard them and to make their laws. + +The monster Vice is fed by the police and politicians, who, under cover of +night and darkness, plunder, steal, cheat and murder to satisfy its greed. + +We speak not in metaphor; this is the literal truth. We shall prove it. + +If Satan came out of the depths of his Inferno, away from the shrieks of +the lost millions, he would wander from city to city until he reached +Chicago. + +Then, in this twentieth century of culture, refinement and progress, he +would stand outside the gates, smile in triumph and speak this,--the +living, shameful, naked truth: + +This is the CITY ACCURSED! This is the CITY OF THE LIVING DAMNED! This is +the CITY OF MY DESIRE! This is the CITY AFTER MY OWN HEART! VICE, CRIME, +CORRUPTION RULE:--MY TRIUMVIRATE! + +This is THE MOST WICKED CITY IN THE WORLD! + +Satan would tell the truth. + +Chicago today is the most wicked city in the world. + +Babylon had its vices; so, too, Alexandria. Greece and Rome struggled and +died in a national moral degeneracy they had created. + +Chicago has surpassed them in wickedness. + +Nay, Sodom and Gomorrah, destroyed by the wrath of Heaven, were pure when +compared to Chicago. + +Paris and its lure of vice is tame by the side of Chicago. + +There is no parallel in history. There is no adequate comparison. + +Chicago leads the world in evil today. She stalks at the head of the Army +of Sin:--a beautiful, sensuous mistress and paramour to a personalized god +of named and unnamed Crime. The army is composed of bodies and souls that +Hell has claimed but not called. Their destinies are still unfinished on +earth. + +And why is Chicago the Hell-hole of the world? + +Because she has taken the failings, sins, defects, crimes, miseries and +vices of humanity, hurled them into a seething caldron of infamy, melted +them, amalgamated them and commercialized them. + +A Vice-Graft system has been created. It has been formed along the lines +of modern commerce and finance. + +Today the institution is stronger, more powerful, more impregnable than +the biggest financial or industrial combine in the United States! + +In fact, it has absorbed many and invaded mysteriously and secretly every +other enterprise founded on decency and honesty. It is living off every +legitimate trade, business and industry in Chicago. + +That is the limitless scope of the Vice Trust of Chicago, unincorporated, +but possessing a capital running high into the millions of dollars and +souls. + +There are three stockholders, speaking in a collective sense, in Chicago's +Vice Trust, namely:-- + +The inhabitants of the highways and byways and gilded houses of infamy. + +The police department of the city. + +A coterie of politicians. + +These form the board of directors of the ruthless, merciless, parasitic, +powerful corporation of Vice, Graft, Crime & Co. + +Scarcely an individual, scarcely an industry fails to yield its life-blood +to that infamous trust! It feeds like a great octopus on the entire city. +Many of us are its unconscious victims! + + +CHICAGO--THE LIVING, BREATHING HELL. + +"Leave behind all hope, all ye who enter here." + +Dante dreamed he saw that line above the fiery gates of Hell. + +To those who know and understand, that line flames as if written by the +fiery finger of Fate, in the heavens above Chicago. + +You, all of you, dwelling without its polluted precincts, cannot enter it +without being trapped into the meshes of the Vice-Graft combine! + +Spider-like, it has woven its web over and about the city. Enter and you +are entangled, consciously or unconsciously. + +There is no escape. We shall prove this broad, sweeping statement. + +From the depot to the cab, from the cab to the hotel, from the hotel to +the dining room, barber shop, manicure room or other places, the monster +trails you. The Vice Trust's agents are forever lurking in your shadow. + +To the store, place of business, halls of amusement, the silent form +sneaks behind you, exacting from you a toll for the privilege of walking +the streets of Chicago and breathing God's free air. + +When you leave for your quiet, peaceful hometown, the minions of the trust +follow you almost to the sacred entrance of an undefiled home. Only the +sanctity, purity and goodness, stops them there. + +Such is the system! + + +THE SYSTEM AND ITS CAUSES. + +Vice is co-existent with reason. Vice is a form of the abuse of reason. + +As the city grew like a mushroom, so vice grew. All elements were +attracted. + +Vice crept in, grew and flourished. Its resources were human souls and +bodies,--men and women. + +It became a great, eating, nauseating, foul-smelling ulcer on the body +municipal. + +It needed control. + +Control--police regulation--was given it. Flagrant, unblushing vice was +hidden away in the corners of the city, to fester and die unseen. + +But vice never dies. It lives on the body it has destroyed. Its existence +is parasitic. + +It grew, grew, grew. Then like a many-armed octopus it stretched out and +out about it. + +Craven souls, dealing with it, sworn by law to slay it, felt the terror of +death upon them. Also, with Satanic insight they saw the-- + +POSSIBILITIES! + +Gold! Gold! Luxury! Power! Wealth! + +Ever since the beginning we have cried for them, sinned for them. + +Here was the chance. + + +THE COMPACT WRITTEN IN FLESH AND BLOOD. + +"Let the creature Vice live and thrive, but give us part of the red blood +and white flesh of its victims"--was the thought. + +The politician saw the opportunity. He could not evolve the scheme without +the aid of the police, so he confessed his conceived crime. The police +consented. Then the leaders of the cohorts of vice were told of the +combine and its ultimatum. They, too, consented. + +"Give us part of the blood and flesh money and you may live and we will +protect you."--said the politicians and the police officials. + +Out of the cavernous depths of Chicago's Hell, where thousands yearned to +be free to sow death without hindrance, came the fiendish answer:-- + +"WE WILL!" + +The compact was written in letters of blood. Thousands gave up health, +happiness and life to launch the Vice Trust. + +Today it is in its zenith! + +Competition has been a factor in making and completing its triumph. + +We have spoken collectively of the Vice Trust organization. + + +THE DIRECTORATE OF GRAFT, CRIME AND CORRUPTION. + +Individually, today, ten powerful politicians lay down the law, exact the +toll, distribute it, after taking their major share, pass sentence of +life and death on good and bad, direct the huge and intricate machinery, +pay off the hundreds of employes,--principally members of the police +department,--high and low, and plan to enlarge and strengthen the +greatest, strangest and most complex organization in the world. + +It is the Directorate of Ten! + +They have divided the city between them and their vassals. They are the +rulers of the mysterious underworld, living like princes and rulers in the +white palaces of the overworld, surfeited with the heavy luxuries of life. + + +POLITICS, POLICE AND VICE. + +Political power is the greatest of all power. It can subjugate with iron +hand all other powers. + +The Directorate of Ten found willing agents in the police department of +Chicago. It has them today, and if needs be, can find more. Human souls +are easily purchased. + +Today the system is intricate. So intricate that the combine has received +the appellation,--the Vice System. + +To exist, vice, in any one of its thousand forms, must pay tribute. The +tribute is shared with the police for protection. + +Many police inspectors, captains, lieutenants, sergeants and patrolmen +receive portions. + +Segregation, flaunted to the world as the best remedy yet found for the +social evil, is but a lie on the part of the Vice Trust. + +Only a portion of the unit Vice is kept within the limits of four +"redlight" districts. The rest stalks the streets, free, robbing its +victims in the glare of the noon-day sun. + +The lost women-souls of the levees are but a pitiful and small part of the +army of Vice. They simply dwell in the rendezvous of the thousands who +live by infamy. + + +FOR EACH CRIME A PRICE! + +From all vice-sources tribute is exacted monthly by the police themselves +or by the low, inhuman collectors of the Vice Trust. + +Every vice has its price of toleration for existence! + +Every possible violation of the law, the powers that be will wink at at so +much per wink! + +All this infamy,--this protection of crime and reeking corruption, exists +today in Chicago. + + +THE ATTACK UPON THE TRUST. + +The Civil Service Commission of Chicago attacked the bulwarks of the Trust +of Crime. + +The police department was the point of assault. Several officials were +discharged for incompetency and inefficiency. Had they destroyed that +Satanic allegiance the backbone of the Combine might have been broken. + +Chicago stood paralyzed at the revelations. The truth was murderous in +its hideous nakedness. No one had ever dreamed of the scope of its +business--the vice business. + +The unholy alliance struggled to outlive the attack. Back on to the weak, +narrow shoulders of unsystematized infamy the politicians and the police +threw the blame. + +The network of vice, the spiderweb of crime, the intricate working of the +System, the collusion of vice-parasites and political and police magnates +have become known. The story has more interest than a novel born of the +imagination of genius; more lure than the best detective story ever +penned; more fascination than any page in ancient or modern literature; +because it is palpitating, aching present day truth. Because it is a +living fact. Because it is an "elbow to elbow" condition. Because it is +the story of a great city, lost to goodness, and won to wickedness. + +It is the story of Chicago! + +The hideous ulcer is no longer concealed. It festers no longer in the +dark. Its poison seeths in the searing light of inquiry. + + +THE VICE-GRAFT CIRCLE:--WITHOUT BEGINNING, WITHOUT END. + +Political power to become absolutism without danger of extinction needs +strong, imperishable foundations. + +To hold vice-control meant to rule a vice territory with iron hand. + +It was accomplished. + + +THE BALLOT:--THE SECRET OF VICE POWER. + +This is the way it was done and still is being done. Take those political +precincts within whose boundaries the "redlight" districts exact their +toll from the thousands of unfortunate souls, who live in the iniquitous +Hell-holes or haunt them in search of pleasure. + +Political powers were busy systematizing. Elections threatened to defeat +them and kill their plans. + +The ballot box was the salvation. + +The prostitution of the ballot came into existence and lives and +flourishes today, the primal blot on Chicago's once honorable escutcheon! + +To gain an election, to hold political and vice-power the ballot box was +and is stuffed by a subtle and almost unpunishable method. + +A district, by way of example, is populated by a floating and transient +element, brought into Chicago by the agents of the corrupt or drawn here +by promises of lucrative gain. + +These men are used to stuff the ballot boxes and secure a victory of +crime, sin and iniquity. + +On the South Side there are scores of hotels, whose standard and character +are written in unmistaken language on their very exteriors. These also +exist on the West and North sides of the city. + +The assignation houses and the cheap lodging houses are the media for +slaying the honest ballot. + +Men, brought to the city to corrupt elections, register in these places +under the names of prostitutes and absent inmates and under this guise, +cast polluted votes. + + +THE BALLOT-CONTROL OF VICE. + +One man on election day can easily cast ten votes under ten names of ten +dissolute women, who live in the hotels under cognomens, giving initials +for their first names. + +One hundred men can cast 1,000 illicit votes. That is sufficient to carry +an aldermanic election. + +One thousand men can cast 10,000 ballots! + +That, in a pinch, could sweep honesty from the highest office in the city, +and crown a Vice Trust vassal,--mayor! + +This is how the Vice Trust wields the balance of power in Chicago, a power +that can crush any business, any man, can remove to the "woods" any +policeman or police official who refuses to obey its decrees, and so on +without limit. + +Destroy this and Chicago might once more rear her head in pride. It is the +clutch that sets in motion all the machinery of evil. + +Wreck that clutch and the delicate, subtle mechanism of concerted crime +would disintegrate. + +Chicago is blind to the terrible evil of the plethoric ballot box, but the +eyes of thousands are being slowly opened. + +The "prostitute-repeating" system is but one of the means employed to gain +and sustain political control. Hundreds of other methods are in vogue +today and working their evil effects. + +"Stamp out Vice and Evil. Eliminate the red-lighted, tinsel Houses of +Shame; give our city to God." + +This is the cry of the churches, led by their praiseworthy pastors. + +Oh, ye with eyes that see not, and ears that are deaf to the voices of +hell, strike now and strike hard. + +But strike not at the thousands of fallen women, nor at the brothel +keepers, nor at the dive owners, nor at the panderers, not yet, at least. + +STRIKE, FIRST, AT THE POLITICAL SYSTEM THAT CONTROLS ALL AND REIGNS OVER +ALL. + +Destroy the foundation and the superstructure will topple over of itself. + +Break the power that begins and ends at the ballot box. Break the power +that sucks at the veins of the myriad army of the lost, and lives on the +white ways of decency. + +That is the evil! Kill it! + +In showing the Unbroken Circle of Iniquity we have shown where the control +of crime is begotten. + +And now the parts, interlocked so finely that the connecting points are +lost, are to be revealed. + +Once political power is assured, all else is inevitable by the nature of +things. + + +THE POLICE COLLECTORS. + +The political power finds its agents. They are of necessity, the police. +Willing spirits are found. + +The guardians of the law and public safety are hired out by the political +kings to collect their tolls from their sycophants and vassals. + +Chicago policemen, high and low,--we venture to say eighty per cent of +them,--are today by virtue of the collection and tribute system the +confederates of every species of criminal, of every exploiter of every +known kind of vice. + +They aid, abet and allow these law violators to thrive. + +Vice and crime must pay its tribute to the police. The police must turn +over the bulk of the proceeds to their political masters. No criminal can +continue in his nefarious business without paying the price. It is called +Police Protection. + +That is the blind. In reality it is Political Protection. The police are +but the body guard, the secret service of the corrupt-- + +Directorate of Ten. + +Under Police Protection, for so many dollars per day, according to the +nature of the crime-business being carried on, every form of vice flaunts +itself in the face of Chicago's 2,000,000 inhabitants and its thousands of +country visitors. + +It is no secret. Chicago knows. But she has failed to observe the reason, +and to open her eyes is the mission of this book. + + +THE PRICE OF CRIME:--$15,000,000 A YEAR! + +From the army of vice the yearly tribute to the Directorate of Ten--the +controlling power--is almost unbelievable. + +The figures stagger one. + +With reserve, not exaggeration, we make this statement:-- + +Chicago's vice legion yields for existence and for protection the sum of-- + +$15,000,000 annually. + +Think of it! Crime pays that fortune to exist and rob the public of more +money. + +We are not dealing with the thieving contractors who rob the citizens +through fixed contracts. We treat only of the crime that the police are +sworn to slay. + +$15,000,000 put into the coffers of men supposed to be representing the +people that the donors may go on destroying the souls and bodies of women, +the souls and bodies of men! + +That astounding offering to appease the human Juggernauts and to sow in +the youths and maidens of our nation the seeds of incurable diseases! + +That sum in the blood-stained hands of demagogues to blast a city's +decency and prosperity and to eat into the very vitals of our Republic! + +In small envelopes, dirty and diseased, bacteria-bearing paper money and +grimy silver are handed in the dark or the light to policemen or outside +collectors to be turned over to the Directorate of Ten. + +Let the figure $15,000,000 in tribute burn into the recesses of your +brain if you would realize the gigantic and almost indescribable character +of crime in Chicago. + +It is estimated that the $15,000,000 annual vice tribute is less than half +a year's aggregate earnings. + +Do you realize that $15,000,000 is five per cent of $300,000,000? + + +A VICE CAPITAL OF FLESH AND BLOOD. + +Think of it! + +Almost half a billion dollars! + +But the capital in this business is not so many dollars. It is human +flesh, human souls, human blood! Can they be measured in dollars? + +There is no capital in this hideous trust that stands in banks. The real +capital must be turned over and over. The exhausted bodies of men and +women fill the incurable disease wards of the hospital, the crippled and +broken down inhabit the shacks of the tenements, and thousands are buried +in paupers' graves. + +This is the price of the slaves! + +There is nothing but the world of infamy. Nothing but the aching, diseased +bodies of women. Nothing but the outraged purity of childhood. Nothing but +the toiling, unrestrained passions of fiends. Nothing but the lust that is +insatiable, the desire that fattens on the poisons it eats. + +After years of investigation, acquiring information from politicians, +police officials and their subordinates, gamblers, habitues of the levees, +and nearly five hundred more vassals of the vice trust, we have placed +the protection figure at $15,000,000. + +Attorney W. W. Wheelock, counsel for the Civil Service Commission and the +man who attempted to break up the Vice-Police-Political graft combine, in +speaking of this subject, said: + +"I have as yet only scratched the veneer and the surface of this +terrifying evil, but the results have made me reel in horror and +amazement. At this time I estimate that the yearly graft is $15,000,000. + +"The true figure, when all things are considered, must run far above that. +It is evident that at least eighty per cent of the police, at some time or +other, are grafters. The system of tribute and graft burrows into every +legitimate pursuit and finds some undreamed of channel of graft." + +And Ellis Geiger, an alderman, made an astounding statement in full +council session, when the subject of appropriation to aid in the police +graft investigation was before that body. He said:-- + +"From the reports of investigators and men who have knowledge of +conditions in our city, vice pays tribute of $15,000,000 annually to the +police for its liberty of existence." + +Both these men are citizens of high repute, men of intelligence and +understanding. Both have placed the vice-graft at a tremendous figure, but +they have not carefully studied all the sources of collection. These when +considered, make $15,000,000 a very conservative estimate. + +What must be the murderous heart and the demon's soul of a monster that is +willing to pay such a price to wallow in the trough of moral filth and +physical bestiality! + + +THE EVILS OF A WORLD IN A MELTING POT. + +"Name a vice, a crime, a sin, that was known from the Beginning to the +present day, and I'll show it to you in Chicago today." + +Several years ago when the agents of the system were bolder in their +depravity, a "guide" stood outside the Polk street depot, waited for the +"gentlemen of the long green" and excited curiosity by the above +pronouncement. + +He could truthfully shout it from the housetops today. + +To it he would add, if he were to tell the entire truth:-- + +"I will show you not only every crime, but I will tell you the price of +its existence paid to members of Chicago's police department, and other +collectors of the Vice Trust." + +Search and you can find:-- + +Salient shows, obscene amusement houses, houses of prostitution, +segregated and otherwise, fashionable "flats" in choice neighborhoods, +dens of reeking infamy for the congregation of humanity's lowest dregs, +rendezvous for degenerate white women and negro men, clubs and resorts +where degeneracy in its most revolting forms are practiced, professional +beggars, rich pickpockets, pretty shoplifters, leering street-walkers, +cocaine, morphine and opium dens, fake palmists and fortune tellers, and +gambling in its hundreds of luring, deceptive forms. + +That is Chicago's generic crime list. If we omit, name the sin and it can +be found. That is the army that pays the graft to the police and other +creatures of the Vice Trust. + +Then, there are walking the streets of Chicago, known to the police, a +score of bomb throwers, men under pay of the gamblers, who have the police +as partners, who threw over half a hundred bombs that destroyed nearly +$1,000,000 worth of property. + + +THE UNDERWORLD CONTRIBUTORS. + +Two thousand gamblers pay their blood money. + +Five thousand women, offered as slaves on the auction block of +prostitution, give their lives to make up the hellish tolls. + +More than five hundred keepers of houses of ill fame contribute their +blood-dripping dollars. + +Owners of five hundred "flats" or assignation houses pay their +"life-price." + +We have said that every form of evil exists. We shall show in this book +the amounts of money paid by the minions and promoters of each vice for +police and political protection. + +Our figures are accurate. They are founded on the statements of men who +once paid blood-money to live. They are the prices demanded by the Vice +Trust today. + +The graft scale is so astonishing as to be almost unbelievable. + +Cold figures are set down by the over lords; cold dollars are paid by the +lawless. Failure to pay means ruin. Grace is rarely given. The new man or +woman seeking to open a vice-business must pay a high entrance fee to the +political powers. Their protection price is always higher than that +exacted from the "old timers." The more hideous the crime-business the +higher the protective compensation for it. The greater the profits +accruing, the more the weight of the gold and silver poured into the +coffers of the corrupt politicians and their allies. + +In the white palaces of hidden sin, where degeneracy boasts of its +infamous acts, and where men of wealth and women of fashion congregate to +turn loose their insane lusts without fear of detection or restraint, the +price of existence runs into the thousands of dollars. + +In several vice emporiums, fitted as sumptuously as the homes of +millionaires on Lake Shore Drive, the protection for traffic in white, +delicate and beautiful bodies of young girls is $1,000 a month! + +From the elegantly furnished roulette parlor to the den of quarreling, +cursing negroes in the "black belt,"--from the highest place of gaming to +the lowest--the price to go on filching thousands of men and women is +paid, and paid willingly. + + +THE WHITE SLAVE TRAFFIC ANDS ITS LIFE-PRICE. + +The White Slave Traffic--the most infamous, foulest, lowest and +destructive feature of Chicago's wickedness,--pays a terrible price to the +lords of the underworld. + +Police protection is granted it at terrible risk to the police and +politicians themselves. For this reason the price is high. + +We all know what the White Slave Traffic signifies. + +In a word it is:-- + +The buying, by insidious means, of thousands of pure, trusting and +innocent girls, the casting of them into the horrifying flesh markets and +the auctioning of them to infamous, polluted and brutal slave masters and +mistresses for a blood price. + +It is the desecration of virginal sanctity. The bartering of women-souls +for dollars. + +It is the tearing away of beautiful girls from their parents and the +fireside, and the thrusting of them into living hells. + +IT IS SLOW, SURE MURDER! + +AND THIS REEKING, DASTARDLY INFAMY HAS ITS PRICE? GOD! WHAT A SACRILEGE! + +Of this evil and its relation to the Vice Trust we shall speak at length +in a separate chapter. + + +PROTECTION PRICES OF ALL VICES. + +And now here are some startling figures. We will tabulate them, so they +will leave their proper impression. + +THE LIST. + + Tribute + per month + Houses of Prostitution-- + Those known as "dollar" houses $20.00 + "Two and three dollar" houses (for each inmate) $25.00 + "Five dollar" houses (for each inmate) $35.00 + "Ten dollar" houses (for each inmate) $40.00 + Fashionable "flats" $25.00 to $500.00 + Assignation hotels $25.00 to $500.00 + High class houses where rich old men bring + young girls of virtue $500.00 to $1,000.00 + Dives of vice where whites and blacks mix $200.00 + Saloons with women "hustlers" $100.00 + Cafes with "hustlers" (of prosperous trade) $100 to $300.00 + Infamous dance halls $50.00 + Infamous dance halls, extra for immoral dances $50.00 + All-night saloons $50.00 + Obscene acting in houses of ill fame $200.00 to $500.00 + Handbooks and poolrooms 50 per cent + Faro games 50 per cent + Stuss ("Jewish poker") 50 per cent + Poker and other games 50 per cent + Crap games 50 per cent + Gambling houses with all games 50 per cent + Chinese gambling of all sorts 50 per cent + Opium dens $50.00 + Cocaine and morphine selling $100.00 + Manicure and massage parlors where the women + employes are really prostitutes $100.00 + Pickpockets and confidence men not definite + Street walkers, or "hustlers" $20.00 to $50.00 + Professional bondsmen 50 per cent + Burglars and dynamiters not obtainable + "Vampire" Trust, (members of which are women + preying on patrons of fashionable hotels) 50 per cent + Professional beggars not definite + Fake street hawkers per day, $5.00 + Kimona Trust (to be explained later) 66 per cent + Laundry Trust 50 per cent + "Cadets," or "pimps" not definite + Chop Suey restaurants in certain districts $25.00 + +Such is the record of vice and crime and it is not complete. Such is the +record as it appears on the debtors' pages of the Vice Trust. + +Hundreds of petty forms of infamy have a price. Other crime-trades pay, +but the prices cannot be learned or estimated, so intricate are the +workings of the vicious combine. + +What do the agents of the White Slave Traffic pay to barter body and +blood? + +The trust has the secret blood price. Investigation by the state, city and +particularly the federal government, has shown its existence. The monthly +figure must be upwards of $10,000. + + +SIDE ISSUES IN THE VICE GRAFT. + +Nothing is consumed by the slaves of crime, nothing is used or even wasted +that does not hand over its pittance to the avaricious over lords. + +We shall give specific instances of the far-reaching, grasping power of +the trust to collect. + +In the South side "redlight" district but one brand of whiskey can be sold +today. + +The Directorate of Ten has so ordered. + +Why? + +Because a politician has the controlling interest in the manufacture and +sale of a certain brand of whiskey. Therefore, that is the kind of whiskey +sold. It is as logical as all things in the harmonious and well-oiled +system. No keeper of a house of ill fame, no bloated, blear-eyed +saloonkeeper of the district would offer any other brand. Wisely, if not +honestly, another capitalist of the vice-corporation has bought up a +cigarette concern. He makes and sells a poisonous, brain and +moral-destroying cigarette. Ask for cigarettes in any den of infamy in the +levees of the city, and this brand will be forced on you. Perhaps if you +strongly protest, you can obtain some other brand, but your protest must +be loud and insistent. + +Once more is evidenced the overwhelming, overreaching power of operative +and unified lawlessness. + +Another member of the Trust has sunk his crime-tainted dollars into a +taxi-cab concern. The corporation must yield a profitable harvest. + +Result: The man, who after satisfying his lust and passions, drunk with +the wine he has paid dearly for, and exhausted from a repulsive debauch, +is put into a taxi-cab and driven away from a "redlight" resort. That +taxi-cab belongs, through invested capital, to a member of the Crime +Directorate. Again the shadow of the monster. + +If a business man engages in the manufacture of gambling paraphernalia he +looks for a market,--usually the saloon or dive. When he seeks contracts +he is told: + +"Better see the boss." + +He sees him. He pays him, and then he installs his machines at will, even +over the protest of resort keepers. + +Again the hidden graft channel. + +Hundreds of pounds of opium are smuggled into Chicago yearly. The opium +dens pay their protection price, but long before that the policeman has +held out his hand behind his back, accepted the graft from the "importer" +and sent him on to sow a slow death to thousands through the petals of the +poppy bud. + + +THE QUACK DOCTORS OF CHICAGO. + +The city is overrun with quack doctors. Sensational and horrifying signs +adorn their windows, they advertise their "cures" in the columns of the +daily newspapers. They are the destroyers of health instead of the givers +of strong physiques and clear minds. Their prey is, in the most part, +out-of-town men and women and the illiterate of the city, who suffer, or +fear they are the victims of unmentionable diseases. + +Do they fatten on the proceeds of this crime, free of trust-tribute? + +Far from it. They pay a stipend from the fee wrung from the unfortunates +who enter their laboratories of crime. + +The professional bondsmen, usually "lieutenants" or friends of the men +"higher up" are useful assets in times of emergency. When the outlook is +dull, when the collection days are far away, they do good