CHAPTER IV.

RE-ELECTION OF MAYOR--FALSE ISSUE UPON WHICH RE-ELECTED--VICES IN

CHICAGO--"BLIND PIGS"--PROTECTED BY POLICE--WHERE SITUATED--HOW

CONDUCTED--CLASSES--DRUG STORES, BAKERIES, BARNS--REVENUE TO

POLICE--LOCATED NEAR UNIVERSITIES--LIEUTENANT OF POLICE CONVICTED FOR

PROTECTING--COCK FIGHTING--BUCKET SHOPS--WOMEN DEALERS--POOL

ROOMS--POLICE PLAY--PULLING OF, FARCICAL--VIEWS OF CHIEF OF POLICE--

PLAYERS--LANDLORDS--BOOK MAKING--ALLIANCE BETWEEN, AND POLICE AND

LANDLORDS--NEW YORK AND CHICAGO--CHICAGO POLICE FORCE WORST--HOLD UP

MEN--METHODS--VICTIMS--POLICE SLEEP--MAYOR'S FELICITATIONS, APRIL 11,

1899--ACCOUNTS OF HOLD UPS, SAME DAY--CLASSES OF HOLD-UP MEN--STRONG

ARMED WOMEN--STREET CAR CONDUCTORS ROBBED--ICE CHEST AND OVENS FOR

PRISONS--HAIR CLIPPERS--PROTECTION TO CRIMINALS--"SAFE BLOWERS'

UNION"--FAKES--PANEL HOUSES--BADGER GAMES--NUDE PHOTOGRAPHS--OBSCENE

LITERATURE--CONFIDENCE MEN--DIPLOMA MILLS--GAMBLING--WOMEN'S DOWN TOWN

CLUBS--SEXUAL PERVERTS--OPIUM JOINTS.

That public opinion can be aroused on any question deemed of importance to

the municipal welfare finds abundant confirmation in the history of

Chicago, and that that opinion can make itself felt at the polls has but

recently been most remarkably demonstrated. Admittedly deficient, both by

friend and foe, in public assemblages called in behalf of its retention in

power; permitting the violation of the law, in all its departments; openly

consenting to the unrestrainted lechery of the debauched classes, the wide

open running of gambling houses, pool rooms and disorderly houses; aiding

by its refusal, or neglect, to stop the levying by the police of

protection rates upon poker rooms, crap games, pool rooms and dens of that

class, the pitfalls and snares set for the young men of the town;

assessing for political purposes the keepers of disreputable resorts of

all kinds, and the employes of the city under civil service rules in

defiance of a law sternly prohibiting that demoralizing practice; an

administration appealed to, and received, the support of nearly a majority

of the whole people, upon one fictitiously dominant issue, under which all

others were adroitly sheltered and wholly hidden from view.

That issue which concerned the people as an incorporated body, rather more

than as individuals, was practically non-existing. The power to invade

the rights of the people had been destroyed by State legislation. In the

absence of new legislation, the extension of railroad franchises is now an

impossibility, except under the terms of the existing charter. No

legislation can be obtained in enlargement of such municipal power, until

the next general assembly shall have convened in January, 1901, unless a

special session should be called for that particular purpose, the

probability of which is too remote to be considered. Meanwhile the new

administration which will be carried on for the next two years by

practically the same men as for the past two years, can find no refuge

behind an issue of supposedly overwhelming importance to hide its neglect

of others, which affect, if not directly, yet indirectly, the financial

interests of the city. Those matters, to which the administration of the

city must now give its attention, concern the purity of municipal

legislation; the proper enforcement of the laws in all departments of the

city government; no interference in matters of education; no attempt at

the control of the civil service commission in the strict enforcement of

the law creating it; the proper letting of contracts, and the preservation

of pay-rolls from manipulation and fraudulent swelling. The purity of

municipal legislation is assured by the election of a number of aldermen

whose records as citizens warrant the prediction that they, joining with

an already trusty minority, for the ensuing year at least, will conserve

public rather than private interests, guided by the promptings of each

individual conscience. There will be no opportunity to filch from them for

party ends, or for personal advancement, due public acknowledgment of

their integrity and ability. But the enforcement of the laws governing

municipal administration in its several departments; the proper

disbursement of its appropriation funds for street improvements, scavenger

service, street and alley cleaning, public buildings and parks, etc.; the

management of the school-board by its own officials, free from political

suasion; of the civil service commission along the lines contemplated by

the law free from party dictation, and the elevation of the police force

to the plane of its non-political duties, for the prevention of the

spread of vice and indecency, the repression of crime, the protection of

life and property, are all matters, the non-attention to which can no

longer be excused upon the theory of the necessity of first destroying an

attempted private seizure of the public streets, a theory which has gone

to its destruction by the repeal of an obnoxious law, under which seizure

might have been accomplished.

