In the row of houses running from Lake to Randolph street there are
approximately six hundred White Slaves, and diseased, crippled prostitutes
of the lowest class, dumped from the city's cleaner dives, and on that
night it was almost impossible to push one's way through the mass of men
and boys--whites, negroes, Turks, Polocks, etc., gathered in front of
these places of public abomination. At the corner of Randolph and Peoria
streets several earnest men and women were holding a little gospel
meeting, and, stopping with them, I counted during the thirty minutes I
stayed there six hundred and forty (approximately) men and boys stop in
front of or enter this horrible flesh market.
As I left the scene, a young girl in a drunken, filthy, diseased condition
slipped out of an alley and followed me, asking me to help her, and as we
sat on the steps of Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral, corner of Washington
boulevard and Peoria street, she told me the worst, most heart-breaking
story of wrong and vice and ruin I have ever listened to (see note.)[4]
As I left that West Side levee of vice I knew I had seen prostitution at
its lowest ebb and that from these holes of horror finally went those
awful alley women of the night to sell their soul and trail their black
disease to any young boy or drunken man who could give them a few cents or
even the price of a drink of whiskey.
Coming down Custom House Place one night about 10:30 o'clock I overtook,
without their knowledge, six boys, ranging from about twelve down to
perhaps seven years, three of whom I knew fairly well. Following them from
shadow to shadow, I gathered sufficient of their low-voiced conversation
to make me certain they had been holding an orgy in a nearby cellar or
basement with a drunken harlot, and that together they had paid her the
small sum of seventeen cents for this damning, soul-destroying commerce.
One boy, a lad of about nine years, had been wheedled by his companions
into paying ten cents of this sum and was arguing for the return of at
least a part of his money, because of the age and helplessness of the
woman and the =extreme short time= allowed him by his companions in his
relations with her.
* * * * *
Mr. J. J. Sloan, when he was superintendent of the John Worthy School,
which is the local juvenile municipal reformatory, reported that one-third
of the street boys sent to him were suffering from the loathsome diseases
and distempers of the red-light district, nor is this to be wondered at
when we consider the fact that sexual commerce may be purchased almost
anywhere in South State street and in the West Side alleys for the
remarkably low price of ten cents, or even a glass of beer or whiskey,
from the gonorrheal, syphilitic denizens thrown out long ago from the
better class houses of prostitution to live off of the half-drunken men
and boys to be found in swarms along South State, Halsted and South Clark
streets.
Almost invariably, the street boy haunting these underworld sections of
our city is first led into sexual sin by one of the crippled, half-rotten,
yet painted vampires of the streets whose only care or hope is a crust of
free lunch and enough whiskey or "dope" to drown for a time at least the
last throb of heart and conscience and keep life a little longer in the
wretched body, and the boy having purchased for a small fee his own
destruction trails out again into the night and on into disease and crime
and prison, and finally death.
The average parent of to-day has little idea of the temptations which
constantly surround and beset the growing boy. I recall a case in Des
Moines, Iowa, where a little degenerate girl of sixteen caused the moral,
and in several cases physical, ruin of five young boys, all this happening
in an exclusive East Side neighborhood and under the watchful care of
honest parents and friends, so what must be the temptation thrown out to
the young boys of our city when through block after block of our central
districts they must come in contact with those whose only mission is to
ruin and debauch.
It should be the direct object, morally and physically, of every father
and mother in this city to banish these parasites--these leeches who suck
the life blood of our boys--from Chicago's streets.
Listen, father, mother, there are thirty thousand pure, dearly beloved
young girls growing up in our midst to-day who within five years must,
under the present business system of White Slavery, put aside father,
mother, home, friends and honor, and march into Chicago's ghastly flesh
market to take the place of the thirty thousand helpless, hopeless,
decaying chattels who now daily, behind bolts and bars and steel screens
(see note[5]), satisfy the abominable lust of (approximately) two hundred
and ten thousand brutal, drunken adulterers.
I believe, as I write, that the final solving of this reeking, hideous
question lies in the moral and Christian teaching and protection of the
growing girls of our Land. I believe in a rigidly enforced law that keeps
girls under legal age and unattended, off the down town streets at nights
after a reasonable hour. Harry Balding, the convicted White Slaver, in his
confession before Judge Newcomer and State's Attorney Roe, said:
"We would be sent out by resort keepers to work up some girls, for
whom we were paid from $10 to $50 dollars each, though the cash bonus
was much more. The majority of them were girls we met on the streets.
We would go around to the penny arcades and nickel theaters, and when
we saw a couple of young girls we would go up and talk with them. I
will say for myself--I never took a girl away from her home; the
girls I took down there I met in the stores or on the streets."
There is a league of Masonry worldwide that makes it possible for a Mason
anywhere, in trouble or distress, to raise his hand toward the heavens
with a certain sign, and if there be a brother Mason within reach, that
brother, no matter of what nationality, kindred or tongue, is sworn to
give him all needed protection. Listen, father, mother, sister; listen,
brother!
To-day from beneath Chicago's awful moral sewerage system, which has
sucked their hearts and souls under, thirty thousand trembling hands are
held up to High Heaven and to you for help, hands reeking with the blood
on which some whore monger has fattened, the hands though of your sisters
and of mine. And I believe that here in Chicago, the greatest market for
White Slaves on the Continent, should be formed a league that would become
world-wide, of earnest, law-abiding men and women whose efforts, united
with those of the proper police, municipal and Federal authorities, would
make it practically impossible for a girl to be sold into or compelled to
lead an immoral life, and through whose influence such open,
publicly-protected flesh markets as our red-light and levee districts
would be banished forever from Chicago streets. And I believe with all my
heart that this can only be accomplished by education, by agitation, by
legislation, by the ballot and by the power of God, directing a great
national army of well informed, moral and Christian men and women against
this vast, thoroughly organized, well administered and heavily financed
public horror of our Republic.
I believe in helping, God knows, with heart and hand and money every
fallen, or as one has put it, every "knocked down" woman in our Land whom
there is the slightest chance to help in any way; but I believe, first of
all, in using every known measure =to keep our girls from falling=.
You and I live beneath the only flag in all the world that has never known
defeat, and the very basic principle upon which that flag is built is
human liberty and human protection, and so by personal work and
co-operation with every other reform and labor organization for the
uplifting of womanhood, by song and by prayer and the Power of the Cross,
let us set ourselves to help these helpless ones in our midst until the
angels shall take up the story of shame and bitterness and wrong and bear
to all the world and to Heaven itself the swift acknowledgment that you
are your brother's keeper.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: The above picture is from a Flashlight Photograph taken by
the author and is a side view of 114 Custom House Place. The demolishing
of 116 Custom House Place and several adjacent buildings gave the chance
of a life time in securing this and many other photographs. The
demolishing of these houses, which up to three years ago were used
exclusively for purposes of prostitution, brought to view a perfect
network of bars, screens and steel doors (see heavy steel door at right of
cut) scarcely dreamed of before as existing outside of our State
Penitentiaries.]
The Only Place of
Its Kind
In Chicago
_Five Thousand and Forty Night's Lodging_ and
over Six Thousand Meals furnished to
_Homeless Women_ by the