service, aided +by members of the police department. + +Suppose an unfortunate cesspool has failed to meet its obligations to the +vice lords. As a result the police are ordered by the "powers" to raid it. +They do so. At least a score of men are caught in the net. The +professional bondsman signs their bonds at a price ranging from $5 to $25 +each. The bondsman retains a small percentage, as also the police. The +rest goes to the vice rulers. + + +THE KIMONA TRUST AND THE VAMPIRE TRUST. + +The light, cheap and thin apparel worn by the lost women of the dens of +pollution contribute their small share to buy diamonds for the +vice-magnates. + +There is a vice-asset called the "Kimona Trust." Every stitch of clothing +worn by the women denizens of the underworld is made and sold by its +agents. + +For that trade it pays a regular and definite tribute. + +We could go on enumerating indefinitely and never reach an end. + +Graft, graft,--every kind from every dreamed-of source! + +The Vampire Trust is one of the novelties of Chicago's crime-world. It is +of recent creation. It is a subsidiary corporation of the "big combine." + +One hundred women, it is estimated, form its rank and file. They are women +of luring, attractive appearance, insidious "good-fellows," smartly +educated and vice's students of human nature. + +Like vultures they prey on Chicago's wealthy visitors. They infest the +lobbies, restaurants and cafés of Chicago's most exclusive hotels. They +search out their victims, wile them away from business cares by sensuous +charms, take them "slumming," drug them and rob them. + +Then they divide their ill-gotten gains with their protectors. + +Then, too, there is the "hotel thieves combine." It is estimated that more +than $1,000 worth of valuables is stolen from the hotels in a month. + +Bell boys are numbered among the hotel thieves. The police watch them and +follow them to the "fences"--the places where the stolen property is sold +for less than one half its value. Once more the trust does its work. The +"fence" manager must pay tribute or go to jail. He pays, of course. + +That is the story of GRAFT, its origin, source and magnitude. + + +WHEN AND WHERE WILL IT END? + +In the most defiled pages of the world's history, can you find a parallel? + +It is not brutal, primitive, disorganized, heterogenous vice and crime, +such as inoculated nations that crumbled to decay; it is systematized, +organized, commercialized corruption. + +It begins with the power created at a debauched ballot box! + +It ends--? God alone can tell where it ends! + + +THE MEAGER PURCHASE-PRICE OF POLICEMEN'S SOULS. + +The police department in a large majority is corrupted. But the evil hides +behind that body. It would be like paring a corn to destroy that body. The +root is still imbedded in the flesh. + +POLITICS--prostituted and debauched--is the root of the evil. + +The honest policeman is but a plaything. If he wanders into a vice king's +district he is tried out. If found wanting in rottenness his transfer is +effected. A more plastic man is found to fill his place. + +The police department has sold its soul of honor for a mess of decaying +pottage. + +Because:-- + +It is estimated that of the $15,000,000 in graft annually, the corrupt +members of the department receive but ten per cent. + +They do the slave's work, the pander's work, etc., for a bagful of +blood-dripping dollars! + + +THE BATTLE OF GOODNESS WITH THE POWERS OF HELL. + +A saint might sit in the seat of power,--the Mayor's chair--and be +powerless to stem the evil. + +He is the creation of an election. Vice is the creation of satanic wisdom +and diabolical cunning. + +The Mayor of the city is battling against the sea of iniquity about him. +He has appointed municipal physicians to cut out the moral cancer that is +rapidly destroying the city. God speed this noble work. + +But we tremble when we think that in the end it may be futile. + +Justice has scarcely any way of reaching these criminals. They create +their own power, build the citadel of crime and vice about them and dwell +securely within. + +To save herself Chicago needs a new civic conscience or the stimulation of +a latent one. + +Chicago needs leaders,--men willing to become martyrs for the sake of +their city, their children and their children's children. + +A general awakening to the gigantic, monstrous evil is the only palpable +salvation. + +Destroy corrupt political power and the victory is won. Then the police +force will fulfill the object of its creation. Then concerted crime and +vice will fall to pieces. Then the glaring plague spots of assembled +infamy will be dissipated. Then we will have a city after God's own heart +and man's best desires. + +We are telling the truth to create public and saving opinion, to destroy +lethargy and inoculate the germ of activity. + + +CHICAGO!--TAKE WARNING, YOU WHO ENTER! + +Chicago today is an unsafe city. Although first in the world in +progressiveness, it is first in rottenness. + +Crime, sin and vice claim ninety per cent of those who enter it. + +Thousands of young women of the country come, live and die victims of its +iniquity, day after day, year after year. + +An army of young men, fired by dreams of great futures, enter and are +defiled, and slain by the poisons that are disseminated. + +Shall it go on interminably:--this reign of the +triumvirate-Vice-Graft-Corruption? + +We pray not. We are hoping that it may not. + +Back of the ruin of world-nations, if stripped to an ultimate cause, is +the one word--Vice. + +Its grip is on Chicago; a stronger grip than any other city of the world +has ever felt. Our life-blood is thinning; the flesh of our bones is +wasting. The crucial hour is here. + +Save Chicago from a record on history's page of "Forgotten and Ruined +Cities, Victims of Sin and Crime." + +Let the ministerial forces fight for the betterment. Let them seize the +leaderships. + + +WHY THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN. + +In this little volume each page is a sign post of warning, for the Chicago +man and woman, and particularly, for those who visit or intend visiting +this city. + +This book is not a mere setting forth of facts without explanation of the +reason for their existence. + +It is a clear, truthful analysis of crime, vice and graft from every +standpoint. + +It is the first story, as far as we are aware, of the monstrous Vice-Graft +system. + +We have given a general outline of crime and its relation to the +conscienceless, fattening Trust. + +In the later chapters we shall treat of the hideous and most important +evils of the city, in detail. + +The "Debauchery of the Ballot," the "redlight" districts and their +machinery and thousands of ruined women, the White Slave Traffic, the +gambling games and their alliance with the police, the "Vampire Trust," +petty crimes that flourish, buried plague spots of the city, and other +startling features in the kingdom of crime will be separately and +truthfully treated. + +We are telling a terrible story. It is the story of-- + +--CHICAGO-- + +THE WICKEDEST CITY IN THE WORLD! + +[Illustration: Mr. McCutcheon in The Tribune.] + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +The Debauchery of the Ballot. + +The Sacredness of the Ballot--Its Corruption by the Vice Trust--Methods of +Corruption--Affidavits Showing Corruption--A Cleansed Ballot Box--A +Cleansed City. + + +American advancement has its foundation in the principles of government by +the people, for the people and of the people. + +Every American citizen, in theory at least, is an ideal autocrat. He is +the judge of his personal conduct; the maker of his surroundings; the +master in his home; the ruler of his nation by his power of representative +government. + +Ideal democracy is God's highest gift to his best creation. + +Prostituted democracy is hell's highest triumph; is evil's best +instrument. + +Individual right to create a governing power is an American citizen's +first prerogative. + +The most sacred thing in the mechanism of self-government of the United +States,--is the Ballot Box. + +Tamper with the ballot box and you aim a body blow at the constitution of +the United States. + +Defile its sanctity and you destroy the purity of our democracy. + +Chicago is a seething mass of corruption, vice, graft and iniquity today, +as has been generally shown in the first chapter. That must be admitted. + +Previously we have spoken of her evils in a general way. + +The Vice Trust rules supreme. It is almost impregnable. The secret of that +herculean strength and power is-- + +The Debauchery of the Ballot Box! + +The ballot of Chicago has been debauched, sold and enslaved! + +Not more than ten men, powers in the political world, by insidious methods +have poisoned it, killed its political value for municipal betterment, and +made it the armament of their corrupt forces. With its aid they have built +up the monstrous Vice combine, and with it they retain year after year the +sceptre of vicious tyranny. + +Investigations have proven the debauchery of the ballot. Investigators +have shown that the corrupted ballot box has won disastrous, political +victories. Investigation has demonstrated that all the forces of +moral-decaying vice have been used to destroy the honesty of the ballot, +so that vice might flourish and pay its tribute to its sleek-faced, +big-bellied masters. + +It is our intention to show in this chapter how the debauched ballot box +is the secret power of the forces that make Chicago the wickedest city in +the world. + +Granted the necessary political despotism to rule and pass sentence of +life and death on good and bad, what opportunity have the powers for good +to destroy the parasite? + + +40,000 ILLEGAL BALLOTS IN ONE YEAR. + +The situation today is appalling. The foundations of government are +menaced. + +From reliable sources, and from information gained by investigating bodies +backed by the reform element, 40,000 illegal names stand on the poll-list +of the city! + +This is the heavy, moral and political-destroying artillery of the vice +generals. This is the battalion that drops "yes" in the ballot box to make +vice supreme. + +It is composed of the riffraff of humanity, of the wreckage and driftwood +of the country. + +Every member sells his citizenship for a piece of silver, a poisonous +drink, a mess of pottage. + +They are the army of "floaters" and "repeaters," who are massed, housed +and fed in the regions of the vice lords, a week or two before elections, +and proclaim their unholy allegiance to their masters by the prostitution +of the ballot box and the overthrow of clean, honest, moral government. + +Each man has a past;--vice wrecked the moral conscience of some, brutal +crime destroyed respect in others and drink slew the convictions of still +other thousands. + +They infest, in the large majority, those political territories where +crime and vice are centered. + +The means of defeating an honest election and securing politico-vice +control are many. + + +CHARACTER OF THE VICE CORPS; ITS WORK. + +Every hobo, degenerate and criminal at large, knows when Chicago's +elections come due. From Maine to Washington, from Florida to Northern +Michigan comes the immigration to Chicago. + +Six hundred lodging houses and cheap hotels in the First, Eighteenth and +Twenty-first wards--the vice territories of the city--throw open their +doors to the hired assassins of the ballot. + +The vice kings have issued the order. The army is given lodging. + +The barrel-houses, whiskey halls and underground hells furnish the +nutrition for the human vultures. + +That is part of their agreement of existence. They, too, are concerned. A +defeat of their rulers would mean financial ruin and the loss of a channel +to protection for their crime doings. + +Soaked with destructive liquor, fed with de-energizing food the "floaters" +and "repeaters" wallow in the mire, waiting to do their filthy service and +then depart. + +The sub-leaders of these men are the appointed guardians of the ballot, +clerks and judges of election, principally. + +They, too, are corrupt. Recent elections have even resulted in fixing +election crimes on them and sending some to jail. + +The question, "Shall this city (Chicago) become anti-saloon territory?" +was to have been placed on the ballot, April 5, 1910. Sixty-eight +saloonkeepers and bartenders qualified as judges and clerks for this +election. No "floater" or "repeater" would have been prevented from voting +by these clerks and judges. + + +PADDED ELECTION REGISTERS. + +In the primary election, held September 15, 1910, one third of the vote +cast in the First ward was made by "repeaters" or personators, in the +names of individuals who did not live at the addresses from which they +were recorded as voting. + +This terrible condition was unearthed by investigators working for Arthur +Burrage Farwell, president of the Chicago Law and Order League. This fact +was ascertained by a comparison of the poll books used at the primary with +the records of a house-to-house canvass of the ward. + +In March of that year the same reform organization caused the erasure of +702 illegal names from the registry books of the notorious First ward. In +a single precinct in that ward, with a registration of 668, 269 names were +those of "floaters" and "repeaters." These were stricken off. + +Investigation before that September primary in the First Ward showed +10,996 names on the registry list. It also showed that 5,552 of the names +were of persons who did not live at the addresses given, but who cast +their purchased ballots at the primary election! + +Similar conditions exist in the other lodging house wards, previously +mentioned, and also known as the "river" wards, because they are separated +by the Chicago river, the last resting place of many revolters from the +system. + +The "debauchery of the ballot" is too mild a term for this crime. + + +THE PROSTITUTE: A MASK FOR THE "FLOATER." + +Three hundred and twenty hotels, whose occupants are mainly prostitutes +and their unfortunate victims, are used to render honest elections +impossible. + +The "floater" is called into the corner of the barrel-house and given the +"dope" by the boss' lieutenant. + +His name is "Panhandle" Harry for instance. He is told that on election +day his names are successively, M. Graham, L. Wilson, B. Smith, etc. He is +to use his suddenly acquired aliases at different precincts. + +He is to cast one, two, three or perhaps ten votes for the vice lords. He +does so. Hundreds like him do so. + +For each name he has an address of the prostitute's name he bears, for +that is the subterfuge. Her name with but an initial for the maiden name +appears on the register of the hotel. It is sold to the man who sells +himself and then sells his vote. + +The working of the system was revealed in a ludicrous manner. + +Carter H. Harrison was a candidate for Mayor. He sent a printed note of +appreciation signed with a printed autograph to the registered voters of +the First ward in which he urged attendance at the primaries. Of course, +Mr. Harrison, himself, did not do this. His supporters did it with +permission for the use of his name. + +One of these went to a notorious woman living in the Cadillac hotel, +Wabash avenue and Twenty-second street. That is on the edge of the South +side "redlight" district. + +That woman's name had been placed on the registry list as hundreds of +others had been, by "repeaters"! + +The woman who received the letter was puzzled. She showed it to the man +for whom she daily sold her body for hire. The mystery of the prostitute +subterfuge was revealed. + +There are sixty-three women living in the Cadillac hotel. It is certain +that each one casts a vote by the proxy system explained, for the +existence of the hellish combine. + +Could anything be more fiendish? + +Is there any power that can dig down deep enough to uproot this crying +evil? + + +THE LODGING HOUSE PERIL. + +In one lodging house in the Eighteenth Ward there is room to accommodate +200 men. + +During the lapses between elections but 75 to 100 men occupy these +unsanitary quarters. At election they are crowded. + +The occupants of these rooms are then registered under meaningless names +and cast ballots. + +A majority of the men who count the ballots in these wards are also +corrupt. They help the stuffing of the ballot boxes. They are the supposed +defenders of the greatest privilege given to the American citizen;--that +of self rule. They are in reality, the slaves of the Vice Trust. + +Occasionally the regular residents of the lodging houses work at +employments that they secure through the licensed labor agencies. But, no +matter how great the demand may be for laborers, no agency dares furnish +these men with work just previous to elections. What agent will deny that +to send voters out on the road to work at election time would mean ruin +through the loss of his license to do business? + +As a specific proof of our statement of the debauchery of Chicago's +ballot-box, we print below the affidavit of a young man who voted six +times at the primary on September 15, 1910. + +The affidavit is one of a score secured by Mr. Farwell of the Chicago Law +and Order League. + +The affidavit follows:--State of Illinois, County of Cook, SS. + +I, James Barnes, residing at 419 State street, being first duly sworn, of +my own free will and accord upon my oath depose and say: + +That on Thursday, September 15, 1910, I and Frank Burns, and one Smith +whose first name is to me unknown, were standing at the corner of Clark +and Van Buren streets, when a man, a heavy set fellow with iron-gray +mustache, Hackett, by name, a hanger-out at Kenna's saloon, north-east +corner of Van Buren and Clark streets, asked us if we were doing any +voting. I said no. He said that he could take the three of us over and +vote us and that he would pay us 50c a piece and give us a couple of +cigars each. We said we didn't want to take any chances. He said it was +all fixed up--that he would give us the names we were to vote under and go +down with us and tell them it was all right. He gave us the names, +typewritten on a plain envelope, of which he had a pocket-full. + +Burns and I went with him to the polling place on Clark street, between +Jackson and Van Buren streets, down in the basement. (4th Precinct, 1st +Ward, within 300 feet of the Union League Club.) He went down stairs with +us. There were two or three others waiting to vote. We gave the names we +had--I voted under the name of T. M. Hayes, 99 Van Buren street. Hackett +told the man in charge of ballots to give me a Democratic ticket. He did +so. I then went into the booth and was followed by another man who said he +would fix it up for me and he marked the ticket, told me to fold it and +take it out and vote it. He had small gray mustache, gray hair, +forty-eight or fifty years old, gray suit. I gave the ballot to the man at +the ballot box who took it and put it in the box. I then went out and the +man who marked the ticket went up stairs with me and said to me, "Go down +to the corner and meet the other fellow," meaning the man who took me +down, Hackett. I met him by the Princess Hotel doorway. He took me inside +the hallway and gave me half a dollar and two cigars--ten centers. + +I voted again in about half an hour under the name of Henry C. Williams, +99 Van Buren street (same ward and precinct), under same conditions as +before and got seventy-five cents the second time, as he had no more +cigars. He took two other fellows down while we waited for him. + +He later told me to go with another man, a big heavy set man in a gray +suit who told me that if I would hunt up two or three other fellows he +would give me an extra half dollar. He offered a dollar for votes. I got +one fellow for him and another lad got three or four. Six of us went over +to LaSalle and Adams, where we were halted in the alley and two at a time +taken to the polling place at 146 LaSalle street, in a basement bookstore +where I voted under the name of William Johnson, 172 Madison street (2nd +Precinct, 1st Ward). The big man gave us the names on an envelope and a +sample ballot marked as we should vote. It was a Democratic ticket. At the +door of the polling place we met another man who went in with us. I gave +the name assigned, asked for instructions and the judge told the man who +went down with us to go down and help me. He went in with me and marked +the ballot. I did not even open the sample ballot. When I came back to the +alley the man gave me a dollar and also gave the other man who went with +me to vote a dollar. + +I then went back to Van Buren and Clark and met a man from the West side +who said he wanted twenty or twenty-five men to go over there. There were +seven or eight of us went over together and I voted at the corner of +Sangamon and Madison streets, under the name of Danford Stowe, 27 North +Sangamon street (Pct. 11, 18th Ward). We went in three at a time. We got +the names from an old man who had them written on a slip. We had to +remember them as he gave out no printed or written names. I was paid a +dollar after I voted by the man who gave me the names. + +We then went up the street and were told to ask for "George"; we went west +three or four blocks and I voted under the name of Gordon Seymour, 19 +Bishop Court; the polling place was on Madison street in rear of a barber +shop. We asked for "George" and were directed to a man who stood on the +corner with a poll list. He gave me the name of Gordon Seymour (Pct. 5, +18th Ward). The fellow with me was given the name of James A. Sharp, 22 +Bishop Court. I don't remember whether or not it was Democrat or +Republican ticket but think it was Republican. George went in with us and +marked the ballot. He then took both of us and gave us a dollar a piece. +The saloon was full of men. A man there had another list. + +George wanted us to go in and vote again but we refused to go back to the +same place again. He then sent us down to the "brick-layers hall" on +Monroe street where we asked for Barney who gave me the name of Sheldon. +The polling place was across the street from the brick-layer's hall. +Barney took us to the door. Another fellow went in with us and marked the +ticket. Barney took us into a saloon and bought a drink for us and paid us +each a dollar. + + JAMES BARNES. + +Subscribed and sworn to before me this twentieth day of September, A. D. +1910. + + WM. F. MULVIHILL, + Notary Public. + +Other affidavits show that three men voted thirteen times in the fourth +precinct of the First Ward. The Union League Club, one of the largest and +most influential clubs in the country, stands in the center of that +district. + +While the members sat and discussed a renovated city, cleansed of graft, +crime and vice, these crimes against every upright citizen were being +committed. + + +ILLEGAL VOTING COSTS MAYORALTY. + +Edward F. Dunne, former Mayor, declared that his recent defeat for +nomination as mayor for another term was due, in part, to illegal votes +cast at the primaries in the First Ward. + +In speaking of the First Ward, Judge Dunne said: + +"Over 2,600 affidavits for registration were filed for men in the First +Ward. These men all voted at the primary, February 28, 1911. On March 14, +registration day for the election, less than a month from the day the +affidavits were filed, about 800 out of the 2,600 who registered by +affidavit, appeared at the polling places to register for the election. +This was due to the vigilance of reform organizations which centered +their efforts on that ward. + +"The inference is plain. Nearly 1,800 votes were registered for the +primary by men not eligible to vote and who dared not face the challengers +for the forces of good." + +And that is the result of seventy-four years of effort to build a city for +the welfare, happiness and advancement of its inhabitants! + + +MR. FARWELL ON THE BALLOT CRIME. + +"Chicago has never faced a graver problem," declares Mr. Farwell. Vice, +crime and graft are heinous offenses in the body municipal, but they are +secondary to the debauchery of the ballot. + +"Corrupt that and you sweep all things to ruin. Honest elections mean +honest officials and the end of vice conditions. You cannot solve the +social problems nor remedy the social wrongs until you have cleansed the +ballot box of its pollution. I believe that today 50,000 illegal names +stand on Chicago's election books. That means 50,000 votes for crime, +graft and ultimate ruination." + + +THE LAW ABETS EVIL. + +Even the present laws governing the primary elections seem to abet the +crime. + +According to the primary law it is not a fraud to buy votes! + +It is a crime punishable by imprisonment to sell a vote! + +The Vice Trust evidently had a hand in the creation of that travesty on +justice. The tentacles of the octopus reach into Springfield, the State +capital! + +To the agents of the Vice Trust who pay tainted dollars for votes, freedom +and prosperity! + +To the starving, human wretches, forgetful of their birthrights, who sell +their votes for the price of food or drink--shame and prison cells! + + +IN CONCLUSION. + +That is the source whence comes the power to create, foster and nourish +vice and crime. + +It is the first and the only absolutely essential link in the vice chain. + +THE POLICE FORCE, ASSISTING IN SUCKING THE STAGNANT BLOOD FROM THE CITY'S +LEVEES, MIGHT BE SWEPT AWAY BY A WAR OF PROTEST AND REFORM, BUT THE EVIL +WOULD GROW ANEW. + +New agents could be speedily found. The foundry where the iron manacles +for the vice-slaves are forged, would still exist. + +The ballot box would still remain to be tampered with. + +Guard the ballot box night and day; wipe out the padded registry list; +arrest the thousands of "floaters" and "repeaters"; compel prostitutes to +register their full names to show their sex; and send to prison the +corrupt judges and clerks of election; send to the workpiles the buyers of +votes, and you will strike a fatal blow at the Vice Trust. + +That is the only remedy. + +A debauched ballot box means "redlight" districts. + +A debauched ballot box means dens of infamy. + +A debauched ballot box means putrefying saloons. + +A debauched ballot box means 5,000 registered prostitutes. + +A debauched ballot box means protected White Slavery. + +A debauched ballot box means notorious gambling. + +A debauched ballot box means police corruption. + +A debauched ballot box means-- + +$15,000,000 annual graft to the corrupters! + +Because the ballot box remains debauched, the Vice Trust exists. Because +it exists, Chicago is a cesspool of the world's mingled corruptions. + +[Illustration: SPEAKING OF FIRE TRAPS. + +By Courtesy of The Chicago Daily News. + +THERE ARE OTHERS.] + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +Come and See! + +A CITY DEFILED. + +The Cafe Evil--The Rich Man's Girl Trap--The Borderland of Hell--Crimes +that Thrive by Night--State Street and Its Pitfalls--The Stages of Sin. + + +It is night. Over the city of 2,000,000 souls is the light of God's stars +and the pale moon. + +Thousands tired from the day's occupation, turn to peaceful sleep for +relief. + +Innocent children are tucked into their little, white beds. The kiss from +loving lips goes with them into the land of dreams. The future has no +terror for them, because they know not. + +While thousands sleep, thousands sin and perish in Chicago! + +Crime loves the protection of darkness. Vice breathes more freely in the +night. + +From his cavern, creeps forth the monster Vice with sun-down. + +He is hungry for his victims. They have been fattened for him. The hour +has come for the nightly sacrifice on the altars of debauchery. + +Come with us! Come, we will show you the City Defiled! + +Down into the heart of the loop district we shall go first. + +Right across from where God's and man's laws are administered in the +County Courthouse, a stone's throw from one of the oldest churches in +Chicago, we shall stop. + +It is George Silver's "Rialto." It is one of the most popular cafes of its +kind in Chicago. It is a place where human souls are valued for just the +worth of the body's hire. An alderman is said to be part owner of this +place. + +It is a typical example of the hundreds of drinking places for men and +women that are found in Chicago. + +Virtue is slain there every night. Hearts are broken there and lives +ruined. It is no worse than other places of the same type. + +It is an underground hell. + +Down the steps we go and enter. + +We are escorted to a table by a colored waiter. + +On a raised dais, a bent-over consumptive looking young man plays a piano. +The airs are the popular hits of the day. + +A pale-faced youth wipes his purple lips after a hasty sip at a beer glass +and advancing to the front of the dais sings a song, usually of sensuous +import. + +He is extravagantly applauded. He is "sent up" a drink by some pleased +patron. + +But look about you. + +There are more than one hundred tables. At each table sit at least one man +and one woman. + +In every woman's face, if you are observant, is written a tragedy, either +beginning that night, or in its unfolding or finished years before. + +Do you see that "washed-out" bleached blonde with colorless eyes, who +smiles at the drinking youth who sits with her? She has lived through the +tragedy. Life to her is but an aftermath of unending agony. + +The monster Vice has long ago sucked the life blood from her veins. She +has been discarded. She lives from day to day on her passing victims. + +They are usually unsophisticated youths, proud to sit with her, buy her +more poison and peril their young lives by contact with her. + +She is coughing. That is the warning signal she knows well but attempts to +forget. It is the signal that death has placed his hands upon her. She has +fulfilled her mission. Hell must claim its own. + +You are attracted by a merry burst of laughter from pretty lips. You turn. + +How her eyes sparkle! How her