So far as the suppression of vice is concerned, the initial duty of

municipal administration is the education of the police in their duties as

imposed upon them by law. For years, under every administration, with

infrequent, feeble attempts at reform, that force has been rapidly

becoming a fleet of harveyized steel battleships, sailing under the

flaunting flag of vice, fully armed, and loyally serving the kings of the

gamblers, the queens of the demi-monde, and their conjoined forces of

thieves, confidence men, cappers, prostitutes, philanderers, etc., etc. It

is not in the least fearful of public opinion. If wealth can snap its

fingers and cry aloud "The public be d--d," so can the force laugh in its

sleeve, and, aping wealth, echo "To hell" with the public.

It is not different in Chicago from what it is in New York. The temporary

disappearance from the "Tenderloin" of many of its flagrant vices, and the

supposed purification of the police force following the astounding

revelations of the Lexow committee, have given way under the ceaseless and

insidious assaults of criminal and vicious influences. A New York journal

recently said: "The reports to the Society for the Prevention of Crime

show that the city is in worse condition than ever before. No paper would

dare print all that is done openly in dens of vice that are tolerated by

the police. The reports seem almost incredible; they show that with few

exceptions the police force is corrupt from top to bottom. Gambling

houses, disorderly houses and dives of the worst description flourish

openly, a regular schedule of rates has been established which the police

force charge for protection.

The flagrancy of crime which brought about a political revolution five

years ago exists today as it did then. In some ways there is even less

attempt at concealment than there was in the ante-Lexow days; in others

the vice and immorality is more hidden. But it is here, and instead of

there being one "Tenderloin" ulcer on the city there are now four, each

fully as extended as was that old hotbed of vice."

What the police force of New York was before the investigation of the

Lexow committee, so the police force of Chicago then was; and what the New

York force is today, so is the Chicago force. A new investigation is about

to begin in New York city. Watch its revelations day after day. Change the

names, and for every police infamy revealed, every unspeakable vice

disclosed, every violation of law recorded, their counterparts can be

found in Chicago, intensified, not modified.

The crimes which these "coppers" should, but do not, give their services

to repress, are numerous, if minor in character. In flagrant cases of

commission arrests may follow, and often do. It is the unused means of

prevention deadened by the purchased indifference of the officers, that is

the most glaring of police sins.

The location of "blind pigs," or those places in which liquor is sold

without a license, both within prohibition districts as well as without

them, must either be known to officers traveling beats whereon they

flourish, or such officers are too ignorant to belong to the ranks. It is

not ignorance of the officers that prevents their suppression. Superiors

are paid a price for non-interference. The patrolman follows his orders,

permits the illicit traffic to be carried on by those who pay that price,

and reports only those who do not pay it, but who seek to conduct the

prohibited business without contribution to the permissive fund.

In the most respectable settlements of the city, in the very heart of

prohibition districts, in which there would be spasms of protest and

whirlwinds of indignation if it were even suggested that the lines

separating the prohibitive from the non-prohibitive districts should be

abolished, are to be found the highest grade of the breed of "blind pigs."

They are the brilliantly lighted, well arranged, and aristocratic types of

the modern drugstore, where, as the evening shades descend, a band of

friendly Indians assembles to discuss the events of the day, conduct wars,

shape the destinies of nations, and draw their inspiration from spiritus

fermenti op., a drug commonly known, however, as whisky, when obtained

without a prescription at the bar of the ordinary licensed saloon. These

whisky jacks express amazement at the want of proper regulation of the

sale of liquor, while aiding in its unlawful traffic. They are typical

Archimagos; high priests of hypocrisy and deceit. They are the open

mouthed reformers who shout for a rigorous application of the law for the

regulation of saloons outside of their own prohibition districts, for the

maintenance of prohibition within those districts, and who wink at their

own infractions of the license laws, behind the prescription case--their

private bar.

