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 caf├ęs 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.]