cheeks burn crimson! + +Her body moves sinuously to the rhythm of the music. + +She smiles even at you as she sips her "fizz." + +She is intoxicated with life. It is lights and shadows, songs and flowers. + +She is a favorite among men. A much-sought after girl on the border line +of womanhood. + +She has no terrors tonight; no haunting nightmares. + +Her blood flows fast; her pulse thrills her; her thoughts burn with +pleasing fire. + +She is reckless. Why not? The world is a bed of roses. + +Four months ago she wandered into the paths that lead to hell. + +Six dollars a week as a clerk. No clothes, no delicacies, no amusements. + +She learned the secrets of the girl who worked beside her; how she +purchased the "good things" of life. + +Her virginal innocence was the inestimable price! + +Tonight she is an habitue of the brilliant cafe. + +The path is still one of beauty and fascination. The tragedy is in its +inception. + +The bright eyes will become dull, the sweet voice harsh, the cheeks pale, +the face haggard. + +The wine shall have been sipped. Nothing then but the bitter dregs! Oh, +the horror of that approaching tragedy! + +Her end is inevitable. + +An early grave, a house of prostitution or an insane asylum! There is +rarely ever a turning back. + +Vice buries its tentacles deep in the flesh. + + +THE FIRST STEP. + +"Dearie, don't be afraid of that. Really, it's like a 'soft' drink. It +won't make you drunk." + +Again you turn on hearing that remark. + +He is leaning over the table;--a gray-haired, fashionably dressed man. The +young girl he is talking to, is not more than sixteen years of age. + +Her face is white. Her eyes are like those of a hunted deer. Her hands +tremble. + +It is her first night! + +The fiendish brute induces her to take the drink. You see her take +another. She seems suddenly to become stupid. + +"Come on, it is about time to go, Kid," you hear the man say. + +The young girl lurches into his waiting arms. + +That night another victim is claimed by the monster! + +Somewhere a little, gray-haired mother prays that her daughter may be +protected from the sins of a great city. + +There is an unfathomable abyss waiting for that girl, a chasm in the +depths of which lurk torture, sin, disease and death. + +In that cafe all is levity and enjoyment. It is a living in the present, a +forgetfulness of the past, a shutting of the eyes to the terrors of the +unborn future. + +In one night while the music pleases the senses, while song brings an +ephemeral joy, while drink quickens the pulse, while the atmosphere lulls +the conscience to sleep, innocent young girls, barely out of school, are +inoculated with the poison of forbidden fruit. + +Every year, hundreds of young girls, undefiled and pure, drift into the +wickedest city in the world, are carried away by the glare of the "Great +White Way" and the sensuous lures of the dazzling cafes and the Bohemian +pleasures, and become unconsciously, the recruits of the great absorbing +Vice Trust. + +As we pass from this cafe,--the type of hundreds of others,--note the +attractive pictures on the wall,--pictures of popular actresses, actors, +prizefighters and men of the world of sports. + +The girl who a year ago knew comparatively nothing of the world outside of +her harmless, narrow sphere, can point to the pictures and give you the +names with dangerous accuracy. They are now a part of her Bohemian world. +She boasts today of familiarity with them. + +Late in the night, or to speak accurately, at early dawn, the cafes empty +their drunken revelers into the streets. In pairs they stagger away, some +to houses of assignation, others to the disorderly hotels where they live, +and still others to the "redlight" districts of the city, of which we +shall soon speak. + +That is the cafe evil of today. It is the outward threads of the enmeshing +web of the insidious and poisonous spider-Vice. Once trapped, redemption +is scarcely possible. + +Two hundred department store girls, according to a reform association's +statistics, take the first downward step each year, in these cafes. + +It is the outside trap, with luring bait, set by the Vice Trust for the +unsuspecting victims. The girls from out of the city are drawn to it for +the pleasures of life because other avenues of enjoyment are not open to +them. A conscious or unconscious emissary of the vice lords lures them to +these cesspools, robs them of their senses by subtle intoxicants and +destroys that same night their virginal purity. In a night they have +fallen from the highest estate to the bottomless pit of a living hell; +they have been stripped of their robes of innocence and clothed in the +shameful, sinful, scarlet garb of the thousands of women who have fallen +before them. + +No mother, no father, who kisses a daughter goodbye as she leaves the +fireside to plunge into the foaming sea of Chicago life, can be certain +that the child of his or her flesh and blood will return to the fireside +undefiled, pure of body and clean of heart, as long as those cancers +fester and flourish in the city of Chicago. + +We have treated of the girl problem and the cafe. + +What of our boys?--you ask. + +It is a sociological axiom that a nation's integrity depends on its +womanhood. + +The depraved woman means the depraved man. Each night thousands of youths, +full of physical strength, mental energy and ambition, seek recreation in +the cafes. It is there they meet or take the lost women. It is there they +wreck bright futures, sow the seed of crime, deaden their moral +consciences, and contract fatal diseases and rush unthinking down the path +that leads to ruin and to death. + +Back of a murder, in which some young man of good parentage and of +promising hopes figures as the principal, you can read the word "cafe." It +began there, it progressed, until its end meant the gallows in the court +yard of the county jail. + + +STATE STREET AND ITS PITFALLS. + +Let us leave the accursed place. We have other places to visit before the +sun flares red above the waters of Lake Michigan. + +We stroll down Randolph street, through Chicago's well lighted avenues and +its "Rialto" to one of the busiest thoroughfares in the world,--during the +day--State street. + +The bustling, shoving, pushing, army of men and women, has gone home. + +Yet, the street is by no means deserted. + +As we walk along we are conscious of the number of unescorted women, +walking the main loop thoroughfare. We mentally comment on it. + +They seem to saunter aimlessly about, jauntily swinging their purses, and +looking up into your face in a questioning, puzzling manner. + +Would you know the hideous truth? + +These are the outposts of the great army of Vice. These are the women, +stripped of the last element of self-respect, who like vultures attack +their prey in the glare of the arc lights, in the face of the uniformed +guardians of the law. + +In the vernacular of the street, these are the privates of the army of +"street-walkers." Unblushingly they flirt with their victims, catch their +eyes, draw them into a side street and quibble over the purchase price of +their flesh. + +There is an army of 2,000 of these women infesting the loop district and +its adjoining neighborhoods every night in the year. To the shady hotels +within the loop or just outside of it, where no embarrassing questions are +asked, these brazen prostitutes take their temporary masters. + +No decent woman is safe on a downtown street after dark when alone. The +haunting evil is about her wherever she goes. She is good, but the men who +walk the streets do not know it and they may offer her insults at any +moment. + +At times the evil becomes so open that police regulations are issued, +driving them from their byways of crime. Invariably within a few days, the +same painted faces and expressionless eyes are to be found on the old +corners, carrying on their disease-distributing trade. + +These women are not free agents of evil any more than other slaves of the +Vice Trust. They pay toll for every step their tired feet take during the +night and the early hours of the morning. They take their victims to the +cafes of which we have spoken and lure them into buying poisonous +intoxicants. For every drink they bring to the house,--and they must bring +many if they are to enjoy the favor of the vice lords,--they are given a +commission. The "drink check" is a part of the nightly income of every +woman of the underworld. + +But let us pass on. We have only scratched the superficial, outer covering +of the crime life of Chicago. There are a thousand more revolting sights +to be seen, not for the purpose of morbid curiosity but in order to prove +to our readers the magnitude and the power of the Vice Trust in Chicago. + +We are taking a trip through the greatest kingdom in the world, the empire +of unhampered, bold-faced, threatening sin. + + +THE STAGES OF SIN. + +As we pass down the well lighted streets of the loop district we are +halted in our progress by a man standing in front of a garish-appearing +theater just south of Van Buren on State street. + +The cry that reaches our ears is: + +"Come on, I know every man here is dying to take a peep at Chicago's only +and original Salome lady! She's inside in all her glory and all her--well, +you know, Gents, the best ever. Come on, it's a whole pile of fun for a +dime. You will thrill all over when the cutest girl in the world hugs a +man in a grizzly-bear wiggle!" + +Strains of music float from the place and a swarm of men of all types and +conditions wedge their way to the inside. + +That is another of the sore spots of the big city. It is just one of +hundreds of indecent forms of entertainment that have enough air of +respectability about them to exist on the borders of Chicago's loop +district. Here they flourish and reap their harvest. + +In such places, many a promising young man has committed, in mind at +least, his first moral murder. It is in this kind of places that vice sows +its first seeds--they are the first stepping stones down the abyss ending +at the dishonored grave. Every night young men pour out of these places +with their minds poisoned and with the fiery hand of temptation on them, +and from there they drift southward to the great whirlpool of iniquity, +falling victims to the deadly perils about them and tasting the deadly but +subtle poison for which they return until they die at the source. + +Every form of indecency may be found on the small and poorly lighted +stages of these theaters. Suggestive songs are sung, obscene witticism +spoken, until pent up, disastrous passions burst forth with demoniacal +fury and slay their own masters. + +But let us go on down the roadway of crime and sin. + + +THE RICH MAN'S GIRL TRAP. + +We have crossed over to Michigan avenue--to one of the main boulevards of +the world. It is the promenade of men of millions and women of blood. It +is the location of some of the most exclusive, most fashionable and most +expensive hotels in the world. + +Surely, you say, these hotels do not figure in the great vice plot which +exists in Chicago? + +They do! They figure in a way that will make every father and mother who +reads this narration, tremble with fear and horror. + +These hotels are infested with men of wealth and time, men of dead +consciences, men of diseased moral senses, who are always in search of +young, innocent, pretty prey for their decaying passions. + +Under the pretense of respectability, and with the false counsel that they +are safe and protected from harm, these parasites bring their young +victims to these hotels, dazzle them with the beauty and luxury about +them, rob them of their senses with new and intoxicating delights, and +then steal the only priceless gift that God gave them. + +That is one phase of the hotel evil, as we see it from a superficial +glance. There are a score of others. + +In one of the leading hotels of the world, there is a great crime center. +Let us enter it. + +Down the corridors we walk until we enter the portals of a new vice +palace. It is a cafe scene but not of the character witnessed at the place +first visited. Everything bespeaks luxury. The music is subtly and softly +sensuous. Obsequious waiters tread softly from table to table, taking +their orders from rich patrons. + +The men sitting about bear the marks of wealth and prosperity. They are +money lords, feasting at the table of life and toying away the moments +with women who are ready to be purchased for pretty clothes, suppers with +wines, and hard, cold dollars and cents. + +In the majority, the women we see, are dressed in the latest fashions, +brilliant with delicately rouged faces and penciled eyebrows, set off by +large and attractive picture hats. + +If you study the majority of the faces you will see that they are cut as +if of stone. They are faces of women who have lived through tragedies, +have thrust those tragedies aside and have reduced life to a mere living +from day to day, prepared every hour to barter flesh and blood for cash. +But, as in the less pretentious cafe, we find here also the type of girls +and women who are just beginning to stray into the broad path of +destruction. + +Money buys a false air of respectability. It has purchased that +pharasaical atmosphere for the big hotels. + +It is in these fashionable hotel cafes and restaurants that sin is +suggested and the road to ruin prepared. Of course, we must not lose sight +of the fact that the vast majority of the women who enter such places, +have long since drunk the first glass of poison and eaten the first piece +of forbidden fruit. + +Into these places, nightly, thousands of men and women bent on shameful +missions come and depart, inebriated by wines and liquors and forgetful of +respect to each other. There are, however, hundreds who enter and depart +without being contaminated by the vice that haunts the handsomely +furnished apartments. + +Out in the lobby of the hotel, we notice a nattily-dressed man of mature +years with the gray showing in his hair, holding a conversation with one +of the hotel attaches. We are curious. We notice he is being given +directions. + +We follow him to a room in one of the hotels adjoining the one we have +just visited. He is taken to a certain room and is admitted by a rather +flashingly dressed woman of about forty-five years, of florid complexion +and sharp, raucous voice. + +She smiles at the man. He speaks to her in a low voice. We might overhear +this conversation or one similar to it in import: + +"I am Mr. Edwards from Cincinnati. I am a business man and the evening is +boring. Mr. ... the hotel clerk, tells me you can find me a companion?" +queries the caller. + +The woman smiles knowingly, stops and thinks and then says in a half +jesting manner: + +"Why, certainly, Mr. Edwards. I can make the evening agreeable. I can find +you the best little partner in the world. + +"But"--and she smiles some more--"what do you want, something rather young +and new to the game, or a 'woman of some experience?' I can certainly +produce a choice assortment." Then she laughs that meaningless laugh +again. + +Mr. Edwards hesitates a moment, laughs off a possible embarrassment and +then answers in assumed flippancy: + +"Oh, as long as they are numerous, serve me up a young blonde chicken of +about seventeen summers, one that will go the limit and not try to put +mucilage on her fingers to stick to the long green. I'll pay her right for +her trouble." + +Then he makes his first flesh payment at that moment to the mistress of a +dozen women's bodies. He strolls down to the lobby and waits. A few +moments later he is "paged" by a bellboy and a note is given him. If we +should follow him we would find that the note named the rendezvous and +that the purchased woman waited for him there to do his bidding during +the night of shame. + +This is not fiction but shuddering fact. + +In a Jackson boulevard hotel, there is a "Miss Harris," who is the +procuress of girls of every description, character, temperament and +physical type, for men of wealth. + +There are a dozen of such women with headquarters in Chicago's big hotels. +They are the fashionable panderers for the rich human beasts, who live or +stop at the hotels or who go there to find their victims. + +These places in the criminal world have a name. They are named "Houses of +Call." They are employment agencies for young and old prostitutes. If a +man is willing to pay the price demanded, the woman, "Miss Harris," or +other such women, will produce for his pleasure, a young virgin and turn +her over to the merciless, insane lust of human Satan. + +These places are the fashionable flesh-markets, the slave blocks where +women are sold to men of wealth. + +That is another phase of the great Vice Trust, for those women panderers, +and those girl slaves pay tribute to carry on their traffic to the great +kings of the underworld. Of the relation of these classes of criminals to +their protectors we shall speak later. + +"Miss Harris"--we shall use her as a type--has a secret directory to the +covert, hidden but expensive haunts of vice. + +After Mr. Edwards departs, we might see another caller on a similar +mission. He is not a new customer. He is an old one. He makes his demand +without hesitation. He wants a young girl of innocence. He wants a girl in +the first flush of maturity, a girl who fears the things of sin, but who, +paradoxically, craves for the cloying sweet things of life. + +The girl is found for the monster. His crime must be committed in the +dark, in a secure and safe place, in a place where no one shall see him +committing his soul-murder. + +Again "Miss Harris" comes to the front. She directs her customer with the +trembling, wondering and frightened girl, to the "Arena," a pretentious +residence in Michigan avenue near Fifteenth street. + +His coming is known before his arrival. "Miss Harris" has informed the +"Madam" that a "live wire with a young kid" is on the way to the place. +The man and his victim are received politely and ushered into a +luxuriously furnished room, delicately scented with perfume and stripped +of any suggestion that it is a crime-chamber where sin is intangibly +present, waiting for the next victim. + +The desecration of soul and body begins and ends in that room. If the man +wishes it, supper with delicate morsels of food and wines of choice and +expensive brands are served. The atmosphere wooes to sleep the last moral +rebellion and all is lost. + +The "Arena" is mentioned here as a type, again. Chicago is infested with +such places. They may be found in our best residence districts, near +fashionable churches and adjoining homes where purity is sacred. + +To state more specific facts on such places we will name several more +similar "flats." + +A "Mrs. Clouds" conducts a similar place on La Salle avenue near Erie +street. It is necessary to have a letter of introduction or be known +before entrance can be effected. Here, nightly, men of wealth and even of +prominence with wives and families, ignorant of their orgies, take young +girls. + +The automobiles of the wealthy drive up to this place every evening and +their occupants seek their pleasure within. + +Here many-course dinners with wine as a zest giver--usually champagne--are +served to the patrons for $12 a plate. It is the vice haunt of the +millionaires and their purchased women. + +Then there is the place of Mrs. Mohr in Erie street, west of Rush street, +where the same luxuries are in evidence, where the same vices are +committed and where the range of prices eats deep into anything but a +plethoric bank account. + +These places run without intervention. They are known to few outside the +patrons. They pay, as do all other forms of vice, for police toleration. +Reform movements have not attacked them because they are scarcely aware of +their existence. They are but a small part of the contributing elements of +graft and corruption. + +We have digressed, but it was necessary to show the source and end of a +vice evil starting in the big hotels. In these "flats" of secrecy, girls +will be furnished in the same manner as they are furnished by "Miss +Harris" and her ilk of panderers. + +But let us resume our trip in the underworld. From the hotels, we move +southward again. + + +THE BORDERLAND OF HELL. + +Down Michigan avenue, Wabash avenue, State street, Fifth avenue and many +other prominent thoroughfares leading out of the loop district, are the +"assignation hotels" of Chicago. These are the houses where men bring +their victims at a cost of one dollar to five dollars a room, where street +walkers "steer" their customers and where vice festers with the roar of +the business world outside the windows. + +Within the loop district alone there are fifty hotels of this vicious +character. Their average earnings, according to a prominent investigator +and reformer, are $600 a night. As we move southward we pass them at every +step, little dreaming of the lives that have been ruined within and the +tragedies that have begun and culminated there. + +The part of the South side in which we have entered was at one time a +fashionable neighborhood of wealthy and respectable residents. The Vice +Trust drove them away by its encroachments. Today those same buildings are +tenanted by lost women, living there and carrying on their nefarious trade +in the district but a short distance away. + +From Twentieth street south on Michigan avenue, in sections, and in Wabash +avenue and State street, vice reigns openly and supreme. There is no +pretense at respectability. Vice has thrown off its masks and flaunts its +hideousness, its diseases and its crimes in our faces. + +It is the Borderland of Hell,--it is the city's death-spot. Similar +borderlands are found on the West and North sides. + +As you look farther south you can count the electric signs flaring over +the haunts of vice--they spell saloon, cafe or hotel. They run into the +hundreds. + +The interiors of these cafes are similar to the loop cafe we have +described, stripped of its air of hidden sin. Here sin stalks about as the +fearless master. + +The woman who a year ago reveled in the pleasures of a night at some +fashionable restaurant with a "friend" may be found drunk and maudlin, +vulgarly and cheaply clothed, dropping "dope" into her glass of whiskey to +revive her tired brain and body to attract another victim and stave off +the wolf of starvation a little while longer. + +These are the "hangouts" of the women who are going down and down. They +have ceased to attempt to appear respectable; they have tired of hiding +their shame and infamy; they have torn off the mask and their faces peer +leeringly at you and their blue-colored lips seem to cry out in hellish +abandon: + +"I am a damned, lost creature. I sold my birthright. I bartered the body +my good mother gave me. I drank to the last lees the glass and I am +accursed. Death has placed his seal upon me and I am struggling to cheat +him of a few days longer. Life, life, more life!" + +Here women smoke cigarettes openly, embrace the men they are with, expose +their limbs in licentious manner to attract prospective customers. Here a +sign is made, and a half drunken waiter brings a half crazed creature +sitting alone in the shadows of a pillar, a white powder, which she +snuffs. That is cocaine. + +A majority of the women who live in and about the levee districts of the +city, are the slaves of the opium, cocaine and morphine habit, and +fourteen per cent, according to a conservative estimate, are yearly sent +to the state insane institutions as hopeless victims of drugs. + +In the "near-levee" cafes we come across a vice-creature, whose type we +have not yet encountered in our night tour. + +Watch that young man, dressed in a stylish, brown suit of clothes, who is +talking to the painted unfortunate beside him. His voice rises as he +shakes his finger at her. Her hand trembles as she reaches down in her +stocking. He curses her and tells her to hurry. Then she gives him a +number of bills. + +"Damn you, you cheap cur; have you quit hustling or have you another man?" +he yells at her above the jarring music of a tin-pan piano and the +cigarette voice singing to it. + +"Get out on the street and get some business!" he says to her hoarsely, +striking her across the face. + +Pale and trembling the pitiful creature rises and hurries out into the +street to search for more prey. + +That man is the woman's "cadet." That is the more polite word for the old +word "pimp." That is her master:--the man who takes from her the infamous +earnings of her body. + +Lower than the murderer, in the moral scale, are these debased creatures. +They are men stripped of every instinct of honor, lost to every sense of +shame. They are the lowest form of the human parasite. + +In the borderland of the levee they live, breathe, eat and drink off the +earnings of thousands of depraved women. From the earnings of their slaves +they pay the police to grant their women immunity from prosecution. + +These men are also termed "macks." The name means nothing; it is the +character of its bearing that is the horrible fact. + +In the South side levee district, including the places that encircle the +open houses of prostitution, there are 800 of these low vile creatures. We +are but describing one of the levees of the city. Conditions are similar +in the others. + +We have seen them in the notorious cafes of the South side but they exist +in swarms within the levee zone proper. + +The hours are swiftly passing and our trip is by no means over. Let us +leave the haunts we have just visited. + +Let us go down to one lower level of crime and vice. We have reached +Twenty-second street and Wabash avenue and we stand on the edge of the +Great White Ulcer. + + +ANTE ROOMS OF HELL. + +Let us follow the crowd of men and women into that large building on +Twenty-second street. + +A novel sight greets us as we enter. Our hats and coats are checked and we +walk out from behind a mirror used as a screen into a large hall on the +floor of which several hundred couples are dancing to the strains of an +orchestra in a balcony above. + +Some of the faces which we saw earlier in the evening within the loop +district have also "come south," as the expression is. They are here to +revel until dawn. There is no letup until the bright sun drives vice +blinking and blinded back into its holes. + +Every type of woman, from the woman who is simply "slumming" to the most +depraved and degenerate creature can be seen in this notorious levee dance +hall. As the music dies down, the couples with unsteady steps, caused by +the whirling about the floor and the drinks which have been freely +imbibed, seek rest at the dirty, wet chairs and tables which encompass the +room. Drinks are served in profusion, regardless of the state of inebriety +of the patrons and regardless of the one o'clock closing law, which the +police declare is in effect. + +Women, rendered senseless by drink, are dragged from the place nightly and +carted away--God knows where! + +Let us get away from the reeking atmosphere, from the smell of stale beer +and sickly, perspiring women. + +Before we enter the biggest cesspool of all, let us stop at Buxbaum's +Cafe at Twenty-second and State streets,--the most notorious outside-levee +dive in the city of Chicago. + +Its habitues, with few exceptions, are the overflow, the outcasts of the +levee, or the women who seek a few moments of so-called relaxation from +their labors of sin. + +All night this place reeks with infamy; all night orgies impossible to +portray are carried on; all night the saturnalia of vice wrings the blood +from women's hearts and crushes life in its ever grinding mill. + +South of the street where we have stopped, the cafes continue. Again they +take on an air of respectability and trap the young and innocent girls and +with hands dripping with blood the vampires of vice push them on and on, +until they reach the point where we have stopped. + +We are on the shores of a Lake of Infamy. The tributaries flow from the +north, the south and the west, coursing through every section of the city, +sweeping their victims in a surging current, without hope of rescue to the +waters, whose eddies close forever over the drowned. The cafes and +disorderly saloons and dance halls are the traps at the beginning of the +avenues of vice. They are the feeders to the infamous hotels. The chain +has no missing link. The Vice Trust has made it in perfect manner. + +We are standing on the shores of a lake--that lake is one of the +"redlight" districts of Chicago. + +[Illustration: EAT, DRINK AND BE MERRY ... AND TOMORROW? + +By Courtesy of The Chicago Daily Journal.] + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +The "Redlight" District. + +The "Redlight" District--Houses of Infamy--The Life of a Prostitute--The +Blood Price--Hidden Tragedies--The Polluted Grave. + + +Chicago possesses four "redlight" districts: one on the South side, one on +the West side, one on the North side and the Strand of South Chicago. + +For the sake of description we have taken the one situated on the South +side,--running from Eighteenth street on the north to Twenty-second street +on the south, and from Wabash avenue on the east to Armour avenue on the +west. + +It came into existence in 1905 when Mayor Carter H. Harrison, the present +city executive, cleaned out old Custom House place, Plymouth court and +South Clark street, the nest of vice, bounding the south end of the +commercial district. + +It established a new territory and flourishes as prosperously today as it +did in its old haunts. + +Within the zone described 250 houses of ill fame house the unfortunate +women, lure men of all conditions in life, grow rich on sin and on the +practice of every form of bestial degeneracy. + +[Illustration: SUGGESTED BY A PROMINENT NEWS STORY OF THE MOMENT + +By Courtesy of The Chicago Daily Journal.] + +There are 2,000 enslaved, scarlet women in these infectious