This form of attack upon the license law exists all over the city, more so

perhaps in prohibition districts than without them, but each drug store,

as a rule, has its patrons from whom a yearly revenue is derived by the

accommodating and equally guilty proprietor who vends his drinks without

compliance with the law.

The other class of "blind pigs" owes its existence to a prearranged

bargain between a policeman and the members of that class, who, for the

entertainment of friends, and the turning of a penny, embark in the

business without fear of arrest. As the sale of liquor for use upon the

premises as a beverage is lawful when licensed, every combination to evade

a license is not only an evasion of the penalties of the license law, but

it is a conspiracy to rob the city of a portion of a large revenue,

sufficient almost to support the police force. The city is thus plundered

by its own servants who take its place in fixing the amount of the

license, and who appropriate it when collected to their own use.

Some of these institutions are to be found in the rear of bakeries, in the

costly barns of the wealthy classes with coachmen as bartenders, and at

the gates of the silent cities of the dead.

They are a fruitful source of revenue to the police, and, consequently,

difficult of discovery, since their patrons must be well known as

non-squealers, and the police are too loyal to turn informers.

They exist in surrounding country towns and in classic neighborhoods, in

Evanston and Hyde Park particularly. Both of these localities are the

seats of institutions of learning; the Northwestern University at the one,

and the University of Chicago at the other.

A Lieutenant of Police was arrested for extorting money for protection

from the keeper of a blind pig in Hyde Park. It developed, in the course

of his trial, that he was to pay part of the insurance premium to a

brewery company. To such an extent has this blackmailing scheme gone, that

its proceeds are distributed not alone among patrolmen and superior police

officials, but also to brewing companies united in a trust affecting the

price and the quality of the poor man's beverage.

The national pastime of the Filipinos is of common occurrence in Chicago,

and escapes the watchful eyes of the police, although its uniformed

members pass the door of the saloon with which the principal pit is

connected. The entering crowds, and the crowing of "birds," never fail to

announce the on-coming of the main, except to sightless eyes and deafened

ears. No underground or out of hearing place is selected for these

exhibitions of cock fighting. They are held in the rear of saloons, or in

barns or stables connected therewith by covered ways of approach. One

geographical division of the city is generally pitted against the other.

Usually the indignant police, even with early information of the time and

place where and when this inhuman amusement is to be held, arrive upon the

scene when the fight has ended, the lights extinguished, and the sports

scattered. Although the city council possesses the charter power to

prevent these disgraceful combats, that power remains unacted upon, and

the offense falls within the definition of disorderly conduct, the penalty

prescribed by ordinance, upon conviction for that offense, being a fine of

from one to one hundred dollars.

Bucket shops have nearly disappeared from the public gaze. They are,

nevertheless, still carried on in secret, for the purpose of enabling men

and women to gratify their natural propensity for gambling. The active

efforts of one man, having the courage of his convictions and with the

support of a commercial organization, which is the only competitor of

these gambling concerns, have kept them in comparative subjection. Yet,

such is the resistance made by them, that this man, aiding also in the

discovery and punishment of gambling in general, ran the risk of the

destruction of his life, his home, and the loss of the lives of his

family, by the explosion of a bomb thrown at night into, or against, his

house, by some miscreant or miscreants, with the evident intent of

"removing" him as an impediment to the transactions of their murderous

employers.