prisons! + +They are of every nation in the world! + +They are young girls in their teens; women in mature years and hags who +have outlived their usefulness to the god of lust! + +There is an army of 500 to 800 human vultures--"cadets" who live within +this district, prodding these women on in the paths of evil! + +There are ramshackle hell-holes that are falling to pieces where diseased, +broken-down, forgotten women dispense deadly toxins to their customers for +fifty cents! + +There are "one dollar," "two dollar," "three dollar," "five dollar" and +"ten dollar" houses. Those are the prices for some mother's precious +darling! Man buys and woman sells. + +There are holes of infamy where white and colored persons mix and sin +together. + +There are places where the sins that wiped Sodom and Gomorrah out of +existence are practiced nightly. + +There are places where prostitutes outrival in the forms of obscene acting +anything to be found in the Monmartre and other deadly places within the +confines of Paris. + +There are places of material filth, and uncleanliness and there are places +where thousands of dollars have been spent to make sepulchres appear as +places of delight and pleasure. + +Think of it! + +Two thousand women on the slave block of lust sold to the thousands of +bidders nightly, in this small district! + +Lust, vice, crime and graft are the deities of Chicago's "redlight" +districts. + +The "redlight" district gets its name because of the lurid, crimson signs +that hang above its entrances. The name "redlight" should signify a +burning, blazing warning to every man and woman who is tempted to set his +foot or hers on the crime-reeking thresholds! + +Let us enter one of the houses and study the interior and the type of the +prostitutes corralled within. + +The swinging doors admit us. As we appear, a dozen girls or women rush at +us like a flock of vultures, ravenous, hungering. + +They use terms of meaningless endearment, fight among themselves for the +possible prey, coax us to purchase a bottle of beer or whiskey or a mixed +drink. They attempt to embrace us, to kiss us to arouse latent passions, +whose outburst means half the purchase price to them and half to the owner +of the place. + +A "professor," half-crazed by drugs and drink, thumps the latest airs on a +piano, or a mechanical instrument furnishes the noise. You are asked to +give a dime to the "professor" and you do. + +You are talking to a frail, blue-eyed, blonde girl. Across the room a +brunette, a red-haired girl and a girl with raven black hair and sparkling +eyes watch you, wondering as to the ultimate success of the woman who +captured you. + + +THE QUESTIONS UNANSWERED. + +Where do these thousands of women come from? + +What are their varied pasts? + +Who are their mothers and fathers? + +What strange circumstances brought them here? + +Who is accountable to God for this wholesale slaughter in women's souls? + +Those are questions that come to the mind when one enters any den of +infamy in any of the four "redlight" districts of Chicago. + +Every one of these questions has a thousand answers. The solutions to +these social problems are as numerous as the women who create the +problems. + +These women come from every city in the United States, from the farm +houses of God-fearing farmers, from the gabled cottage of little country +towns, from the hovels of the poor of the great city and from the palaces +of the rich of the same city. + +They come from across the great ocean:--from England, Scotland, Ireland, +France, Germany, Italy, Austria and every nation you can name. + +Thirty-three per cent of the women in the "redlight" districts of Chicago +are the victims of the most pernicious vice system known to history. They +are the victims of the much-talked of and much-discussed White Slave +Traffic. + +It is not our purpose in this chapter to treat of this cancerous, moral +growth. It is of such vital importance in a story of crime and vice and +graft that we will dissect and analyze it in a distinct chapter. We are +obliged for the sake of our narrative to name it here. + +This portion of the vice population is the women who have been lured by a +thousand satanic means to a life of shame and sin, and once steeped in the +atmosphere give up all hope or attempt to regain a lost social standing, a +new moral conscience or a clean body. + + +THE FEEDERS OF THE "REDLIGHT" DISTRICTS. + +The other portion of this crime colony reach the centers of vice through +the thousands of channels which serve such purposes in the city of +Chicago. + +We have spoken of the cafe evil, the dance hall, the cheap theater and the +vicious hotel. These are the major channels. Yearly, hundreds of girls go +from one grade of badness to a lower, until there is nothing left but the +house of ill fame in which to hide their shame, feed their passions and +nourish their broken-down bodies. + +The girl clerk in the department store tires of trying to live on her six +dollars a week salary; grows envious of the women who have pretty clothes +and costly jewelry, and sets about to sell her young body to buy the +luxuries of life. The end is inevitably the house of prostitution. + +Or it may be, that some depraved man, possibly her employer, lusts for her +purity and with threats of discharge coerces her into sin. She never +stops, it is a succession of falls to the last level of degradation. + +Another, three years ago may have visited a Bohemian cafe to see the +sights and taste the wine. She goes back again and again. Beyond her +confines are the forbidden sins, luring and coaxing. She will taste of +them, promising herself that she will go back to her former life and never +venture into the pathways of sin again. The step is taken and the barrier +erects itself behind her--she can never come back. Gradually she drifts +down to the hell haunts and with recklessness as to the future, becomes an +inmate of a dive. + +There is no standing still in any phase of life--good or evil. There is no +stationary point in vice. The beginnings are eternally different; the +endings of the Scarlet Women are eternally the same. + +These women just described, can scarcely be called White Slaves in the +proper sense of that term. They are "slaves," but they brought the slavery +upon themselves. + +The Summer excursions on the lake in large pleasure boats where vice can +revel without fear and where young boys and girls without any restraint +fall into sins that lead to terrible social evils, are another primary +"feeder" for the "redlight" districts. The city asleep does not realize +the fact that the "moonlight" excursions on the waters of Lake Michigan +start a hundred girls on the road to ruin and the prostitute's grave in +one night! + +And this is the first chapter of the women dressed in scarlet tonight. + +Above these women like an ominous shadow is Man and His Lust! Man and his +insatiable passions! Man who reckons not the destruction he sows about +him, the homes he robs of precious ones, the broken-hearted mothers and +fathers sent to an early grave because he inoculated some innocent child +with his venom. + +To fit our descriptions, somewhere, you can find in the "redlight" +districts a woman who will stand up and say: + +"That is my story." + +In one night in the South side "redlight" district in a visit to eight +houses, twenty-one girls were found who stated that soulless men, who made +capital of their ignorance of the world and its ways, robbed them of their +virtue while they were under the influence of their first drink, or stole +their virginity after they had promised to marry them. + + +THE DAILY LIFE OF A PROSTITUTE. + +But to return to the scarlet woman as she is today. Here is the routine +life of the prostitute in the levee district: + +The women in a house rise about two o'clock in the afternoon, dress and +eat their breakfast. + +They are then sent by the "landlady" or keeper of the house to the +parlors, to wait for prospective customers. + +When a customer comes in he is "sized up." If he appears to be a spender +and buys plenty of drinks, courtesy is extended to him and an effort made +to keep him as long as his money lasts. If he is "a dead one" he is forced +to pay his price and depart as speedily as possible. + +These women entertain as many as thirty men in one night. That is the +record at least, that one girl declared she was forced to maintain. + +At six o'clock, or near that hour, supper is served to these women; a +number of them in a house eat while the others stay "on watch." + +Then the evening's work begins. By midnight a greater part of these lost +souls are maudlin drunk. + +Their work continues until four o'clock in the morning when they are +allowed to seek rest. + +Even then the evil does not sleep. There is the "dog watch." One or two +girls face a day of horror. They are kept ready for the lax hours of +business. + +Many of these women do not live in the houses. They live in the flats +bordering on the "redlight" districts. + + +THE SLAVES OF THE "CADETS." + +Ninety per cent of these open prostitutes have "cadets." These men +exercise the power of tyrants over them, urging them on to death, beating +them brutally when their tired out bodies drop from exhaustion, and +stealing their bodily earnings from them. + +These women cannot purchase a single article without the consent of the +landlady. Two thirds of them have the bondage of debt hanging above them +and keeping them prisoners. The landlady buys their clothes and charges +them exorbitant prices and they are obliged to pay without a murmur. + +These conditions exist in the cheapest and the most expensive houses in +the levee districts. There is an air of luxury about the big houses but +the scarlet prisoners within are all the same, all slaves, all subjects of +the great Vice Trust. + +The women in the poorer houses have white men for "cadets." In the higher +priced places, we find that the women are in the bondage of negro +"cadets." + +And all this infamy, seething, boiling and emitting its stench in the +center of the city of Chicago! + +Standing out among the small hovels in the South side vice district are +several large and pretentious ones, whose interior furnishings are valued +at hundreds of thousands of dollars. + + +BIG PALACES OF VICE. + +The Everleigh Club, at Twenty-second and Dearborn streets, the richest and +most gorgeously furnished house of prostitution in the United States, is a +notable example. Another one is Georgie Spencer's. + +Honesty never cemented a single stone in the building. It was built and +furnished out of the blood and flesh dollars of women. Its foundations +reach down to hell and each chamber with its beautiful settings is filled +with the ghosts of women who suffered untold agonies of mind and body to +make it attractive to victims of the women who followed them. Thousands of +dollars are harvested nightly there. Wealthy prominent men frequent this +place. + +Immorality is hideous; but there crimes are committed against nature that +make men revolt at the thoughts of them, down in those pest holes. In the +slang of the levee, it is called "putting on a show." + +It is bad enough to be obliged through binding circumstances to sell one's +virtue, but think of the horror, the humiliation, the degradation of +committing acts for the sake of drunken, orgy-loving men that even the +animal nature within us rebels against. + +That is a hasty sketch of the "redlight" life as the visitor sees it. +There is still another phase, a deeper phase, a commercial phase, a graft +phase, and of that we shall speak later as it is our intention to show why +these conditions exist without hindrance from the police and how this +mighty army of Satan strives, struggles and dies for the earthly lords of +hell. + +There is no intention here to paint a lurid picture of Chicago's ulcer +spots that might arouse passions and do evil. + +We are telling of the Great Curse that we may help destroy it. We have +said that the wiping out of the prostitute will not cure the malady and we +are soon to prove it. We have told of vice that we may show how it serves +its masters. + + +THE HIDDEN TRAGEDIES. + +Who can depict the crying, aching hearts of these lost women of the +levees? + +Who can tell of the agonies undergone in their short existences? + +Who can know of the sleepless nights, of the hours of remorse and despair? + +Who can imagine the physical pain of the eating, wasting diseases? + +All the world's wretchedness, sorrow, hunger, thirst and suffering lies +behind the lurid lights of the "redlight" haunts. Behind the paint and +powder is the blue-white color of coming death. + +Every year, a thousand of these women outlive their usefulness to their +brutal masters! This is the record for one city. Authorities say this +record for the country is 60,000! + + +WHAT BECOMES OF THEM? + +We shudder as we answer that question. + +Many of them seek the river as a last resting place and their bodies are +cast ashore to lie in the county morgue a week, and then to be buried in +the paupers' field. + +Many of them go insane and are taken to state institutions where death +soon mercifully comes and wipes out their useless lives. + +Many of them are cast forth from the dens where they have turned their +every drop of blood to gold for their masters, and are picked up dead in +the alleys and streets of the city. + +Some are sent to other cities to die, and leave no reflections on the men +and women that turned them out. + +God has destroyed cities for lesser evils, but Chicago lives on, fattening +on the dead bodies of these victims! + +As the parade of lost women moves slowly to the grave the tributaries pour +more souls into the lake of infamy and there is no place left unfilled! + +No woman going down there knows of the terrible possibilities until it is +too late. That is the secret of vice; its lying lips belch forth the truth +only when its shackles are welded about the limbs of its victims. + +Lust beckons. The eternal woman answers and approaches the poisoned spring +and drinks. The eternal man is there. On and on he leads her, casts her +away when he has tired, and the Vice Trust with its directorate of +powerful politicians, debased men, takes her and reaps its awful profit +from her. + +Vice first: then Graft. Graft formulated in the minds of men: Vice born in +the blood of women. + +Death--dishonored death to the woman. + +Wealth--overflowing wealth to the Grafter. + +We have seen the city in many phases. We have not taken into consideration +the army of women who maintain superficial respectability, who live at +homes, some of them with husbands and children, and who yielding to +temptation are carrying on liaisons. + +They are called "clandestine" women. They may be found in all walks of +life. + +There are, normally estimated, 15,000 women of this type in the city of +Chicago! + +Are you convinced that Chicago is the "wickedest city in the world"? + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +What Will You Bid for This Woman? + +White Slavery--Price of a Body and Soul--Hell's Bondage--The "Cadet" +Master--Death the Penalty--The Trapping of the Prey. + + +Thirty-three per cent of the women fed to the insatiable god of lust in +the "redlight" districts of Chicago are White Slaves! + +Nearly two thousand women, annually, are sold to the highest vice bidders! + +They are procured from every imaginable source and by every imaginable +method. + +Thousands of women drift yearly into a life of prostitution, driven to it +by hunger and want primarily. + +Why then must others be sought out, trapped, brought, bound and tied, +stood on the auction blocks of vice and sold to the thump of the gavel? + +Because the demand is far greater than the supply! + +Hell is always hungry; the taste of blood on the lips of the monster Vice, +drives him mad with desire for more blood; the crushing of bones and the +morsels of white woman's flesh, frenzies him for other bodies! + +More women! more women!--that is the cry. + +It is a difficult problem. The question arises, is it simply a feeding of +men's passions that must be satisfied or is it a desire to make men hunger +and buy because the women are placed in their pathways, so that the vice +lords may reap the harvest? + +We believe the latter is God's truth, or rather the devil's truth! + +Many a man would not be the brute of unrestrained passion that he is, if +his paths were clear of temptations. + +The temptations are placed, the White Slaves are purchased to make gold +and silver for the wretches who create, nourish and commercialize vice. + +It isn't vice that is robbing homes of innocent girls each year. It is the +Commerce and Traffic of Sin. + +The White Slave Trust is a perfect organization existing in the city of +Chicago today. + +Its agents procure the flesh and blood product from every source, its +agents peddle the human article, from house of ill fame to house of ill +fame; sell it, take the profit and divide with the members of an infamous +combine. + + +THE TRAPPING OF THE PREY. + +There are 150 professional procurers or "buyers" for the White Slave +corporation! + +There are at least 300 more men who at times act as procurers and at other +times as "cadets." + +There are thousands of other men in every walk of life who are constantly +on the lookout for a possible victim for whose sale they reap a small +return in bloodstained dollars. + +The professional procurer, hired by the members of this trust; the owners +of houses of prostitution or men whose business depends on the prosperity +of places of ill fame--play on the three inherent characteristics of every +woman's heart-- + +Ambition, vanity and love! + +By attacking the points of weakness they trap their victims. + +Out in the country town they dazzle the fresh, pretty creatures by stories +of the pleasures and delights of life in the big city, by making love to +innocent children, by depriving them of their sacred chastity. + +In the city they appeal to their vanity: they tell them they are +beautiful, loveable; they promise them clothes and jewelry, and again the +woman falls. + +Every form of amusement, from the nickel theaters to the wine rooms, is +used to entice the prey. + +Outside the professional procurer, the city is infested with men who make +the business a side issue. + +The extra procurers are found in the department stores, in the dance +halls, in the nickel theaters and penny arcades, in the waiting rooms of +the railroad stations, on the lake boats, at excursions, at rest rooms, at +employment agencies, theatrical agencies, factories, business offices, and +a hundred other places where girls are employed at meager salaries. + +AND ALL THIS TO FILL THE ROTTEN COFFERS OF THE VICE TRUST! + + +PRICE OF ONE BODY, ONE HEART, ONE SOUL. + +In 1860 one black woman was sold for $25! + +In 1860 one black woman was sold for $500! + +You shudder when you remember those times! + +In 1911, in the city of Chicago, one white woman is sold for $25. + +In 1911, in the same city, one white woman is sold for $500! + +Slavery succeeded by slavery, or worse than slavery! + + +THE TRAFFIC OF WHITE SLAVERY! + +After a victim is procured, the next step on the part of the perfidious +combine is to dispose of her to the highest bidder. + +Absolute examples of women-selling and the prices paid by resort keepers +for the women purchased are in the hands of the federal government. Uncle +Sam does not tolerate fiction. That is why we know this is the truth. + +Investigation has shown that the prices for women sold into bondage of +crime run from $25 to $500. + +That scale is sliding and depends on the qualities, mostly physical, of +the woman, and the immediate demands of the purchaser. + +A girl taken by a procurer who has dazzled her by his insidious lies, and +who is not of a type that would attract men of wealth or particular +tastes, can be bought by a keeper of a house of ill fame from the agents +of the White Slave Trust for the inhuman price of $25. + +If the girl is ruddy with the glow of health, well-formed of limb and +innocent of deep crime--the price soars. + +Cases have been cited by ministers and reformers within the past year, +where keepers of high-priced houses in the levee districts have paid +outright, $500 to the White Slave combine's agents for girls whose purity +has only been defiled by the procurer himself, and whose bodies are +capable of bringing their masters thousands of dollars within the year. + +These are the treasure-slaves of the hell-hounds! + +It is of standing record, according to an investigator into the flesh +traffic, that one procurer in one trip into the country districts of +Illinois, trapped eight girls and sold them at prices ranging from $40 to +$350! + +One of these girls was a virgin. She was drugged by the procurer and awoke +the next morning to find that she was a prisoner in a house of ill fame. +She had been sold while robbed of her senses. She had been outraged while +unconscious. The landlady approached her the next morning with an air of +good fellowship, told of the benefits of the new life, promised her +beautiful gowns and jewelry before night and attempted to make her forget +the real, sweet and pure things of life which had been so mercilessly +stolen from her. + +This is the story of but one out of thousands. + + +$200,000 ANNUAL WHITE SLAVE PRICE. + +We have said there are 2,000 White Slaves sold every year. + +The average price is $100 a girl, according to a well known federal +official, who has investigated and prosecuted several hundred cases of +White Slavery. + +That makes the aggregate purchase price of White Slaves in Chicago +annually, $200,000! + +This same official declared that the South side levee district contributes +$60,000 a year to the White Slave Trust for new victims. + +The balance is paid by the resort keepers of the other districts of vice +and by keepers of the "houses of call"--the places where men of wealth and +bestial perversion seek for virgins on whom to wreak the fury of abandoned +passions! + +Here is a terrible example of the procuring of an innocent girl for the +perversion of a wealthy man. + +Detectives investigating the conduct of a man implicated in graft charges +affecting the high personnel of a big railroad, discovered that at a +Michigan avenue "house of call" a tender and unsullied virgin procured by +White Slave agents, was given into his lust-stained hands for desecration +weekly! + +That same man, the investigation showed, paid as high as $500 for an +undefiled child! + +He even went so far as to go outside of the city, in search of purity and +goodness to be sacrificed in the fires of his degenerate passions. + + +THE SHACKLES OF THE WHITE SLAVE. + +Many a girl after a month of horror, revolts against the conditions +confronting her; the terrors in her dreams of the future fill her soul +with fear and she yearns for freedom once again. + +The dreams, which the stories told her by the procurer aroused, have never +materialized; she is as poor as she was before she was trapped into the +life of shame; she is broken in spirit and in health. + +Can she walk out a free woman? + +No. She is a White Slave; the slavery is not just one of selling and +purchasing; it is one of permanent bondage in ninety cases out of one +hundred. + +The man who trapped her has become her "cadet." He is her "guardian" for +her master. His word is law. She is a slave forever. She is treated +brutally if she makes serious attempts at escape; she is even locked in a +room and in some instances women have been tied hands and feet to +bedposts. + +She is at times drugged in order to make her forget her misery and her +plans of escape. Every possible precaution is taken to prevent her release +from bondage. + +Her procurer in dull times, may take her from one house and resell her for +a new price. She is thus bartered as a dead commodity instead of a woman +of flesh and blood. + +There is nothing in human history that is so filled with horror as this. +There is no deeper stain on the annals of this nation than the crimson +stain of White Slavery. + +It is the evil that cries daily to Heaven for vengeance. Thousands of +mothers lift their trembling arms and cry out to God to kill the monster +that has eaten their daughters. + +And this White Slave Trust, taking the money from these ill-fated women, +turns part of its profits over to the magnates of the great Vice +Trust,--to men who stand high in the world of politics, to men to whom we +intrust the task of making our laws and administering them! + +The law stands without and makes no effort to stem the tide of infamous +traffic in women. Political leaders listen to the voice of a people's +protest, sham a "clean-up" and then send forth the word to the vice +lieutenants to "lay low" for a short time. Within a few weeks, the monster +creeps from his hiding place and feasts ravenously on the victims piled up +and waiting for him. + +We have shown the price of these pitiful victims of a vice system. + +We are now ready to show how every form of vice in which woman stands as +the central figure is protected by the police department at the command of +the political lords and their friends, in order that they may derive a +vast income from the human sacrifice. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +Vice and Graft. + +Police Collectors--The Prostitute's Graft Price--The Kimona Trust--Laundry +Trust--The Woman and the "Cadet"--Terrible Examples--To the Woman: +Death--How About Your Daughter? + + +From the enemies of moral progress and from those who find it to their +personal interest to exploit the shame of women and the crimes of men, the +cry has been raised:-- + +Vice, segregated and otherwise, is absolutely essential in a large city. +Passions must be given an outlet; lusts must be allowed to exhaust +themselves. + +That view, in the face of earnest study of the subject, is a pernicious +fallacy. + +Take away from man the open temptation; cleanse his paths of the thousand +lures to evil; bar his coming in contact with the lost woman as far as it +is possible and you will minimize vice to a marvelous degree. + +It is on the fallacy and sophistry of the theory that passions of men must +be satisfied, that Chicago today carries on its terrible exploitation of +vice. + +It is on that theory that the Vice Trust has built its superstructure, +created its gigantic business, bartered its thousands of women for +flesh-prices and harvested millions of dollars annually. + +Vice exists under the conditions which we have depicted, because the Vice +Trust--the all powerful coterie of police and politicians,--wish it. + +The would-be municipal leaders, are the powers behind the city's ignominy +and shame! + +Every evil that cries out in the big city, every crime that is committed +in the day or in the night, every vice that is practiced to the ruin of +human souls and bodies, does so because the Vice Trust commands it, +because the Vice Trust waits for its monstrous returns from them. + +Chicago's four levee districts with the hundreds of resorts and the +thousands of unfortunate inmates, furnish a tremendous capital to their +owners, but the owners have a lease of vice existence from the political +powers behind and above them, simply because these men and women pour into +their coffers a constant stream of graft money. + +The saloon evil, the cafe evil, the hotel, the dance hall, obscene theater +evil, the "house of call," "flat" and White Slave evil, pay a tribute of +existence to the agents of the big alliance who have the political power +to crush them out of existence if they so desired. + +That is why we stand on the statement that if the CORRUPT POLITICIANS and +their slaves and corrupt police officials were stripped of their power and +sent to the penitentiary, Chicago could swiftly purge herself and become +the City Beautiful in the most ideal meaning of the term. + + +THE TRIUMVIRATE. + +The evil lies today in the alliance between Vice, Police and the +Politician! + +The sore festers so that the matter running from it may be turned into +dollars and cents by men we elect at the polls each election! + +It is our purpose in this chapter to show in cold, conservative figures, +just the price that vice pays to its political masters to live; just the +gold that is beaten from women's bodies so that the political bosses can +be given their share and the slave masters of prostitutes can still make a +profit. + +We shall show that from every possible channel graft is derived. We shall +show that to the big powers goes the big share; to their friends go +smaller amounts, so that the pie is so divided that a tempting morsel is +cut for all the favored few. + + +PRICE OF PROTECTING VICE. + +"Give me so much gold from the earnings of defiled women and we will give +you so much protection, so much liberty and so many privileges," offers +the directorate of the Vice Trust. + +That protection money is counted out: so much per woman, so much per sin, +so much per vice. + +The Vice Trust of the grafting directorate accepts the money and vice +lives and flourishes. + +The purchased souls of policemen, ready to do the bidding of the graft +masters, are the agents through which this protective power is dispensed, +in the primary matter of existence. + +Graft for protection is the vital graft and the primary one. Policemen +collect this themselves and turn it over to their superior officers. Their +superior officers in turn take out their percentage for the damnable work +and pass the bulk on to "men higher up." + +The graft for police protection is not always paid to policemen. High +officials, fearing that their hand may show in corrupt and incriminating +transactions, hire private and debased citizens to carry on this +pernicious work of collecting from the resort keepers and from those whose +business depends on the resorts. + +That is the graft exacted for the simple existence of prostitution and the +carrying on of the trade in women's bodies. + +The more the earnings of the house of ill fame, the higher the value of +the women enslaved, the more liberty granted to make hellish profits, the +greater the protective graft. + +As a corroboration of our flat statement we have scores of men of +prominence in every walk of life who have first-hand knowledge of the +existence of this alliance of vice and graft. + +Recently, an attorney whose business takes him into the "redlight" +district on the South side, made the following statement in a Chicago +daily paper: + +"There is one police official who should be punished for his activity in +collecting tribute for the protection he dispenses to levee resort +keepers. He is a smooth article, however, and he goes straight to +headquarters in a fine show of indignation whenever anyone makes any +charges against him. + +"My business takes me into the district and I know that there is a regular +tax levied on these people. It all depends on the size of the +establishment and the amount of business done. The collecting is done by +plain clothes men who turn it over to a police official and he takes or +sends it to a higher official and after he takes out his share the balance +goes to a city official. I've had that told me so many times by so many +different persons, some of them policemen, that I know it is true. + +"But you couldn't get a person in the district to talk; they are run out +of the district as soon as they threaten trouble." + +The man who made the above statement is one of the most prominent +attorneys in Chicago. He is simply corroborating our charge of the +existence of the practice of protection. + +The high city official to whom the money goes and to whom he refers is one +of the organizers of the great Vice and Graft Trust; a man who has made +thousands of dollars by corrupting the power placed in his hands, and who +today continues in the face of reform movements, to instruct his +sycophantic police officials to allow vice to flourish just as long as it +pours its gold into his coffers. + +[Illustration: THE DRUGGED CONSCIENCE. + +Copyrighted 1910 by The Midnight Mission. + +Used by permission of owners of copyright. + +Steeped in iniquity.