The police, after much effort to discover the perpetrators of the outrage,

finally dismissed it from further examination, upon the theory that this

man had himself "put up the job," to accomplish the destruction of his

wife and children, and of his own life. Through this heroic man's efforts,

together with those of a fearless and outspoken clergyman, as in New York,

and not by reason of police assistance, but in spite of police resistance,

the convictions in the criminal court, in the past year for gambling, are

wholly due. The latest accessible reports show that in the year 1897 the

number of places closed during the two preceding years was one hundred and

forty-six, and that at the end of 1897 there were twenty-nine still in

existence, including tape games and fraudulent brokers' haunts. These

institutions possess a peculiar fascination for women. Three of them,

patronized wholly by the female sex, were found under one roof. Of the

leading one, a writer in a city daily newspaper, in a vivid description of

its general surroundings, said:

"The atmosphere of the rooms is stifling and poisonous. The odor is rank

with the effluvia of bodies, which, in many cases, present the appearance

that would justify the belief that they have been strangers to the bath

for weeks. To go into these rooms out of the fresh outdoor world is to

almost suffocate at first. * * * The effects are plainly visible in the

faces of the women. They had, with few exceptions, leathery, sallow skins,

drawn and tense features, hard lines about the mouth, and wrinkles between

the eyes, while the eyes themselves had acquired a restless, half cunning

expression, composed of cupidity and uncertainty. As for their nervous

systems they are wrecks. Take the hand of any woman in those rooms,

especially if she has just made an investment, and the nervous vibration

is plain--her hand quivers, her whole body is tense, her bulging eyes fix

themselves on the board."

Alluding to the men who hang around, furnishing "pointers," and looking

for an invitation to a fifteen-cent lunch, one of the speculating women

said of them, "These men are the lowest creatures who come up here; most

of the women are respectable, but these men are lazy, dirty, ignorant and

infinitely low, and all they are after is to get money and a free meal out

of women."

"The ages of the women range from twenty-five to seventy years. The older

women peered anxiously through their spectacles at the board and whispered

quietly to a companion; wisps of ragged gray hair escaped and waved below

the little black bonnet. Heavy, thick-soled shoes stuck out from the hem

of the modest black gowns; they grasped worn silk reticules in their

nervous fingers, and got out the small sum which, in most instances, they

did not have the nerve to invest."

Describing the condition in life of these women, the reporter was told

that some had been wealthy, and were now poor through speculation; while

"more than two-thirds are the mothers of families and are eking out a

little income, in many instances supporting an idle, worthless man, who

should himself be out in the world earning a living."

"If they make 75 cents a day it is a big day for them," said the

reporter's informant. "How little you realize the state to which many of

these women are brought! Many of them are almost penniless. Frequently

they come here in the morning and borrow money with which to begin the

day's operations."

Pool rooms, as a general rule, run wide open; occasionally they are

"closed for repairs" caused by a police raid, forced by some flagrant

outrage against the law. They flourish in the most public places, with no

restriction upon admission to any visitor. The daily races all over the

country are posted on large black boards covering the walls, with a list

of the horses entered and a minute of the odds which will be given or

demanded by the house, from which the room's judgment of the "favorite"

can be ascertained.

The money is handled openly, bet openly, and paid openly. City detectives

assist in their management, and "play the races." Raids contemplated by

the police are tipped off to the managers, and when the officers arrive

the game has closed.

The incidents attending an actual pull are in the main more laughable than

impressive. The "hurry up" wagon takes its load away, and before many

moments have elapsed the same faces are seen again returning to the one

attractive spot in their daily lives. These rooms are munificent

contributors for protection. They pay from $600 to $1,000 per month. They

hold back telegraphic messages of the results of races until their

confederates have placed bets. They are patronized by women of,

apparently, all classes. In one raid eighteen women were captured, fifteen

of whom claimed to be married. All of them, of course, gave fictitious

names; three had babies in their arms; three claimed they were wives of

policemen; a few were well dressed, and all were undoubtedly devotees of

gambling, sporting women who fancied they had discovered the way to lead

an easy and money-making life.

The following extract, taken from the examination of the head of the

police force of the city, will show the view entertained by that official

of the nature of his duties, in this regard.

Before the senatorial committee appointed January 6th, 1898, to

investigate scandals in connection with the police force, its Chief was

interrogated and answered as follows, viz.:

Q. How many pool rooms have you pulled, how many men have been arrested

and convicted for pool selling since you have been chief?

A. I understand one fellow has been found guilty and fined $2,000.

Q. But he was arrested by the Sheriff of Cook County, indicted by the

grand jury because the police would not do it?

A. I don't know whether it was because the police would not do it, or

because they could not do it.