--Blind to his sin.--One step from eternal ruin.] + +As an instance that vice is shut down when it fails to make its tribute, +we quote the following story from a well known criminal lawyer. It is +astonishing in its features and in its revelations. This man said:-- + +"I was obliged in the course of my professional duties while searching for +a woman important to a case at hand to visit the Empire Hotel on Wabash +avenue. A week before my visit I had read that the police had raided the +hotel and arrested several girls who lived there. These girls were not +prosecuted and were discharged the morning after their arrest. The matter +was fresh in my mind when I made my visit. I questioned the proprietress +of the hotel as to the recent raid, and she smiled at me and said: + +"'Oh, we have to stand for these police gags. You see we weren't paying +protection money and they simply raided us as a warning. We are running +full blast now and without any police interference, because we are coming +across every week with our protection price.'" + +The protection money is gathered principally in the levee districts but it +also comes from every other place in the city where vice is made a +business. + +The protection money that is exacted from the keeper of the brothel is +exacted from the keeper of the hotel, cafe, saloon and other species of +places of infamy. + +Here is another example of the truth of the story of protective graft. + +An investigator for the Vice Commission corroborates our own +investigation. + +This investigator witnessed the following scene and conversation. + +A man who had remained in a South side levee resort all night, complained +to the police the next day that he had been robbed of fifty dollars by one +of the inmates. + +Accompanied by two detectives from the Twenty-second street police +station, the man went to the house. + +The landlady, when she heard his charge, became angry and while the +investigator listened made this remark: + +"That man never possessed fifty dollars in his life. It's a frame up. Why +are you police bothering me? Are you looking for more money? What do you +want? I paid my protection money two days ago." + +We will show the price exacted from the prostitute's master in order that +she may exist as a creature of vice and sell every drop of blood in her +body to make more money. + + +FIGURES THAT FREEZE THE BLOOD. + +In an investigation that took in the cases of 500 prostitutes it was found +that their average earnings were $100 a week. + +We are aiming to be conservative. Let us place the average earnings at +forty dollars a week, as a basis for figuring out some astounding results. + +There are 5,000 outright prostitutes in the city of Chicago. Five thousand +women making forty dollars a week will make $200,000 a week. + +Five thousand women at forty dollars a week earn in one year-- + +$10,400,000! + +Is it conceivable? Is it possible? + +Tortured bodies of women yielding that gigantic income! + +These are the women who live in the levee resorts, the inmates of flats +and hotels and the slaves of the cafe owners. + +Those women who live within houses whose owners pay protection for their +inmates, give up half of the weekly earnings to the "madam." + +Those women who are known as "hustlers" in the slang phrase, give fifty +per cent of their earnings to the police for individual protection. + +No matter how and where that protection money is paid, it eventually +percolates through the hands of the police or agents to the members of the +Vice Trust. + +The women of the street who frequent the hotels with their victims, pass +their protection money to the hotel owners. They act in furthering +protection, in the same capacity as do the keepers of the houses of ill +fame for their victims. + +The police trail these girls to the favorite hotel and then compel the +hotel men to collect from the women. + + +POLICE PRICE FOR THE SCARLET WOMAN. + +Investigation again discloses a terrible condition of things. + +We are going to show what these unfortunate women pay to exist:--the +amount of money they pay the police for protection and the money that is +passed on. + +The prices exacted from a levee house by the police or other agents of the +Vice Trust for police protection, varies according to the liberties given +these slaves. + +From investigation of a thorough character it is safe to say that the +average protection price paid per woman in Chicago is twenty dollars a +month! + +Figuring on the basis of 5,000 women who are prostitutes in the accepted +sense of the term, this means a payment of $1,200,000 in protection money +a year. + +In support of our monthly protective price of twenty dollars, we quote the +following from a woman, for twenty years the owner of a big house of +prostitution in Chicago and now a married and reformed member of the best +society of Cedar Rapids, Ia. This woman in speaking of the question of +protection money, said: + +"During my experience of twenty years as the keeper of a Chicago resort, +900 girls passed through my hands. The protection prices I paid depended +largely on the profits that the girls made. I had as many as forty-five +girls in my establishment at once. The girls got half of their earnings +and I got the other half. From my part I paid my protection money. I paid +from fifteen to thirty-five dollars for each girl to the police. The +average for all the girls was twenty dollars a month for each girl I kept. +I will not give the names of the police or the collectors." + +When prominent investigators were searching for facts to use in a crusade +against the sale of liquor without a license, they visited the Everleigh +Club on Dearborn street. + +Minnie Everleigh, one of the two women who own that notorious resort, made +the following statement, showing the existence of police protection: + +"I would be perfectly willing to pay a liquor license of $1,000 a year. I +would like to see the entire business legalized. I would pay the price +legally demanded. + +"As it is today, someone permits us to conduct our establishment. I am +paying in other ways." + +The payment which that dive keeper made "in other ways" was the protection +money and a dozen allied forms of graft to the Vice Trust through its +"lieutenants." + + +GRAFTS THAT FEED ON FLESH AND BLOOD. + +The protection graft is the beginning of the great graft system. It is +created to be used as a foundation for a thousand and one other sources of +graft from sin and vice. + +It has been shown that the woman either personally or through the woman or +man to whom she is sold or has sold herself offers the first tribute to +the Vice Trust and pays for a lease on her demoralizing and destructive +life. + +Now that she has paid her protective graft, she is to be fleeced by the +great trust with its political leaders, out of the remaining part of her +earnings. + +The women in the resorts are the greatest victims of the "consequential +graft." + +Take for instance, the woman inmate of a house who is in need of clothes +and other necessities and watch the way the Vice Trust robs her over and +over again. + +The average earnings of a woman was placed at forty dollars. Of that +twenty dollars was turned over to the resort keeper. That leaves an +average of twenty dollars weekly to a woman. That is $1,000 a year. + +Of this amount these women are compelled to spend $500 yearly. That leaves +them but $500. Even that succumbs to a mere nominal figure when graft has +finally stopped feasting on it. + + +THE KIMONA TRUST. + +There is a subsidiary trust of the Vice Trust which robs the 2,000 inmates +of resorts in the city. + +That combine is called the Kimona Trust. It is composed of certain +clothing makers who sell exclusively to the inmates of the houses of +prostitution. It received its name from the fact that the prostitutes buy +and wear light house apparel, consisting of kimonas, wrappers, flimsy +gowns and gaudy lingerie. + +The operation of this trust, the extent of its graft and the way that +graft is divided, with its portion going to the vice lords is interesting +and not well known. + +Take for instance, the girl who is in need of a kimona. Here is a truthful +story from a girl in an Armour avenue resort as to the way she was +victimized by the kimona grafters. Thousands of others could tell the same +story. + +"I had not been in the resort very long," said the girl to the +investigator, "when I needed some clothes. I told the 'madam' and she said +the agent of a clothing house would call within a few days. I wanted to go +out and purchase the things where I desired, but she told me she had to +see that her girls got them from a certain man. + +"The man came and I made my selections from a number of articles of +apparel which he displayed. I had worked in a department store before I +entered upon this life and I knew the value of clothes. + +"I was compelled to pay $15 for a kimona which I could have purchased for +$3 at any department store. I paid $120 for a hat with plumes on that was +worth only $30. I was forced to give up $67 for a dress whose value I knew +could not have been more than $25. + +"The man then showed me some jewelry which he had with him and the keeper +told me I should get some to make myself look more attractive. + +"He showed me some cheap rings and bracelets and earrings. I paid $20 for +a bracelet, some neck beads and a ring which were not worth any more than +$4. They fell to pieces a short time later." + +These girls, according to their own stories are obliged to pay two dollars +for a pair of stockings that are not worth more than fifty cents. + +That is the system of the Kimona Trust! + +Increased value on articles of clothing sold the inmates is about the same +in every instance. + +Three hundred per cent excess profit is the taxation made by the agents of +the kimona trust! + +The purchase prices on all things are so increased as to make that +enormous profit. + +There are 2,000 women buying clothes at a yearly expenditure, or rather +robbery, of $500. + +That means $1,000,000 spent by these poor, dying, unfortunates yearly to +feed the avaricious grafters! + +That enormous sum is spent for materials that are worth only one fourth of +that value. + +That means that the Kimona Trust brings an annual harvest of graft of +$750,000! + +The figures are so startling as to strike one dumb with horror, yet they +are as true as the annual statement of the earnings and capital of a +reliable bank. + +The Kimona Trust agents are satisfied to make the normal profit on the +goods as if they were sold at their legitimate price. They raise the price +and create the graft in return for the favor of having a big business with +no competition. + +The $750,000 is then split up. To the police undoubtedly a small share +goes for their general work in the district, the keepers get a share for +compelling the girls to buy and the big bulk goes to the directors of the +Vice Trust. + + +THE LAUNDRY TRUST. + +The Kimona Trust has not eaten to the last bill in the purse of the vice +slave. She still has money left which the Vice Trust must batten on. + +The Kimona Trust has a logical successor, the Laundry Trust. + +This combine proceeds in the same manner as the combine that furnishes +clothing to the 2,000 prostitutes in the houses. + +It proceeds by boosting the prices and robbing its victims. + +In the ordinary laundry service, the laundry man with a cleaning +establishment is satisfied with sixty per cent of the income of a man who +has a private route and brings his collections in clothing to the place. +He is allowed forty per cent for himself and for his wagon. + +In the levee districts the privilege of the laundry business is hard +sought after, but it is limited to a few men. These men pay for the +privilege. They add 100 per cent to their prices for work done, so that +the Vice Trust which grants the favor may reap its profits. + +Speaking conservatively, every girl is obliged to have a laundry bill of +two dollars a week. + +Two thousand girls with an average laundry bill of $2.00 means $4,000 a +week or $208,000 a year! + +The just laundry bill for those poor, fleeced women of sin should be but +$104,000. + +But the Vice Trust must have its toll. That graft of $104,000 is carried +to the under lords and again the capital of the deadly combine is swelled +while its victims starve! + + +THE CRIMINAL DOCTOR. + +Even science has prostituted itself to aid the Vice Trust collect its +tithes from the lost women. + +In the South side "redlight" district about ten physicians who are +graduated from good schools have sold themselves to the lords of vice, +crime and sin. + +These men are employed to examine the women inmates of the houses to see +if they are suffering from diseases of a venereal nature that might sow +the seed of death in thousands of men. + +This practice is also carried on in the other "redlight" districts. + +It is the biggest farce in the whole system. It is a criminal perversion +of science. + +It has to the resort keeper an advertising value. The word is sent forth +that his girls are "healthy," or the man who accompanies her to her room, +sees stuck in a prominent place a certificate signed by a physician +declaring he has examined her and found her free from venereal +afflictions. + +It is a terrible and criminal deception. + +Those physicians are supposed to give each girl a personal, clinical +examination each week. + +That is rarely done. + +For this "examination" these girls are taxed fifty cents a week and given +signed certificates. Often they do not see the physician for months at a +time, yet they receive their certificates. + +The physicians making a living at this terrible exercise of their sacred +profession are slaves of the trust. They sold their manhood to receive the +position. To the trust they give back a large part of the money taken +from these unfortunate victims. + +This graft, is said by those acquainted with the subject, to reach $15,000 +a year! + + +THE PROSTITUTE AND THE BEER GRAFT. + +It has been demonstrated that the graft yielded by prostitution direct is +enormous. It has been shown how the disgraced and fallen women not only +give up a share of the earning from their dying bodies, but also are +compelled to assist in the collection of subsidiary graft. + +But the Vice Trust has not finished with the picking of the bones and the +sucking out of the marrow. There is still more to be taken for the price +of sin and shame and misery. + +The women who have the seeds of death in their bodies must be pushed and +shoved swiftly to their dishonored graves. As they go they must yield more +gold to the money lust of the vice lords. Gold must be their price even on +the brink of the grave. + +The Beer Trust must fatten on the last pieces of flesh and the last drops +of blood! + +There was the Kimona Trust; then the Laundry Trust, and now the Beer +Trust. + +In order to further its business and increase its income, these +unfortunates must poison their already decaying systems with quantities of +beer that would revolt even the average drunkard. They must inoculate +themselves with the virus of slow death! + +They must drink, drink, always drink! + +As a lure and a bait to force these already underpaid wretches to fill +themselves with the venom of the beer vats they are given a meaningless +profit for every glass of poison they force a customer to buy. + +They are obliged to drink with the customer in a spirit of good +fellowship. Even after they are sick and drunk they pour the cheap, +over-fermented liquor into their stomachs--for the sake of sociability and +to appease the Vice Trust through its brewery graft. + +The girls thus become the Beer Trust's agents. The woman that is not a +good "beer agent" in a house of ill fame, is either punished by being +deprived of some privilege or her body bruised and discolored by a brute +employed just for such purposes. + +But we have demonstrated that subsidiary graft has reduced the ill-gotten +gains of the women until there is scarcely anything left for them. + + +"SELL DRINKS OR STARVE." + +Do you wonder that they sit hour after hour at a table guzzling beer with +their drunken customers? + +It is the old story of--"Do this or starve." + +In the "redlight" districts of Chicago certain breweries have the +monopolized concession from the vice lords to sell their commodity. No one +else dare enter into the precincts to peddle his goods. + +The Vice Trust demands a terrible stipend. Therefore the beer must be sold +at an outrageous price. The over lords must get their share, the girls in +the houses must be paid their horrible commission and the keepers must +make their profits. + +The sale of this beer in the disorderly houses is a direct violation of +the law governing the sale of liquors. All this beer and other intoxicants +are sold without a city license. + +There are one thousand places in the city selling liquor without a +license. Nearly all these are houses of prostitution. This figure is +arrived at by a comparison of federal tax records on the sale of liquors +and the records in the city license department of the city clerk. The +houses of ill fame dare not ignore the laws of the United States. So, they +purchase a federal liquor license at the nominal sum of twenty-five +dollars a year. + + +BEER GRAFT--$2,915,760. + +The yearly graft in beer in the holes of vice in the city is unbelievable. +We shall quote an authoritative source. + +According to the report made by the recent Vice Commission to the Mayor of +Chicago the annual graft from the sale of intoxicants in the restricted +districts of the city, is-- + +$2,915,760! + +That means that many dollars in graft over the price paid the brewery for +its product. + +That income must be divided among three factors: the prostitutes, the +keepers of the houses and the members of the Vice Trust. + +In the calculations of the Vice Commission, the prostitutes receive forty +per cent, which amounts to $1,166,304. + +From sources reliable and from interviews with keepers of disorderly +houses, we have learned that the Vice Trust exacts fifty dollars a month +from each disorderly house for the privilege of selling beers, whiskeys +and other death-dealing drinks. + +From the houses of prostitution in the levee districts, from the "houses +of call," the "flats" and other disorderly places, numbering 1,000, +figuring on the basis of fifty dollars a month, the beer graft to the over +lords is $600,000 a year. + +That is the price that the minions of vice pay for the privilege of +violating the municipal laws, of taxing vice to its last strength, of +murdering the women who must promote the vicious industry! + + +THE INVESTED VICE CAPITAL. + +The over lords, cunning and commercial to a degree, have never lost an +opportunity to grow dollars from cents. + +Realizing that the breweries made golden harvests from their privileges of +monopoly, the vice kings sought to extend their power to these +corporations. + +They did it by practically buying the breweries! + +Three of the politicians who are members of the Directorate of Ten--the +graft spirits of Chicago's underworld--have profit-yielding interests in +breweries that serve levee trade. + +In this way the over lords have another source of swollen income. + +Nothing escapes from their talons. + +In the levee resorts large quantities of cigarettes are sold daily. Again +the vice masters seek out and gain the gold. One member of the all +powerful Directorate of Ten has a controlling interest in the agency of a +certain brand of cigarette. Every effort is made in the vice districts to +sell this cigarette because the vice lord has commanded that it be +disposed of. + + +THE PROSTITUTE AND THE "CADET." + +In the ante bellum days when slavery flourished in the South, the blacks +were directly ruled over by foremen who goaded them on at their tasks of +making dollars for the plantation lord until they found welcome rest in +death. + +The modern slave is the prostitute. She, too, must have a boss to urge on +her tired body to make more dollars for her masters, to keep up the +constant stream of graft to the Vice directorate, to boost the earnings of +such industries as in turn pay a tribute to the great trust. + +The boss of the miserable outcast woman is the "cadet." That low species +of perverted human, crunching on the few morsels of food thrown at his +feet from the well-heaped table of vice, is also known as "mack." History +has given him the name of "pimp." + +The pickpocket, the burglar, the safe cracker, even the murderer, command +more respect--we say respect for lack of a better term--than do these +human, creeping, craven parasites. + +They are the real slave-men; the lowest form of the Vice Trust's vassals. + +Among these men are also the men who first destroyed the sacred chastity +of the women over whom they now rule. Nothing is sacred to them; nothing +good; nothing inviolable. + +They have become an essential element to the nefarious scheme of the Vice +Trust. Whip in hand they are the appointed lashers of the thousands of +lost women, beating them to urge them to work harder, faster, and thus +yield a return for their purchase price until the cold earth falls with +hollow sound upon the cheap casket purchased to hide away their shame and +sin in the ground. + +The subsidiary trusts of the great Vice Trust have taken their toll. But +the unfortunate women, through their commissions, particularly on liquors, +have still some of the terrible wage drained from their bodies. + +The trust must have the greater part of that. It is the duty of the +"cadets" to get it. They do. + +They collect from the girls, take their share and turn over a large +percentage to the Directorate of Ten. + +The trust has a strange reason for this. The trust considers the "cadet" +primarily as a parasite. That parasite must pay a price for existence. To +get it, he must compel the woman he controls to make more money. + +In urging her to make more money he is boosting the graft in every +possible way. + +There is a psychological connection between the "cadet" and his +prostituted slave-woman. + +Inherent in the nature of every woman is the primitive instinct of the +mastership of man and obediance to it. In the good woman that obediance to +that subconscious instinct finds its expression in love and in strange +submission to his theories and practices of life where there exists no +moral conflict. + +To be loved, to be cared for, to be desired, are the impulses developing +out of the conception of man's mastery. + +In the lost woman, the instincts are the same; so, too, the impulses. + +When a woman has fallen she never gives up her dream of a "one man" who +might love her, treasure her and protect her, until the eternal night +blots out the colors of the vision. + +Failing to find a return love, the thousands of unfortunate women fall +victims to their own loves for men. Rather than lose even the hollow, +empty sham of love, rather than to miss the presence of a brute, they +submit to indignities, brutality and tortures that are indescribable. + +It is the under current carrying the idea of Man the Master. The woman is +willing to be the slave. + +Playing on this perverted instinct of the woman, the Vice Trust makes +capital of it. The "cadets" are brought in on the general plan of graft. + +The "redlight" districts of the city are infested with these men, +fattening on their lost women. + +Judging from the number of well dressed men of no apparent occupation who +hang about the saloons, resorts, poolrooms, cigar stores and other places +near the levees, there are more than 1,000 of these worms of the earth at +large, feeding on the city's great ulcer, flaunting their crimes in the +faces of our young men and young women of clean morals, and murdering +their women hirelings! + +They have no fear of the police because they know that the police dare not +molest them just as long as they "hand over" their graft to the "men +higher up." + + +BRUTALITY OF THE "CADETS." + +These men exercise the most brutal mastership over the prostitute. +Instances have been shown where women were whipped within a few inches of +death by the inhuman dogs. + +One night in the South side levee, a "cadet" caught one of his women on +the street in front of a resort, cursed her for her small earnings and +proceeded to beat her into insensibility. Bleeding from his inhuman blows, +she reeled and fell to the sidewalk. + +Standing in the glare of the arc light, the man's face and hands were +smeared with blood. Two policemen approached and stopped. The "cadet" held +up his blood-stained hands and laughed. The policemen pushed him ahead, +and one of them said: + +"Fred, you better move on. Go and wash your face and hands." + +A woman came from the resort, kicked the prostrate form of the unconscious +girl with her foot, then grasping her by the hands, dragged her into the +hell chamber from which she had emerged to breathe a little of God's own +air. + +That is not the story of a heated imagination. It was actually witnessed. +Incidents of similar character which beggar description, occur every +night, when these outcasts are confronted by drunken, blood-exacting +degenerates. + +Some of these men are the slave masters of several women. + +In a recent White Slave case in the federal court, one of these wretches +confessed that he was the "cadet" of four prostitutes. He drove them on in +their vicious labors, forced them to work day and night to bring him money +from which he made his own living and paid protection to the police and +tribute to the Vice Trust. + +This man swore that he made from fifty to sixty dollars a week from each +girl. + +Many of these "cadets" do not live in the "redlight" districts. They +scatter and come back when it is time to gather in the gold. + + +"CADETS" AND POLICE GRAFT. + +The business of exacting graft from these men is a difficult police +problem because of their nomadic habits. Still it is accomplished. + +Rendezvous of these men are frequently raided by the police and these +"cadets" to save themselves give up what money they may have with them. + +Many of them, however, cannot keep away from the scenes of their crimes +and cravenly and regularly pay their price. + +The "cadet" system is highly valued by the Directorate of Ten because it +is the human prod to vice, the medium of increasing infamous profits from +day to day. + +As an instance of this, here is a story from police circles which is +confirmed by other corroboration. + +Recently, a captain of police was transferred to the Twenty-second street +police station. He was an unsophisticated police official, then. He was +not well acquainted with the workings of the Vice Trust and he was +determined to rid the districts of some of the evils which were more +flagrant than others. + +He determined to destroy the "cadet" system and to cast every "cadet" into +jail on charges of vagrancy. He set about to do it and forty-eight hours +later the district was seething with indignation, fear and anger. + +A conference of the big resort keepers was held and the police captain +invited to attend. He went prepared to deliver a staggering ultimatum that +would wipe out the evil forever. + +When he emerged he was a beaten, broken man, broken on the great, ever +turning wheel of vice. + +Those keepers told him in that conference that if he drove the "cadets" +out, they might as well shut down their houses. He was willing that they +should. But there was the rub. He was quietly shown that the graft lords +wanted more money and would not stand for a decrease of profits. + +They declared that women without "cadets" to urge them on, did not make +half the money those did who were driven to death by these inhuman +creatures in their exploitation of vice. + +To back up their statements they showed him the records of their houses. + +The great powers, he realized, were behind commercialized vice. To harm +one member of that Directorate of Ten by shearing him of his profits meant +ruin to himself. He gave up the battle. + +Later on, in another police territory, this same official hemmed in and +enmeshed by the exacting system which he had allowed to make him a slave, +fell a victim to the Vice Trust and was sacrificed with much pomp of +public investigation on the altars of the temple of vice and graft to +appease the unseen god of public wrath and indignation. + +Another example of how the graft system reaches out and destroys the +upright, is the following:-- + +Another captain of police was sent to take command of the police district +including the South side levee. A clean-minded chief of police ordered him +to clean up the district. He ordered him to place men in the resorts where +there were flagrant violations of the rules regulating the district. + +The police official did so. The resort keepers tried to reason with him, +argue with him and plead with him, but he refused to listen. "I shall +carry out my orders," he said firmly. Then they predicted his transfer +from the police station. They predicted that within thirty days he would +be in command at another station. They missed their calculations by but +one day. He was transferred to a district where his honesty could do no +harm. Beyond and above the chief of police ruled a power--the political +power of the Directorate of Ten, that made the final ruling. + +A chief of police in a strange manner has admitted the power of the vice +combine which he was sworn to annihilate. As a sergeant of police he was +powerless to stem the tide of sin and vice. When he received the highest +executive office in the department, the Vice Trust compelled him to move +from the home in which he had lived on the South side for twenty-five +years. The music from the dives floated into the precincts of his home and +disturbed his rest; the unfortunate women carried on their immoral +profession within a stone's throw of where his innocent daughter slept; +drunken men reeled past his door going to and from the vice haunts. He was +surrounded by scarlet women and vicious men. For the salvation of his +family he was obliged to seek other quarters. + + +AND TO THE WOMAN?--DEATH! + +Oh you that are the children of our flesh and blood, you over whom anxious +mothers have watched through the long, weary hours of the night when the +shadow of sickness was upon you, you whose lips are still undefiled by the +kiss of unclean lips, you who still kneel at night and in the solitude of +your chambers, call upon the Master to hold your hearts in the mighty +hollow of His hand, bend your heads in meditation on the truth that is +hideous, but must be known. + +You mothers and fathers, sacrificing every hour of your lives for your +daughters, praying for their purity, guarding their chastity, leading them +in the paths of righteousness, turn not from the truth that you must +know, but listen and take warning. + +IN THE LIGHT OF MODERNITY IGNORANCE IS NO LONGER INNOCENCE. IGNORANCE IS +CRIME: IGNORANCE IS SIN: THE SIN OF OMISSION AND NEGLECT. + +In no age, has a people faced a social problem as vital and crucial as the +one facing the American people today. Our rapid progress in the paths of +commerce has robbed us of a clear moral conscience; it has made the +almighty dollar the ideal, to the detriment of the soul and heart: it has +built taller houses of industry while the church steeples have grown +shorter. + +It has crept unconsciously upon us until it has eaten into our vitals--the +commercial and industrial frenzy. + +It has recognized in the perversion of woman a source of income and it has +commercialized the vicious instincts, and the depraved desires of +thousands of them. + +The baby girl in the cradle is being watched and waited for by the Vice +Trust:--ready to capture her and throw her tortured body into the mart of +sin for filthy dollars. + +The school girl is trailed and tempted. She falls often unconsciously and +awakens when it is too late. The girl who is earning her own living is +preyed upon and bartered away; and even the wife and mother is frequently +caught in the ever-tightening mesh of the masters Satan has appointed on +earth. + +Statistics show that two thirds of the women who are found in the +infamous resorts of the city drift there in a thousand and one ways. + +The White Slaves are in the minority. + +Economic and social conditions, starvation wages, environment, +unrestrained sexual desires, lack of religious restraint, improper +association with the male sex in immature ages, desires for pleasures, +luxuries and clothing, betrayal by men, are among the principal reasons +why this vast percentage of the prostitutes fills the houses of iniquity. + +Tons of literature have been written, warning the girls of the country +against the perfidious White Slaver. + + +"LEAVE ALL HOPE BEHIND." + +These warnings have also been directed to the parents of our girls. + +The girls and women that need warning today are those who are drifting to +the Lake of Infamy, drifting, some unconsciously and others with +knowledge, in a vague way of what is before them. + +To this class we cry out until we are exhausted and our throats are +bleeding with the effort: + +"Leave all hope behind, you who enter here." + +At each avenue leading into the hellish centers of the city should stand a +lost woman, peering into the eyes and hearts of each girl who is creeping +silently and shamefully to the vice dens. In her hollow, rasping voice, +the lost woman should be made to cry out: + +"TURN BACK ERE IT IS TOO LATE! THIS IS THE CITY OF THE DAMNED! THIS IS +THE SLAUGHTER-HOUSE OF HELL! THIS IS THE CHARNAL-HOUSE OF DEATH! THIS IS +THE SPOT WHERE THE GRAVES ARE ALWAYS OPEN AND YAWNING! LIFE HAS NO HOPE +HERE!" + +If each girl could be told the paralyzing truth of the life of the +prostitute as we have told it in this book, would she plunge headlong into +the consuming fire? Would she leap into the ever-present abyss? Would she +take the first drink? Would she give her lips to the poison of the inhuman +wretch who plots her death? Would she give her pure, white body to the +abominations of the Vice Trust? + +No, no, no: not unless she were born of hell and deprived of reason and +judgment. + +It has been our object to show that not one dream of the girl who enters a +house of prostitution is ever realized. + +She has hoped for fine clothes, jewelry, food and money. + +She has found nothing but shame, suffering, remorse and sorrow. + + +THE LURE OF THE "LIFE." + +"I will become a slave, that is true," said the girl who is dying in a +resort today, as she entered the abominable life, three years ago, "but I +shall make hundreds of dollars and then leave it and no one shall know." + +That is the lure that has caught up thousands of women and hurled them +into dishonored and polluted graves. + +The Vice Trust is the robber combine. + +No woman who has once fallen into its inhuman traps can escape until she +has paid the last farthing, as we have shown. + +The Vice Trust allows the women of its kingdom to make gold fast, that it +may rob them faster. + +We have shown how each agent of the Vice Trust, each subsidiary combine, +each industry dealing with the unfortunate women, suck out the last drop +of blood. + +In the last analysis, after we have studied how the earnings of the +prostitute are snatched away from her, you ask this startling question: + +"And to the woman, what?" + +And with God as our judge and honest, clean, observant men as our +witnesses, we answer: + +"DEATH!" + +Shudder, all you who today are tempted to give up the struggle against +terrible odds. Tremble with fear, all you who are near the gates of the +City of Sin! Turn back all you who are picking the insidious blossoms in +the pathways that lead to but one end. + +DEATH:--not pleasure, not joy, not companionship; not clothes, not the +niceties of life, not money! + +The Vice Trust paid a high price in one way or another for each +woman-soul. Death can claim the victim only after it is torn to pieces by +the ravenous wolves. + +There is no compensation in the lives of prostitutes for all they have +thrown away; not even a sham of compensation. + +The prostitutes of Chicago are not only the commercial slaves of the vice +lords; they are the victims of the most ravaging and most destructive +diseases that science knows. Cold figures prove this. Nearly every woman +in the levee districts of Chicago suffers from dread diseases. They are +the victims of every possible chronic disease and organic trouble. + +They are today the greatest agents in the city for the dissemination of +sexual diseases that ruin homes, lead men to suicide and fill the wards of +our city hospitals with dying children. + +They are the mistresses of the men of the crime-world, who in the last +stage of degradation, drive them to careers which are checkered with the +murders of their victims. + +And now another hideous truth to save our daughters from the blasting +curse. + + +THE PACE THAT KILLS. + +Death claims these women in from one to seven years! That startling +statement is based on actual figures dealing with the demand and supply of +women for the resorts of Chicago. + +Death is really merciful to those whom he takes at the beginning of their +blighted lives, for they escape in the darkness and sleep of the tomb the +nights of nightmare agony, of remorse, of shame, of physical suffering, of +empty and broken hearts, of ghosts of the pure, sweet past, of home with +the sweet-faced gentle mother, the loving father and the brothers and +sisters. + +Think of it! These commercialized creatures of hell grind out of body, +blood, heart and soul, millions of dollars for their masters! And for +themselves--the GRAVE! + +We have been logical in our statements. We have not delivered simply a +pulpit warning. We have shown, in undeniable figures, that the motto of +the Vice Trust is: + +"Millions for ourselves, but not one cent for the women slaves!" + +If, as is imagined by thousands of good men and women, these unfortunates +derived a profit from their immoral business, then there might exist an +excuse for the thousands who enter the life each year. But there is no +profit, no matter from what standpoint you might view the situation. + +The story of gain is but the lure. The Vice Trust tells lies that are +acceptable because of the strange tendencies in the temperament of women. + +Dean Walter T. Sumner, one of Chicago's most prominent ministers and the +chairman of the recent Vice Commission, declared that each year the men +who visit the many haunts of vice in Chicago spend $60,000,000! He also +declared that of this amount, over $16,000,000 goes to the vice lords! + + +"TOO LATE TO TURN BACK"--CRIES WOMAN. + +Before closing we wish to give a concrete example of the tenacious power +of the life of shame once it has fastened its fangs in the heart and body +of its victim. We tell the story so that every girl in this country may +know that once enslaved there is scarcely any redemption. + +In one of the most notorious resorts in the South side levee district, +lost to all self-respect and shame, is a certain prostitute who drags her +wornout body about, selling it to vice victims night after night. + +That woman is the daughter of an alderman of the city of Chicago! + +Four years ago she was the idol of a happy home, the pet of a loving +father and the darling of a happy mother. Today she is a drunken, depraved +creature. + +Her father has done everything in his power to rescue her. With his own +political power he has obtained permission from the vice masters to take +his daughter from her infamous prison. + +That woman has looked at her father and cried out: + +"It is too late! Society would spurn me and I would have to flee away. +Besides my body is wrecked and could not live without the intoxicants and +drugs I can feed it here." + +The father offered her $10,000 a year as an allowance if the girl would +leave her evil ways. Again she refused because she knew in the depths of +her heart that the shackles welded long ago could never be broken, and +that the poison eating through her blood could never be purged out. + +If this girl with every possible influence brought to bear to save her was +beyond salvation, what of the thousands who, even if they would, cannot +move hand or foot to escape the death waiting for them but a few years +away? + +That is the story of the prostitute. It is not a story of the woman +considered as an entity, deprived of her relative existence; it is the +story of the slave as a commercialized being existing solely for the +enrichment of the Directorate of Ten of the Vice Trust and not because she +is needed to serve the passions of men. + + +THOUSANDS ENTER THE "LIFE" YEARLY. + +And yet in the face of this staggering truth, thousands of women yearly, +enter upon the life of death. They go to fill the polluted beds and +chambers of horrors from which the gaunt, skeleton form of Death has just +crept noiseless, bearing away the victims whose terms of earthly service +in the interests of hell were at an end. + +God of Heaven, Father of the Just, Thou who watcheth over the universe of +living things, teach our daughters to know the truth down to the last, +burning, revolting fact. Save them for the motherhood of a perfect race. +Protect them against the demons who seek them out in the sanctity of the +home. Teach them restraint. Give unto the men and women of Chicago, the +strength and power to rise up and destroy the Vice Trust and its members, +so that the sun may shine on a spotless city, and love, happiness, purity, +and the brotherhood and sisterhood of man may reign supreme! + +How long, Oh God, how long? + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +Side Grafts of The Social Evil. + +Rent Graft--Saloon Graft--Dance Halls and Protective Prices--Graft from +the Vice Palaces--The Massage Parlor--The Drug Crime--The Vampire Trust. + + +Woman is the axis around which revolves the wheel of the social evil +today. + +When directly enmeshed in the woman-traps of the Vice Trust she is the +enriching factor as has been shown. + +Indirectly connected with the Vice Trust or serving it off and on, she is +still the axis of swollen profits to the Trust. + +It is the purpose in this chapter to show the side grafts which are +derived from the existence of the persons and places contributing to the +social evil. + +Again the police department figures as the "go-between" hand from the +victims of sin to the Directorate of Ten. It is through their protecting +agency, permitting haunts of crime and vice to flourish that the already +monstrous fortunes of the vice masters are further swollen. + +It is astounding to learn the varied sources of side graft in the city of +Chicago today. As we have said before, everything must have its price of +toleration or cease to exist. + +A few of the most notorious and flagrant forms of side graft as separate +from the prostitute and her profession are to be exploited in this +chapter. + + +THE RENT GRAFT. + +The excess rental profit, due to the fact that at least 1,000 buildings in +Chicago are the rendezvous or dwelling places of prostitutes and women of +loose character, is today $1,000,000. + +This figure is based on the conservative estimate of the Vice Commission +arrived at in its recent investigation. In its calculation the members +began with the figure of 577 places immorally used. They conservatively +estimated that $1,000 was the average excess profit of rent in open houses +in the restricted districts, and $300 was a similar profit per year on +"flats" and assignation hotels. + +This same profit would not exist if vice did not place a high price on the +haunts where it thrives. If the profits on vice are so enormous, the Vice +Trust figures that the resort keepers and hotel and "flat" renters can pay +high prices. + +The prices for rent on "flats" are boosted from $20 to $40 above the +actual rental valuation of the property. + +The rental price on property in the segregated parts of the city is raised +five times the actual rental figure. + +The real estate owners, and the real estate agents raise the price. But +they cannot steal this vast rental profit. The Vice Trust must have a +share. A split is made. The lords of the vice combine get their share of +the rental theft and back into the pockets of the Directorate of Ten goes +the graft. + +If this money is not paid by the real estate men and property owners, then +they are the losers in the long run. The police department closes the +place, refusing to allow prostitutes to live in the building. + +Result: The property must be rented to people of poor condition who can +pay but small rent. The physical value of the property is so small that a +large rent could never be exacted from decent citizens. Therefore in order +to make a profit himself, the lessor holds the rent high, countenances +prostitution in his buildings and pays his graft to the Vice Trust. + +A certain real estate agent controlling a building in Cottage Grove +avenue, which is infested with immoral "flats," declared that he boosted +the rents in the building $30 for each flat above the actual rental +valuation. This same man declared that he was obliged each month to hand +over to detectives who visited him, $20 on each flat, leaving him but a +boost of ten dollars per flat. + +A woman who keeps a "flat" in Cottage Grove avenue declared that she was +compelled to pay $50 for a $25 flat. She argued with the real estate agent +but he showed her that if she desired police protection she would have to +meet the demand. She did so. + +Some time later, on account of public protest by clean-living citizens +near this place, the police shut down the "flats" in the building in one +day. The women inmates moved out. A week later those flats which had +rented from $40 to $75 to the immoral women, were rented for $15 to $25 a +flat. + +Another example of the rent graft is given on the West side levee. A +resort keeper who was once known as a king of the West side levee, owned a +two-story building, which was used as a house of prostitution from which +he derived the enormous rental of $250 a month. The place was situated in +Curtis street. The street was "wiped out" by the police. A week later the +two flats were being rented for $20 apiece. + +There is one estate in Chicago today situated in a levee district which is +valued at $1,000,000. If the segregated districts were wiped out this +property would not be worth $20,000. + +As an indication of the difficulty that would be experienced in wiping out +this graft, remember that three city officials are owners of property used +for immoral purposes. They are members of the great Combine. They would +not permit the destruction of the immoral "flat" system because it would +deprive them of an enormous revenue. + +This rental graft is either paid to the police who take a small percentage +and then turn the remainder over to the agents of the Directorate of Ten, +in return for their protection, or is given to the vice powers direct by +the real estate agents. + +This rental graft is one of the big factors in maintaining a City Defiled. +To strike at these places is to strike at the vice lords not alone +through their enslaved women but through their property valuations. + + +THE DISORDERLY SALOON AND ITS GRAFT. + +There exist in the city of Chicago 500 disorderly saloons. Those are the +places where women are allowed to frequent the backrooms and the +wine-rooms for the purpose of soliciting drinks from men. + +These places are to be found within the loop district and also in the +resident sections of the city. + +The owners of these places make enormous profits by the exploitation of +vice, but they pay monthly large sums to the Vice Trust in order to carry +on their business. + +Each one of these places has an average of five women "hustling" for it. +That figure is a low estimate. + +Drinks are sold in these establishments at exorbitant and robbing prices. +It is estimated that the gross profit, on an average, is 175 per cent in +such places. + +On the basis of five women in each place, earning three dollars a day as +commission, which is formed on a twenty per cent basis, the daily net +profit from these five girls, is $44. For a year this calculation brings +forth the enormous figure of $16,060 for the proprietor. By computation +this shows that the total profit of 500 saloons for one year is +$8,080,000! + +Think of that fortune in poison to thousands of men and women who frequent +these infectious places! + +But the big point is the graft. + +But the big split must be made. Out of that swollen profit, the +Directorate of Ten by some hook or crook, must get its dividends. + +Although the price of protection by the police, in reality protection by +the Big Ten, varies according to the location, possibilities in return and +the number of women who work, investigation has shown that the average +protective price of the disorderly saloon is $100 a month. + +This runs as high as $300 for the big loop places and those whose revenues +are excessively high. + +Computing on the conservative basis of $100 per month, this means that the +Vice Trust reaps a golden harvest of $50,000 a month from the disorderly +saloons and cafes of Chicago! This means $600,000 graft a year! + +In many of these places forms of entertainment are given, as for instance +obscene theatricals and immoral dances. These places increasing their +revenue by such displays, must of necessity increase their graft to the +powers above. To run such "shows" they are compelled to pay the police $50 +a month more, it is said. + +In some districts the police charge for permitting music after closing +hours. This graft usually is divided among the local police, from some of +the police captains down to the man on the beat. + + +DANCE HALLS AND THE IMMORAL THEATERS AND THEIR GRAFT. + +The dance halls which are found in every section of Chicago and the cheap +arcades and some of the theaters with their suggestive dramas and +vaudevilles are the starting points from which many girls go to ruin. +These places earn many a big dollar for their owners. But again the Vice +Trust holds out its aching and itching palm and cries for lucrative salve +and is anointed with it. These places pay a protective police price +ranging from $25 to $100 according to the degree of evil displayed, and +the amounts of money taken in at the doors. + +The privilege of selling beer at these infamous places to facilitate the +work of destroying the souls of young women and young men is placed at $50 +a month more to the police. + + +VICE PALACES AND THEIR GRAFT. + +In previous chapters we have spoken of the richly furnished homes of vice +and sin where the man of wealth and position can covertly enjoy his +debased passions and ruin young and innocent girls with the assurance that +his sins will not find him out. + +These places to carry on their trade in human souls, where thousands of +dollars are spent on elegant furnishings and where large profits accrue, +also have their prices to pay the police and the political powers in the +Vice Trust. + +Protection prices, ranging from $500 to $1,000 are paid each month to +insure their guests and deprive them of the fear of molestation. + + +MANICURE AND MASSAGE PARLORS AND THEIR GRAFT. + +These evils are not commonly known. The loop district is infested with +such shops which are nothing but thin veils for prostitutes. Many hotels +in Chicago contain such forms of vicious evil. These places are known to +the police and the women in them, who make a pretense of legitimate work +but in reality are ever on the alert for vice victims, are compelled to +pay high protective sums to continue in their illegal professions. + +These places in the loop district pay an average graft and protective +price of $100 a month. This money, taken stealthily by the agents, is sent +in the bulk to the members of the Vice Trust as in every other form of +graft. + + +DRUG SELLING AND ITS GRAFT. + +A large percentage of the lost women in Chicago and their male associates +are the victims of the drug habit. They are enslaved either by the opium, +cocaine or morphine curse. They must have these insidious stimulants to +exist, once they are trapped by this form of misery among men and women. + +The sale of these drugs is prohibited by law except under the most +precautionary methods. In the South side "redlight" district four +druggists make a profit on the sale of these drugs which is larger than +their income on all other articles combined. + +The sellers of these drugs must of necessity be known to the police who +see the constant throng of hundreds of unfortunates sneaking shamefully +into the places to procure the poisons that bring pleasant dreams, and +even unconsciousness. + +These places pay on an average $150 a month protection money to officials +through their subordinates. + + +THE VAMPIRE TRUST AND ITS GRAFT. + +Wherever wealth congregates, and men seek to while away the leisure hours, +willing to spend thousands of dollars in a night's enjoyment, there you +will find the agents of vice ready to minister to the wants of those men. + +Out of such conditions has been born the Vampire Trust of Chicago. + +It is composed of more than 100 women of loose character, women steeped in +sin and vice, women of apparent refinement and dashing appearance, women +of beauty and luring manner. + +These women infest the lobbies, cafes and restaurants of the most +exclusive hotels in the city. Their victims are the wealthy Chicago +visitors who are compelled to forget their troubles and business worries +over a glass of wine with charming, siren members of the trust. These +women drug, rob, steal and blackmail their victims. + +Many of these women have extensive police records. Their faces are known +to the old and young detectives who are appointed to protect the city's +guests. + +Then why are they allowed to carry on their thieving trade and fatten on +their ill-gotten gains? + +Again there is but one answer. + +They pay their protection for existence and are allowed by the Vice Trust +to thrive unmolested. When a victim does muster up enough courage to +complain to the police that he has been victimized by a Vampire, he +obtains no satisfaction. In fact he is given a significant warning against +prosecution. + +Most of the victims are married men, with almost unimpeachable reputations +and social positions and families. They are told by the police officer to +whom they complain that if they attempt to punish the woman who robbed +them, the story would become public and the notoriety would do more harm +than the loss of the money. + +These women concert with the members of the blackmailers' trust. These men +point out prospective victims. If the men cannot be robbed, their +reputations are jeopardized and then the women threaten to disgrace them +by telling the story of a night of shame. + +It is hard to estimate the protective price paid by these women. Judging +from the number of their victims and the large amounts of money stolen, +the relative protective price must be enormous. + +The police admit the existence of this trust as was shown by a high police +official in a recent attempted prosecution of one of its notorious +members, who had served a sentence in the state penitentiary and who at +one time was the respected wife of a Milwaukee jeweler and a prominent +member of Wisconsin society. They do not admit that these women pay them a +price to carry on their open robbing of victims. + +One man in Chicago, who had been held up by these infamous wretches and +bled until he rebelled against the slavery, recently gave up the battle, +committed suicide and in a letter penned to his wife before his death, +told of the outrages he had been subjected to because of his misstep. + +And so these women are the agents of the Vice Trust, the associates of the +lowest male creatures in Chicago, the parasites of rich men and the causes +of suicide, murder and wrecked homes. + +And why? + +Because the Vice Trust must have its toll. Because the treasury has still +space for more silver and gold. Because the hunger and thirst of the +Directorate of Ten is never appeased. + +Because the lust of the political powers behind the monster Vice is +insatiable. + +Not because men must submit to these things because unruly passions drive +them to shame, misery, remorse and death, as has been fallaciously +charged. + +These are the subsidiary vices from which millions of dollars are garnered +yearly to feed the Directorate of Ten, to put new diamonds on shirt +fronts, brighter stones in heavy gold rings, new automobiles to wait for +them outside their palaces whose every stone is hewn by the torn, cut and +bleeding hands of thousands of women slaves and raised to its place by +exhausted weakened and dying creatures. + +Graft, graft, graft! + +That word sings, echoes and reverberates through the underworld of +Chicago. It is the slogan of the Vice Trust. It is the mystic sign of the +vice fraternity. + +And while the Vice Trust screams like a voice from the last depths of +hell: + +Graft, more graft!-- + +The victims lost in the depths of the Inferno echo back:-- + +Death, and more victims! + +Who can really estimate the actual amount of graft reaped from sin which +eats into the hearts of a lost and perished womanhood? + +Our estimates have been conservative. They have been based on an average +system of computation. The actual figures if we were able to carry our +searchlight of truth into the coffers of the Directorate of Ten must be +far above those we have given. + +We have sought to tell the truth. In our hearts we know that such graft +passes from the vicious to their masters each day. From the victims +themselves we have learned the figures which we have given above. + +Is there any wonder that after a thorough consideration of the subject +from every viewpoint, we have closed our eyes and from the depth of our +soul cried out in sincere conviction:-- + +CHICAGO IS THE WICKEDEST CITY IN THE WORLD! + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +Gambling and its Graft. + +The Gambler's Fate--The Handbook, Other Games of Chance and Their +Protection--Police Profit--All Gambling Crooked--A Warning. + + +In the very heart of every man, woman and child is an instinct to risk the +tangible and present for the intangible and the possible future things. + +Since the beginning man has played some game of chance in his struggle for +existence. He has counted his own possibilities as against those of his +enemy, he has abided for what seemed the most opportune time and then he +has risked and taken the leap. Often the goddess of Chance has been with +him. More often that strange goddess has risen against him. + +The boy risks his marbles against those of his playmate. The girl casts +her jacks against those of her small companion. + +It is the desire of risk showing itself in the immature mind. + +As civilization went on and reason developed, the game of chance became a +sport which had for its object a lucrative gain in some manner or other. + +It became gambling:--the risking of something valuable on the basis that +the risk may prove profitable to the risker. + +The pages of history are dotted with evidences of gambling in every age. +Gambling has passed through a million forms. In our present day life it is +looked upon by the general public as a sport. + +It is the purpose here not to dissertate on gambling as a moral and +commercial evil alone, but to show that it is nothing today but another +asset of the Vice Trust, stolen out of the not too plethoric pocket of the +sucker public. + +It is our purpose to show that a gambling ring, backed by millions of +dollars, headed by powerful men and strengthened by the support of the +members of the Vice Trust, thrives in Chicago, adding one more stain to +her already besmirched municipal escutcheon. + +It fattens on those men and women who have already been fleeced by the way +of the social evil and on those who have not fallen victims to that sin, +and whose besetting sin is gambling. + + +RUIN, PRISON OR DEATH, THE GAMBLER'S END. + +Yearly, thousands of young men are hurled to financial ruin, sent or +headed to the penitentiary because of the gambling houses in the city of +Chicago that run full blast with the officers of the law walking blindly +past their open doors. + +The gambling vice grasps its victims in a clutch as powerful as the grip +of the drug habit or as unyielding as the toils of immorality. + +The gambling combine in Chicago is as strong as the most powerful house of +finance. It is bulwarked by every possible protection. You cannot beat it, +in the long run, no matter what your talents, judgment and experience may +be. + +The average man or woman would stand a fair show of winning in the average +gambling game in Chicago were that game "on the square." But it is not; +the entire system is crooked. That is how its profits are enormous. + +The thousands of persons who play the handbooks during the day, the poker +games and other forms of the gambling evil at night, have no more choice +of emerging with the "long green" bulging from every pocket than has the +mouse that is caught by the soft-pawed cat in a room and played with until +tired and then killed. There is no escape. Everything is crooked and the +gambling sucker is dubbed the "bleating sheep" the minute he enters where +the chips rattle on the table or where the man with the dirty dollar +smears your name on a chart with a stub pencil. + +Each year hundreds of men and women end their blasted lives after they +have emerged from the dens of the gambling lords, robbed of their last +cent and face to face with ruin, disgrace, and punishment. + +Each year, men are sent to our state prisons because they dipped their +trembling hands into the gold in their employers' till to make up the +money the gambling fraternity had taken from them. + +Each year, hundreds of women see their homes crumble beneath them, stand +with tear-stained eyes and watch their social positions taken from them, +lose the love and protection of their husbands and are turned adrift to +stray into the hell houses we have described, because the gambling germ +was imbedded and flourished in their blood and drove them on to unnameable +ruin. + +There is no way of estimating the evils consequent on the vice of gambling +as it exists in Chicago today. + + +A GAMBLER'S END. + +As a specific instance of the destructive power of the gambling combine a +Chicagoan recently committed suicide after dissipating a fortune in +flirting with the goddess of Chance. + +In his pockets, stained with blood from the bullet wound through which his +life had ebbed away, was the following note: + +"Several persons have the right dope on the dive, gamblers and the police. +They let a victim go there until they get all and then they blackball him. +Why not destroy these vicious people and close the dives and save people +from committing suicide? + +"This is the raving of a dying and ruined man but I know what I am doing +just the same." + +Do the police dare tamper with these men flaunting their violations of the +law in their faces? + +Even if they desired they could not do them harm. The gambling kings are +in direct alliance with members of the Directorate of Ten of the Vice +Trust. They turn over to it fifty per cent of their enormous income for +the privilege of making the other fifty per cent. + +Even in the face of a rigid and apparently sincere recent crusade against +the unholy combine between police and gamblers, gambling continued to +carry on its trade within a stone's throw of the City Hall and underneath +the shadows of certain big police stations. + +The gambling kings are even more avaricious and selfish in their wealthy +combine than are the members of the combine living off the social sin. + + +A POWER SUPREME. + +No one dares attempt to come into the chosen circle unless by direct +consent of the big lords, and after he has sworn abject allegiance to the +gambling chiefs. He must show the proper spirit by yielding up a large per +cent of profit. If this is not forthcoming, the police suddenly and +mysteriously awaken to the fact that the unfortunate man is running a +gambling establishment. He is raided, arrested and put out of business, +while a chosen servant of the fraternity shovels in the golden harvest +from the suckers across the street, drops a few choice coins into the +hands of the police who raided the opposition place and plies his trade in +perfect quiet, comfort and security. + +That is the power of the gambling kings. They are the high "lieutenants" +of the Vice Trust. They are given big concessions and extraordinary powers +because they are in position to show their fealty by the payment of +thousands of dollars of tribute weekly. + +[Illustration: GOD WORKS MIRACLES TODAY. + +Copyrighted 1910 by The Midnight Mission. + +Used by permission of owners of copyright. + +A hardened heart softened by the appeal of a fellow man. + +A drugged conscience awakened by a word picture of men's and women's shame +and degradation.] + +The gambling organization is so perfect today that there is no chance to +beat it. + +To perfect the system now in vogue it was necessary to do away with all +forms of competition and opposition. This was finally accomplished after +the expenditure of thousands of dollars by the gambling combine in control +today. + + +CHICAGO'S BOMB WAR. + +It was the spirit of competition and the rivalry of factions that led to +the bomb throwing epoch which has left such a deep stain on the history of +Chicago. + +Dynamite, gun cotton, nitroglycerine and other dangerous combustibles were +used to whip the enemies into line. + +The bomb throwing era which was the talk of the nation, was nothing more +than the outward expression of the gamblers' hate. The bombs thrown were +the means of eliminating the competitor and bringing the enemies into the +ranks of the favored as mere slaves. + +In three years, fifty bombs were hurled by gamblers in the city of +Chicago. A million dollars' worth of property was destroyed, men were +maimed and families broken up in this terrible war. The first bombs were +directed against the men in command of the gambling forces. These men then +realizing the power of the dynamiters, employed them to destroy the +enemies of the protected organization. + +As a result the gambling combine today is based on dynamite and +gunpowder. The police knew who threw the bombs but dared not arrest the +criminals. + +Every form of gambling controlled by the gambling combine can be found in +Chicago. The high-priced forms are found in the loop district, the +gambling handbooks are found everywhere, and the cheap forms can be met +with in any part of the big city. + + +MEMBERSHIP OF THE GAMBLING COMBINE. + +There are nine residents and property holders of Chicago in the +directorate of the gambling fraternity and combine. These men control the +vicious gambling situation today. + +These men control one of the largest and most influential systems in the +world. They employ thousands of men to do their bidding and exact +thousands of dollars daily from the pockets of an unwary public. + +These men as a combine, are subsidiary to the great Vice Trust. These men +play directly into the hands of the Directorate of Ten which we have shown +as feasting off the well laden tables of prostitution, sin and women. They +derive their terrible and crushing power through the big vice masters. +They divide the profits with them. They pay high protection in order to +operate the thousand and one forms of gambling which they back daily, from +the cheap crap games to the highest and most money yielding games of +bridge or to the most lucrative, whirling roulette wheels. + +One of these men controlling this terrible vice is today a member of the +city council making Chicago's laws for righteousness; one is a former +member of the Illinois State legislature; one holds a high place in City +Hall circles, and another is a prominent business man carrying on a +business as a veil to his real and disgraceful profession. + + +THE HANDBOOK EVIL AND ITS GRAFT. + +There exist in Chicago 1,000 handbooks. + +A handbook, for the benefit of the unsophisticated reader, is a record +made in a local place of horse races which are being run off at a +distance. As for instance, a cigar store in the loop district makes bets +on races which are being run off at Jacksonville, Florida. + +The handbooks are run in saloons, cigar stores, hotels, and on newsstands. +Here the dollars of the sucker patrons are drawn from their pockets as by +magic, turned over to the agents of the gambling trust, never to return. +Clerks, stenographers, office boys, all classes of salaried men and women +are the victims of the handbook habit in Chicago. + +Day after day this unseeing public scratches its head of "solid ivory," +puzzles its brain in desperation and goes out to "beat" the combination +that never has known a real defeat. + +Barnum said "there is one sucker born every minute." Truly there is. The +birth statistics of the Chicago sucker, male and female, mostly male, is +greater than the birth rate of innocent children. This is a queer world. + + +THE WOMAN GAMBLER. + +In quiet and refined neighborhoods, in the rear of candy stores and even +dry goods stores, women who are considered spotless by their social +associates drop in daily, nervously look over the "dope sheet," pick their +winner, and hurl their husbands' hard-earned dollars into the yawning +pockets of the gambling combine. + + +THE GAMBLING VEINS OF THE COUNTRY. + +These thousand handbooks daily furnishing the names of horses running on +every track in the United States, must have some means of acquiring that +important information. + +The Vice Trust is never at loss to furnish a medium through which its +graft may be increased. + +The members of the Vice Trust looked about for men trained to the fine +arts of separating the innocent and unwary from their dollars, and found +the men who today are the leaders of the gambling combine. + +These men incorporated themselves secretly into a powerful +corporation,--the gambling industry, capital unlimited. + +The superintendent of the strangest gambling news agency in Chicago is +Mont Tennes, for twenty years associated with the gambling world in one +way or another. Through a news service, which leases telephone and +telegraph wires, this man gathers into his clearing houses and exchanges +in Chicago, the daily news of the race tracks of the world. + +This news, once gathered into "headquarters," is sold to every handbook +runner in the city at prices ranging from $12 to $250 a month. + +This news is the same to every place in the city to which it is sent by +telephone, or telegraph. The price for that news varies in proportion to +the size of the place receiving the service and the amount of the daily +profits scraped from the skins of the sucker patrons. + +This wire service is national, not local. It is the veins and arteries +through which the gambling fluid flows daily to many cities in the +country. + +On the circuit, furnishing gambling news, there are twenty-nine cities +that are receiving gambling information daily and paying for it. + +In each of these cities, this gambling magnate has an agent selected to +receive his information and to distribute to places in that city demanding +it on the payment of high sums of money. + +The agent pays for the right of such dissemination. This man in the +aggregate receives $40,000 a month from the agents in twenty-nine cities +on his circuit who reap vast fortunes from the sending of the gambling +news to the handbooks in their respective territories. The "boss" is not +satisfied with the swollen profit. He demands a certain percentage in the +various cities from the profits of the local men using his service. + + +THE HANDBOOK PROFIT AND GRAFT. + +Sixty thousand "pikers" in Chicago feeding the gambling goddess through +her handbook mouth daily! + +Is that figure something to startle you? It is true. + +The "piker" plays in small spurts from fifty cents to three dollars a day. +Then the bets soar up the ladder until you reach the rich sucker who +shovels out as much as $500 a day on an average. Bets are paid as high as +$10,000 in one day on downtown handbooks. + +One man in State street has maintained a $25,000 a day business for ten +years on an average. This has been actually proven. + +There are twenty places downtown where handbooks are maintained that do an +average business of $5,000 a day year in and year out, with men who dream +and plan to beat the unconquerable combine. + +Police officials who have consented to talk because they have been +disowned by political masters and a former partner of the present gambling +head declare that $300 is a fair and conservative estimate of the income +from a horde of suckers of each of the 1,000 handbook establishments +daily. + +This means $300,000 per day changes hands in the race of men to exercise +their gambling interests. + +The betting combinations are so arranged, according to experts, that the +one sucker is pitted against his brother and not against the house. + +The placement of money on horse flesh is so arranged that no matter how +the horses run, a profit of at least ten per cent accrues to the +bookmaker. He is never the big loser. In cold cash that means $30,000 a +day to the handbook men of the city. + +Few of the races or the racing tips are "on the square." The sucker plays +and attempts to defeat a system which is nothing more than one crooked +scheme within another. + +Fifty per cent of that is needed by the handbook men to operate their +places. It is used in the payment of salaries to hirelings, wire service, +rent, telephone service, printing and miscellaneous financial obligations. + +The balance or $15,000 is split between two mighty factors. Seven thousand +five hundred dollars are kept by the poolroom combination and an equal sum +is paid, through members of the police force, or other collectors, as +protection money to the great powers of the Vice Trust. + + +THE POLICE PROFIT. + +The local police for their vigilance in steering reformers from the door +of the gambling holes, carrying on fake raids and helping the sucker to +forget the loss of his bankroll by rubbing his injured pocketbook with the +salve of warning to keep away and learn a lesson, must be given their +share. Then the "big fellows" who in the department are the spokesmen for +the Vice combine must dig out their share. Then the remainder,--a large +remainder,--must go back to the Directorate of Ten. + +Stop and think how swollen and bloated this figure becomes when +considered from the standpoint of an annuity. + +Two million six hundred and twenty-four thousand dollars are paid each +year to the Vice Trust and the big political lords for the right to rob +the general public, prey upon its tempting instinct to dare a chance, and +drive the individual to ruin, starvation and death. + +That same amount of money is split up yearly between the handbook +combination and the agents throughout the city. + + +OTHER FORMS OF GAMBLING AND GRAFT. + +The handbook which we have described in its method of operation and its +graft for police protection is the common man's expression of his gambling +instinct. + +There are five hundred other temples of the goddess of Chance, in which a +variety of gambling games are played nightly. In some of these places +every form of chance game can be found in full force each night. In +others, a specialty of one kind of game is made. + +The principal forms of gambling that flourish today are roulette, poker, +stuss (a Jewish form of poker), fan-tan, faro, whist, craps, black jack +and hearts. + +In a Michigan avenue hotel at Twenty-second street a roulette wheel is +spun nightly to the tune of $3,000. Hundreds of men and women crowd into +the stuffy room, filled with smoke and the fumes of beer and wine, and +stake their all on the whirling colors. + +The man that plays to break the bank at that place is playing the same +game as the man who starts out to tear the cast-iron bottom out of the +bank of Monte Carlo. + +It can't be done. + +Behind the whir and hum of that maddening wheel is $50,000 held by the +keepers of the game. Try to break into that treasury with pick, axe or +jimmy and you will be caught, trapped and bled to death. + +In a house recently closed because of the objectionable notoriety it had +obtained, the gambling and vice powers are said to have cleaned up over +$100,000 in three months. That place was located in Michigan avenue near +Thirteenth street. All forms of chance were thrown into the gambling pot, +melted and handed out to the "pikers" as so many gold bricks nightly. + +In a famous, or rather infamous, whist club in a downtown building, whose +doors open in the face of the offices of several prominent lawyers, +$20,000 a night is cleaned up by the keepers. + +There are a dozen similar places in the loop district where the money that +changes hands in one night, averages $10,000. Men acquainted with the +situation declared that $500 a day is a very conservative average of money +changing hands in the various gambling holes in Chicago. + +For the 500 places this means an exchange of $250,000 a day. + +Oh, will a freshly awakened civic conscience save a demoralized public +from itself, or will the lethargy which is upon Chicago allow the +thousands of young men, men with wives and families, to hurry themselves +on to ruin and to death? + +The gambling houses, according to old time gamblers, on all forms of +gambling, make a "rakeoff" of about seven per cent on each dollar cast by +a victim before their greedy eyes. + +This means $17,500 a day. Fifty per cent of that or $8,750, is retained by +the gambling house keepers for expenses. The remaining profit goes the +old, old way, one half--$4,375--is split between the gambling under lords +and the gambling kings. + +An equal amount, goes to the Vice Trust for the protection received from +the police. + + +GAMBLING IN CONCLUSION--ITS CROOKED CHARACTER. + +So greedy and avaricious are the big chiefs of the gambling fraternity and +the members of the Vice Trust that after all is said and done, there is +little left for the game keeper. + +As a result even the little sporting instinct he may have is sacrificed +and he becomes crooked in every dealing he has with the paying public. + +"Ninety-eight per cent of the gambling games in Chicago today are +crooked," declared a well-known gambler. "There is no money in the +profession unless the public can be hoodwinked." + +Science, electricity, hypnotism, sleight of hand, or other means are used +to deceive the player. + +Unless you can note the swift touch of the gambler's foot on the electric +button, which drops the little ball into the red hole when you bet on the +black, you face ruin every time you face the roulette wheel. + +Can you see the invisible hand that is doping the racetrack sheet? If you +cannot, stay away from the handbook or be prepared to look into the dark +and murky waters of the river as a final hiding place of shame. + +Do you think the friendly game of poker is on "the square"? If you do you +are mistaken. The house has two men, professional sharks, fishing for your +money. They are out to get it and they will succeed. They will whip-saw +you back and forth until they exhaust you and tire your alertness. Then +they will crucify you on the cross of your own cupidity and zeal to make a +millionaire's fortune in a night on the income of a counter clerk. + +The game has not been beaten. That is why the gambling combine is strong. +That is why it has the support of the Vice Trust. Like the man who hopes +to withstand the temptations of the crime-centers, and as the woman who +ventures is poisoned unto death with the venom of sin, so the man who goes +forth to tempt Fate and win a kiss from the cold lips of Chance, is +enmeshed before he is aware of it and borne onward in the terrible +maelstrom which hurls him into the bottomless pit of infamy and shame. + +The gambling curse is a terrible one. Its stigma burns on the cheek of its +victims forever. Scarcely any hope can be held out to the man who is +trapped by its subtle lure. + +To those young men and young women of the city and the country, we write +this warning. We have shown that you "cannot beat the game," no matter how +intelligently you try. + +The Vice Trust has never known defeat. It will not know defeat in this +enormous source of revenue pouring into its coffers annually from the +favored, police-protected, bomb-throwing, life-destroying Gambling +Combine. + +[Illustration: IF HOLDUPS INCREASE. + +By Courtesy of The Chicago Daily News. + +STEPPING OUT TO POST A LETTER + +May take the form of an armed sortie.] + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +Tearing Off the Police Mask. + +A Story of the Hypocrisy of the Police Department--Its Neglect of +Duty--Its Protection of Crime--The Fate of the Honest Policeman--Collusion +of Police and Thieves. + + +The minds which conspire to create a system such as the Vice Trust is +shown to control, must of necessity find agents to carry on the various +phases of the work. + +It has been demonstrated that no species of vice or sin exists in Chicago +except at the will of the vice lords and in return for the payment of +large sums of money. + +In a large majority, the police department, holding in its hands the power +to enforce or ignore the laws of the city, state or country, is the thumb +screw used by the Vice Trust to exact its toll of sin-existence. + +This body of men, each one of whom swore on his word of honor before God +and man to enforce the man-made laws, as a whole, is decaying with the +poison of graft and vice in its veins. + +From a servant of the people, the policeman has become the servant of the +people's enemies. + +Trapped and enmeshed by the political powers above them hundreds of +policemen prostitute their power for the purpose of aiding and abetting +sin and vice and in defrauding the people of their proper tax-paid +protection. + +There are 4,000 members of the department of police in Chicago today. +There are a chief of police, twenty captains, numerous lieutenants and +sergeants and at least 3,800 patrolmen. Through this body of men, many of +whom promised their God and their own conscience to do their duty, are men +sold body and soul to the vice lords who, it has been shown, control +Chicago and derive fortunes from the exploitation of vice. + +These are the men to whom every law abiding citizen trusts his or her life +year in and year out. These are the men appointed to protect property +against criminal depredation, to make the streets clean of crime, and to +watch over our children. + +And yet, investigation has shown that the executive heads of this big law +enforcing system, in many instances, are crooked, corrupt and purchased. + +Many of the men holding high positions in the police department are there +because the Vice Trust has found them of service and because they are +ready ever to do the bidding of their masters. + +The politics of the department is largely a matter of the politics of the +Vice Trust, as has been shown by recent investigations. + +Gambling runs full blast, houses of prostitution openly carry on their +immoral practices, street walkers wink at the policemen on their beats, +pickpockets laugh at the plain clothes men, robbers loot homes and places +of business, crimes of every conceivable description are committed, a +gambling war is allowed to terrorize Chicago, because the police +department is sold body and soul, revolver and star, to the masters of the +underworld. + +The hundred and one duties of the policeman are neglected daily because he +is busy helping some vicious criminal friend of the Vice Trust. + +The history of the Chicago police department today is a history of a duty +neglected and a sacred responsibility shirked. + +Even if certain members of the police force desired to do their duty, the +meshes have so tightened about them, they are so compromised with the big +lieutenants of vice and sin, that to save themselves and their families, +they must go on violating their sacred oath of office and living a life of +cowardice and hypocrisy. + +If the police department was not a subsidized body, the Vice Trust would +have a hard time carrying out its plans. It could not whip into line the +varied and complicated characters of sin with which it deals to lucrative +advantage. + + +THE FATE OF ONE POLICE OFFICIAL. + +Its subsidy was proven clearly in the recent conviction of a West side +inspector of police for the acceptance of protection money. He was one of +hundreds. He was not of a really bad stripe. Circumstances gave him +scarcely any other alternative. + +[Illustration: Copyrighted 1910 by The Midnight Mission. + +Used by permission of owners of copyright. + +Where one escapes the toils of vice and sin, thousands perish as slaves to +the inexorable Vice Trust.] + +There are honest policemen in Chicago. Far be it from us to cast mud of +dishonor and obloquy at all members of the department. We simply state +that a large majority of the members are corrupt and that is a positive +and known fact, although these men have managed through the protection +afforded them by their political masters to escape the penitentiary. + +The police duties, consequent on the assumption to such a position are +numerous. In Chicago these are forgotten daily. + +Wherever vice and sin flourish as they do here, the same condition of +police corruption is to be found. It was found in San Francisco, +Louisville, Seattle and other big cities. + + +THE LOST CHILD THAT IS NEVER FOUND. + +To kidnap an innocent child, to rob a fond mother of the greatest treasure +God can give her, to tear away from a mother's sweet and pure embrace her +own flesh and blood--that is a crime as heinous as murder. + +Kidnappings are reported to the police each day. + +What is the result? About forty-five per cent of the kidnapped children +are never found. + +What of the remaining? God alone can tell of the tragedies which they have +probably endured. Many of them have been slain by the demons who stole +them, many, particularly those of maturer years, have been sold into +abominable White Slavery, and others have been made slaves in other ways +to make a living for their masters. + +It is the custom of the police to put the name of a missing child, who is +usually a kidnapped child, lured away from its home, on the pages of the +"missing book." + +The story is sent over police wires to the various stations and precincts +as a kind of conformity to the letter necessity. These cases are not given +individual attention by the police. They are forgotten and all that is +left of the case is the faded, written report. + +Occasionally a tragedy that has brought sorrow and misery to some home, +driven a mother mad with grief and robbed a father of his reason, comes to +light through the powerful influences of the newspapers. + +The cases which are given display heads in the papers with pathetic +pictures accompanying them, are but few in hundreds of the stories of +missing and kidnapped children in which the tragedies are just as deep, +just as abiding and just as horrible. + +These cases are usually found by some energetic and enthusiastic reporter +who "happens" upon them by chance. The circumstances appeal to him and he +"gets busy." + +Day after day he prods the police into annoying activity. He finally +arouses public sympathy and interest and the police are of necessity +obliged to make a pretense at hard labor. They work on the case and +frequently obtain successful results that gladden the heart of some +frantic mother. + +Did they accomplish the work? + +To be fair and honest--No. The thanks are due the unknown members of the +press and not the police department. + + +THE EXPOSURE OF BIG CRIMES. + +As the newspapers are greatly responsible for the finding of children, so +they are the mind and pushing power behind the police department in the +exposure of big crimes, particularly murders, and the punishment of +criminals. + +Criminals are brought to justice every day, men are sent to the +penitentiary, not through the police department working as a thinking body +but through the efforts of newspapers, expressed in the tireless energies +of newspaper reporters. + +The police department as a body has been clearly shown up as a body of +inefficient, unthinking and unscrupulous men. + +One of the shining examples of inefficiency is to be found in a famous +murder case which stirred Chicago to its depths several years ago. + +A Bohemian living on the Southwest side murdered a mother, a father and +four children. + +The police when the case was first brought to their attention as one +worthy of investigation, it then being considered a strange havoc wrought +by sudden deaths, laughed at the sincere efforts of a newspaper man. + +They told him he was a dreamer and "hard up" for a story. The newspaper +man after gathering all the circumstances and facts, all suspicious, went +to the Coroner, over the heads of the police, and placed the case before +him. The Coroner saw that all clews pointed to a horrible series of +murders. He began an investigation, assured himself that he was right, and +then "called" the police in and ordered the arrest of the murderer. The +man was later found guilty and sentenced to be hanged. He escaped the +gallows through a strange popular sentiment and was sent to the +penitentiary for a life term. + +That is a standard example of police inefficiency. + +Another case that gives evidence of the lack of initiative in the police +department came to light recently. + +It occurred on the South side. + +Two small children disappeared from their home on the South side. The +mother was frantic with grief and sorrow and the father dogged the police +day after day trying to arouse them from their lethargy to search for his +two children. He received no encouragement. + +In desperation he went to a newspaper office and stated the case. He told +how the police had failed to make any strenuous efforts to find his +children. A reporter was sent out who "stirred" the police to activity. +Every possible clew was followed but to no effect. A physician declared +that unless news of the discovery of the children, alive or dead, was soon +forthcoming the mother would succumb to her grief. + +A newspaper reporter suggested that the waters in the slip at Thirty-ninth +street and the lake where the children were accustomed to play, be +dynamited. It occurred to him and not to the police, that the two +children might have fallen into the water. The lake was dynamited at that +place by the police and the bodies found. + +The police when compelled by the pressure of public opinion are obliged to +resort to the bolstering of a case. + +Judging from later developments innocent men have been arrested on serious +charges, thrown into filthy and unsanitary cells, dragged to the Criminal +court and subjected to the most shameful and humiliating treatment, in +order that the police force may purge itself temporarily from the stigma +of being inefficient. + +It is only a matter of inference, but it seems probable that hundreds of +confessions of crimes are wrung from innocent victims by the brutal "third +degree" methods. That these confessions are in many instances false, is +proven by the fact that when presented in a court of law they are thrown +out as valueless. However, they have served their purpose. The public +indignation over the crime in question is given an opiate and the police +can once more turn their energies to the protection of the business and +properties of the vice lords. That is the police department today. + + +THE POLICE AND PETTY LOCAL GRAFT. + +The police are not satisfied with the percentage which is granted them for +the protection which they grant to the vice holes. The little fellow is +still itching for the little graft. To obtain it he uses all the +brutality that is usually a strong asset of an unintelligent nature. + +When police in a district discover that certain gamblers are running small +games and not paying protection money, they walk right through rows of +open-faced gamblers, select the man in question and throw him into jail. +The arrest is supposed to serve as a warning. The man usually heeds the +warning and goes forth to gather protection money for the local police. + +Hundreds of street walkers, new to Chicago, who have not been registered +regularly by the vice lords and are not paying the regulation protection, +are victimized by the policeman on his beat. They are compelled to give +him a mere pittance to cover up their sins and ease his hunger for filthy +money. + +Even in the police department itself there is a constant bickering and +quarreling over the division of graft. They are like a lot of hungry +vultures circling about their loathsome carcass of dead meat. One police +official wars against the entrance of another police official within his +territory. + +Recently a negro opened a crap game in Cottage Grove avenue. He paid high +protection money to the police of the district which was supposed to be +turned over in part to the vice lords to appease their hunger. Things ran +along smoothly for some time. Then a new and brutal face that showed a +star came to his place and demanded money. The negro declared he had +already paid his money. + +"Not the big boss," said the detective meaningly. "My boss used to have +this district but he was transferred. You must still come across to him." + +The negro refused to do so. The "big boss" police official went to the +gambling fraternity and the result was that the negro was put out of +business. The night his place was closed, another, run by a friend of the +"big boss," opened across the street. The police never molested it. A +local lieutenant told the negro that the "big boss" police official was +known in the department as a "double-crosser." + + +"TIPPED OFF" RAIDS. + +In violation of their oaths, the police daily hand the public that is +paying their salaries over to the gamblers. + +Often they are compelled by public demand or through some newspaper to +raid places which are running flagrantly. Frequently, as has been shown, +the keepers of the places are "tipped off" before the raid is "pulled." +The keepers leave a "blind" to impersonate them and "ringers" to appear as +customers. These men are arrested with a great flourish and blowing of +trumpets by the police. They are fined. The fines are readily paid by the +real gamblers who are thankful to the police for the advance information +given them. + + +STRANGE IGNORANCE OF POLICE. + +The police pretend not to know of the existence of gambling places, as +evidenced by the recent statement of a high police official when formally +asked by his superior if he knew of any gambling in his district. He +declared he did not know the location of one place and was sure there was +no gambling in his district. + +A day later the Mayor of Chicago, angered at the fact that the gamblers +were flaunting their trade in the face of the public, and while a gambling +and police investigation was under way, ordered that a policeman be +stationed in every gambling house in the district of that police official. + +Strange to say, although he had sworn he knew of no gambling, when he +realized that the Mayor meant business, he mysteriously found nineteen +gambling places that same night and stationed men in them. That is one of +the laughable inconsistencies of the police department. + +One of the policemen, assigned to the work of standing guard over a +gambling house when questioned about the matter, said: + +"Of course we all knew these places were here and running full blast. But +that wasn't the question. I have been a policeman for fifteen years and I +haven't been asleep all that time. I have learned that the policeman must +not obey the law written in the statutes. He must follow the tacit customs +of the department. A policeman must never make a move until he is told to +do so. If he does, he finds he is treading on some big man's toes and then +the transfer slip comes to him soon." + + +POLICE, BURGLARS AND PICKPOCKETS. + +It seems incredible but investigation and constant observation has proved +that many big police officials and a number of smaller ones, have fallen +so low that they "hold up" the burglar and the pickpocket and make them +pay for their silence and protection. + +There is a thieves' rendezvous on the West side that is known to the +police, but the members of this gang are rarely disturbed. + +Every night detectives and policemen in uniform stroll past this saloon +and salute the well known criminals lounging about. + +Every day robberies, burglaries and holdups and the depredations of +pickpockets are reported to the police. Rarely is stolen property +recovered in comparison to the amounts taken. + +But as an indication of the strength of the alliance between the police +and the thieves, when some one demands justice in a strong voice that has +powerful backing of a financial or political character, the police are +always able to recover the property and restore it to its lawful owner. + +A certain labor organization gathered through investigators, information +sworn to, in affidavits, of the acceptance by policemen on the West side +of protection money from well known crooks who have criminal records in +every large city in the country. + + +THE FATE OF THE HONEST POLICEMAN. + +It has been stated that this chapter is not an attack on the hundreds of +honest policemen who day and night at the risk of their own lives, battle +for public welfare, clean morals and the eradication of the vicious +elements of the community. + +There are many honest policemen. But, we must say that these men, kept in +the dark by the corrupt because they cannot be corrupted are usually +"blackballed," in some mysterious way by the powers that be, and the +majority of them never achieve any rank in the department. Of course there +have been a few exceptions to this condition. + +The "transfer" system, which is nothing more than police railroading, is +the most active medium of getting an honest and incorruptible policeman +out of the way. If a man shows an inclination to balk at the commands of +his superior who is but the agent of the great Vice Trust, he is speedily +transferred to a harmless post where he is forgotten and remembered only +when paid his monthly salary. + +An incident of how the honest policemen suffer is the following: + +Six unsophisticated policemen, anxious to show their mettle and +overzealous in the performance of their duty, discovered a hilarious and +richly paying crap game running at Lake and Carpenter streets. They +decided it was their duty to raid it. They did so. They thought they would +be commended by their superior officers for their conduct. + +Instead of commendation they were told they were inefficient and material +that would never make good policemen. + +Two days later they were transferred to South Chicago. That meant that +they were obliged to travel thirty-two miles each day from their homes on +the West side to their posts on the far South side. + +Is it necessary to say why? + +Simply because in doing their duty in raiding the crap game, they spoiled +the profits of the Vice Trust. The game was run by a man who paid an +enormous amount of monthly protection money to these men's masters. They +had "tread on somebody's feet." + +Investigation of records of transfers in the department showed that thirty +per cent of the transfers were caused for such reasons. The record sheets +of men showed, in many instances, that a few days before their transfers +they had antagonized the great Vice Trust by attempting to do their duty +to the public which entrusted them to enforce the laws. + +As an instance of how the "transfer game" may be worked with telling +effect even on a police official who refuses to give his powers to the +protection of gambling, the following suits the purpose. + +A prominent political leader, anxious to gather spoils, went to a certain +police lieutenant on the North side, and said to him: + +"Well, we're going to start something up this way." + +"Not unless it's on the order books and the captain stands for it," +answered the police officer carefully. + +Result:-- + +The next day that lieutenant was transferred by the powers of the Vice +Trust. One hour and a half after his successor took his place, the new +commander was seen watching a street faro game in progress. He stood +across from it and watched the gambling combine's agent skin the "pikers" +and he never moved to stop it. + +Certain policemen in Chicago who are compelled to arrest certain well +known criminal characters, cheat justice even after the arrests are made. +They send the criminals to certain corrupt criminal lawyers. Then when the +case comes to trial, the policemen lose their memories and do not remember +the incriminating circumstances under which their prisoners were taken. +These policemen receive a percentage, amounting to about fifty per cent, +on the cases which they give to this class of shysters. + +Could Chicago have a deeper blot of shame, dishonor and disgrace on her +escutcheon than the present police department? + +Can the condition be remedied? + +Is there hope that some day criminals may be locked behind barred doors +that gold cannot pick? + +There is always hope while honest men and women live and struggle to build +up a city to rear their children unsullied. The police department is only +one part of a great slave system. The evil is back at the ballot box. It +is the old and only solution here as elsewhere, in the conditions that +make Chicago the "wickedest city in the world." + +That solution is the annihilation AT THE BALLOT BOX of the powers of vice, +graft and sin,--the Vice Trust with its Directorate of Ten. + +The civic conscience will arouse itself from its lethargy and some day +purge out the evils that have thrived so prosperously for so many years. + + + + +CHAPTER X. + +What Are You Going To Do About It? + +The Cause of the Great Evils--A Warning--The Duty of Parents--Conclusion. + + +Christ, prostrate at Gethsemane and hanging in his death agony upon the +cross, prayed for a dying, decaying world's redemption. + +Chicago was included in the divine plan of things since the beginning. + +Chicago has not been forgotten. + +Though her sins are as scarlet, they shall be washed as white as snow. + +There is within the community a slowly awakening civic conscience. It +shall arouse itself to deathless activity and wrest the Windy City from +the forces that prey upon it. That is our prophecy. + +The religious thought, the religious mind, the religious heart are ready +to do battle for the God of righteousness. + +Behind the telling of this story of Vice, Graft and Political Corruption +has been but one predominating idea, the revelation of the truth about +Chicago today. + +There has been but one hope:--the arousing of Chicagoans to the fight +against corruption by revealing the terrible evils thriving about them and +the delivering of a warning to those in and out of the great metropolis +who, innocent and unsuspecting, might be trapped in the lures of sin, evil +and shame. + +On the great white, festering ulcer of Chicago's world of crime and vice, +we have turned the burning searchlight of truth. Into all the dark +corners, the pitfalls, the covered abysses and the paths that lure and +lead to Hell, has the light, blinding in its intensity, been thrown. + +In the beginning we started out to demonstrate the theory that vice and +crime as they exist and flourish today are so, because infamous and +degraded men have commercialized them. + +It has been shown that thousands of innocent girls and women are hurled +into the bottomless pits of Hell annually, not because of a social +viciousness that has no palliative, but because a coterie of Godless +creatures value their bodies and souls at so many dollars and cents. + +It has been shown that back of all the wickedness and evil of Chicago is +the monumental and gigantic Vice Trust. The body, composed of a +directorate of ten men who for years have fattened off the sins of fallen +women and the crimes of inhuman men, has been vivisected and analyzed in +all its component parts. + +Truly, we have painted Chicago as the wickedest city in the world. + +We have not held it up and cried "Shame" for the sake of sensation. + +We have sought to teach a lesson and utter a warning of vital import. + +If the reading of this book turns the thousands of women who yearly stand +on the brink of destruction, and saves them as an honor to the motherhood +of the race, then this book will have been of infinite value. + + +CHICAGO--WICKEDEST CITY IN THE WORLD. + +Its wickedness is the outgrowth of the terrible irreligious system of +commercialism that has reduced the sacred things of life to a filthy gold +and silver valuation. + +As long as men whose consciences are stifled by gold dust, whose souls are +Godless, and whose hearts are dry and hard as rock, control our ballot +box, so long shall Chicago live under an infamous stigma. + +When the ballot box is cleansed of fraud, then the forces of sin will be +dissipated and the Vice Combine of today dissolved. + +The "redlight" districts must stand as pesthouses where death feeds on the +bodies of men and women until the political foundations of the Vice Trust +are dynamited and destroyed. So, too, the saloons, the dance halls, the +thousands of dens of infamy and hell-holes, where the seed of sin is sowed +in the hearts of innocent girls. + +The police department, as we have shown, is a helpless, dependent, +parasitic body. The Vice Trust has enslaved it. Just as long as the Vice +Trust exists, so long will the police department do its bidding, while the +laws are forgotten and disobeyed and a taxpaying public is left to the +mercy of thieves and murderers. + +But-- + + +WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT? + +Rise up and in a body of Christian manhood and womanhood slay the monster +of hellish iniquity. + +But while the evil exists be prepared to fight against it for the sake of +yourselves and your children. + +We have told a horrifying story to save the pure souls and undefiled +bodies of your sons and daughters. + +Books have been written by the dozens on the question of White Slavery as +a warning to young girls and their parents as to how the infamous agents +of this soul and body traffic work. + +The warning is timely. + +But we have struck out into a broader pathway. + +But one third of the lost women today are the victims of the White Slave +Traffic. + +Two thirds of the girls who are dying slow deaths in the gilded dens of +infamy drifted there because they knew not the hideous, paralyzing truth: +because they dreamed not of the sorrow, shame, hunger, remorse and despair +that was to be their bitter mouthful from the chalice of life. + +To save the girls and women who in the future may form that two-thirds +battalion of human slaves has been our aim in treating of the scarlet +woman and her tribute to, and reward from the Vice Trust. + +Few girls who today are tottering drunkenly and uncleanly to a +prostitute's grave, ever dreamed of the fate in store as they sipped the +first glass of wine or felt the burning lips of an agent of Satan upon +their cheek. + +We have set about to tell every woman what is the inevitable end of the +life of shame and sin. + +To the girl who dreams of fine clothes, glittering jewelry, wine suppers +and association with men of brilliant character, down in the hell-holes of +Chicago, we say: + +It is the greatest lie Satan ever invented to wrest your souls from God +and give your bodies to the unhallowed grave. + +There is no hope to those who heed not the warning. + +A life of sin in Chicago, is a life of slavery to the Vice Trust. + +Over and over again on the rock of crime, the agents of that gigantic +combine will break each woman's body, taking flesh, pound by pound, and +blood, drop by drop, until the last merciless toll has been exacted on the +brink of the grave. + +When the mask is torn off, there is nothing to lure in the life of the +underworld. + +It has been shown how the thousands of women in the segregated districts +are robbed of even the last dollar of their immoral earnings. + +To every father and mother we cry out: + +FOR GOD'S SAKE LET YOUR DAUGHTER KNOW THE TRUTH BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE! + +Tell her of the pitfalls that are ever about her; teach her the horror and +ignominy of the life of sin that may be the consequence of one night in a +cafe, or in an evil dance hall. + +Put this book into her hands so that she may go forth to battle with the +powers of evil and pass through the white fire unscathed. + + +FOREWARNED IS FOREARMED. + +To be prepared for life's battle is the first victory. + +If your daughter in the future is to make her living in the big city, +prepare her for the temptations that will beset her. + +The truth may be an awful revelation to her, but the facts set forth in +this book, showing the fate of the scarlet woman who dreamed of love, +luxury and pleasure, and plunged into the lake of infamy, may save her +from a similar fate. + +If you will save yourself, mother and father, from sitting about the +fireplace, wondering in the aching sorrow of your heart, as to where your +rosy-cheeked, bright-eyed daughter is, teach her the facts as we have set +them forth. + +Teach her that it is not the White Slave Traffic she must dread alone. +Teach her that it is the place of amusement that seems innocent, the +drinking of pleasant drinks, the association with characterless men. + +Once she tastes the fruit that is forbidden, the rest is days and nights +of drifting on and on until the whirlpool of vice swallows her. + +For the sake of a glorious motherhood, for the sake of a new generation of +men and women who shall make earth a picture of the eternal Paradise, let +your daughter know the horrors of sin in a large city. + +All that has been said of the girl applies to the parent and the boy. + +The boy here and the one who comes to Chicago must also know of the paths, +luring and attractive, that lead direct to the gates of Hell. + +As you tuck your darling into his bed tonight, think of his future. + +To be great he must be honest. To be a leader he must be pure of heart. To +be a true citizen he must be filled with the love of a true and chaste +womanhood, a despiser of mercenary ideals, an advocate of good government +and a supporter of inflexible and just laws. + +He will carry on his struggle in the maelstrom of a large city, possibly +Chicago. + +Is it fair to hurl him into the midst of temptations without weapons to +fight the demons of sin, crime, vice and corruption? + +Tell him the truth. Let him read the truth. + +Every young man should know the evils which wait ever ready to trap him. + +He should know of the great Vice Trust, of its system of slavery, of its +power and scope of operation, of its daily bartering of flesh and blood, +of its alliance with the dishonest gambling combine. + +Then he will be prepared to gain the ranks of those who will battle +unwearyingly and ceaselessly against the monster. + +Better that your daughter should sleep today underneath the green sward in +the country church yard, in the city cemetery, than be the slave of a +dastardly vice system, wearing her flesh away, damning her soul and eating +out her heart for her vice masters. + +Better that your boy should be taken from you in the flush of early +manhood than that he should grow up to fall a hopeless victim to the curse +of a great city. + +God gave you your child. He gave you a terrible responsibility--the +salvation of that child's soul. + +Therefore, prepare him or her for the battle "that goeth on unending to +the tomb." + +We have told the story of a City Defiled, of a city given over to the +powers of darkness. We have shown the existence of a Vice Body and how it +protects and feeds its thousands of slaves, permitting them to live to +turn more drops of blood into gold for them. + + +A PICTURE OF CHICAGO. + +The story is a picture of Chicago, drawn only after the most thorough +investigation, but we venture to say that investigation would reveal the +same conditions in all the larger cities. + +Sincerely we pray we have done good. Our exposure was undertaken with a +sense of duty to the 2,000,000 residents of Chicago and to the thousands +that swarm into her gates daily. + +Chicago needs civic leaders, civic martyrs,--men and women who will lead +the army of Christian warriors to battle; men and women who will lay down +their lives that their homes may be without peril from the terrible vice +plague,--that their children may never know the face of sin and vice. + +Chicago is full of latent good, religious enthusiasm, moral courage. It +needs to be aroused. + +One concerted blow struck at the head of the monster Vice would cause its +death. + +Let Chicago's Christian population strike the fatal blow. + +Let us engage in an honest rebellion with patriotism to our children, our +country and our God, in our hearts. + +Overthrow the Dynasty of Vice! Overthrow the corrupt political system that +established and today sustains the Vice Trust! + +Voice is without power adequately to describe the inferno that burns about +us and daily offers to the god of the pagans as a propitiatory sacrifice +the souls of men and women. + +The human mind, if it could conceive the real horror of the meaning,--Vice +Trust,--would be paralyzed by the revelation. + +Chicago needs human redeemers,--God-inspired men and women. + +Human persistency, concerted effort, backed by unconquerable wills and +hearts that hold God as a perpetual visitant, cannot fail. + +We of this generation have a sacred duty. + +That duty is the scourging of the Vice combine and the cleansing of +Chicago. That duty devolves on the reform leaders and their thousands of +Christian followers. + + +THE STORY IS CONCLUDED. + +The story is concluded. The trail of graft has been followed from the +ballot box to the dive, from the dive to the house of prostitution, from +the house of prostitution to the gambling hole and on up to the houses of +those debased public men and people-appointed guardians of the law, who +are today weighted down with the gold, created by the melting of vice, sin +and crime in the melting pot of the underworld. + +Chicago waits for salvation. + +Who shall bring it the "tidings of great joy"? + +Every father and mother, every man and woman, every youth and maiden. + +As a mighty army let us go forth. As a mighty army, with God's armor upon +us, using all the means at our command, let us meet and conquer the +enemy. + +With hearts thrilling with the horror of thousands of souls precipitated +to endless darkness, with souls full of divine charity for our brothers +and sisters, let us annihilate the Vice Trust and its minions. + +Let the battle cry be-- + +The Universal Brotherhood, all for God and God for all. + +In the place of dives let us have gardens; in the place of dens of infamy, +playgrounds for a growing generation. + +The revelation has been made. Now is the time of expurgation. + +From the Wickedest City in the World, Chicago may become through +persistent and systematic attack on its Vice Trust-- + +THE CITY BEAUTIFUL OF ALL NATIONS. + + + + +REAL ISSUE LITERATURE + +Lithographed in Colors. + + +STAMPS--1 in. x 7/8 in. + + 25 for $0.05 Postage extra 1c + 500 for .75 Postage extra 2c + 1000 for 1.25 Postage extra 4c + + +BUTTONS--36 ligne. + + 2 for $0.05 Postage extra 1c + 100 for 1.50 Postage extra 8c + 500 for 4.50 Express extra + 1000 for 7.50 Express extra + + +POST CARDS--3-1/4 in. x 5-1/2 in. + + 3 for $0.05 Postage extra 2c + 100 for .75 Postage extra 16c + 500 for 1.75 Express extra + 1000 for 3.00 Express extra + + +CALENDER CARDS--3-1/4 in. x 5-1/2 in. + +Pad 2-3/16 in. x 1-1/4 in. + +Place to print name of local organization. + + 1 for $0.05 Postage extra 1c + 3 for .10 Postage extra 2c + 25 for .65 Postage extra 4c + 100 for 2.00 Postage extra 15c + + +PLEDGE CARDS--6-7/8 in. x 3-3/8 in. + +Including a coupon 1-1/2 in. wide, to be retained by Church. + + 2 for $0.05 Postage extra 1c + 25 for .40 Postage extra 4c + 100 for 1.00 Postage extra 10c + 500 for 2.75 Express extra + 1000 for 4.00 Express extra + + +MOTTO CARDS--8-1/2 in. x 11 in. + +Containing the Picture, the Poem, "The Message of the Picture," and the +Motto, "Grit Wins." + + 1 for $0.10 Postage extra 2c + 3 for .25 Postage extra 3c + 25 for 1.25 Postage extra 10c + 100 for 4.00 Postage extra 40c + + +HANGERS--17 in. x 23 in. + + 1 (in mailing tube) $0.10 Postage extra 2c + 25 for .75 Postage extra 15c + 100 for 2.50 Express extra + 500 for 10.75 Express extra + 1000 for 18.00 Express extra + + +POSTERS--9-1/2 ft. x 7 ft. + + 1 for $0.25 Postage extra 8c + 25 for 6.00 Express extra + + +POSTERS--9-1/2 ft. x 7 ft. (Lettering only). + + 1 for $0.15 Postage extra 8c + 25 for 3.50 Express extra + +This poster contains these three simple statements: "Saloons Defy Law, +Saloons Encourage and Foster the White Slave Traffic, No Saloons Means +Prosperity." + +One color "Real Issue" cut for printing, + + 1-5/8 in. x 2-3/16 in 45c Postage extra 5c + +Large Quantities Special Prices. + +Address all communications to + + YOUNG PEOPLE'S CIVIC LEAGUE + 301-305 Security Bldg., S.E. Cor. Madison St. & Fifth Ave. + Chicago--Illinois. + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Vice Bondage of a Great City or +the Wickedest City in the World, by Robert O. Harland + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 43631 *** |