Q. Well, it was because they did not do it. Do you mean to say that you,

as Chief of Police, with 3,500 sworn men----

A. Don't say 3,500 men. It is 2,500 men; don't make it quite so strong.

Q. Do you say to this committee, that with 2,500 sworn men in this city

you are powerless to stop the public running of pool rooms in this city?

A. I will say that I am powerless to stop a man from making hand books, or

selling pools confidentially to his friends.

Q. Do you know of any pool rooms being conducted in this city during the

months of October, November and December?

A. I don't know of my own knowledge; I never was in one.

Q. Did any of the 2,500 men ever report anything of that kind to you?

A. I never had any definite report on that subject.

Q. They were giving the people a liberal government?

A. Yes, things were running very easy.

* * * * *

Q. I will get you to state if it is not a fact that a large number of pool

rooms were running openly with telegraph operators in the place, pools

were being sold, money paid, and everything running at full blast?

A. I never was present; I don't know anything about it.

Q. Was there any complaint to you of that kind of thing being done?

A. No particular complaint at all. The newspaper boys often came around

and said there was pool selling going on at different places.

Q. Could not the police of the city of Chicago as readily have found these

people who have been fined for gambling as the Sheriff?

A. Well, I don't know. I presume if a _desperate effort had been made to

look that kind of thing up we might, possibly, have been successful_.

Through these resorts, which offer inducements for betting on distant

horse races, the confidential clerk, the outside collector for business

houses, the employes of banks, young men in all grades of employment

involving the handling of the funds of their employers, together with the

men of moderate salaries, working men, and the large number of sports who

live by their wits, are assisted in a downward career, until defalcations,

destitution in homes, and a still more acute phase of living on one's

wits, are reached, followed by flight, arrest, conviction, imprisonment,

the breaking up of homes, and the necessity for the resort of the broken

sport to the tactics of the hold-up man.

Yet they are tolerated, until their shameless management becomes a public

scandal. Then follows a pull, a period of purification of very slight

duration, and again a slow start. Speedily again they are in as full

gallop as are the horses whose names they post, and as around the race

track the horses go, so around the vice track the pool rooms go. The

losing patrons pass under the wire at the end of their foolish struggle to

win, some to the penitentiary, some to despair, and some to suicide.

The keeper and the landlord who knowingly permits his premises to be used

for the selling of pools, are, under the laws of the State of Illinois

enacted into an ordinance by the Municipal Code, guilty of a misdemeanor,

and are liable to punishment by imprisonment in the county jail for a

period not longer than one year, or by a fine not exceeding $2,000, or

both.

The police make no complaints to justices for arrests, nor to their Chief,

according to his testimony. The keeper pays a high rent, while the

landlord, perhaps some sanctimonious deacon of a church, who thanks God

that he is not as other men are, accepts his monthly returns with unctuous

satisfaction, shouts his amens louder, confesses his sins more meekly, or

excuses his violation of the laws of the state with a more emphatic shrug

of his shoulders and a more fervid rubbing of his hands.

Book making, "in which the betting is with the book maker," and pool

selling, in which the betting is among the purchasers of the pool, they

paying a commission to the seller, are both denounced by the statute, and

the court of last resort of the state.

The unholy alliance between the police, the keeper of these law breaking

and despicable haunts, and the conscienceless landlord, could be summarily

dissolved. The police could be made the enemy of both. Their warm

friendship for, and silent participation in the profits of, the

partnership, can be destroyed by an executive order which needs but to be

issued, with no possibility of an early revocation, to be implicitly

obeyed by the sellers and "bookies." If not obeyed, then drastic measures

within the power of the police to employ should be applied. As these lines

are written, some evidence is visible of action by the police. A raid has

been made! The inspector, under whose order it was conducted, said, "The

sooner these men begin to learn that I mean what I say, the better it will

be for them. I want my officers to understand, also, that they will have

to be more vigilant." Threatening words, such as these, are common

utterances by police officials, but heretofore as their echo died away

their fierceness disappeared. No administration could lay claim to higher

praise in any city in the land than that its police force is the guardian

of the people's rights, the stern foe of crime, and the relentless

suppressor of vice and indecency through the enforcement of the laws

created for that suppression.

If this is done in Chicago, a few of the devil's aids in the diffusion of

wickedness will disappear from sight so completely that Asmodeus would

vainly tear off the roofs of the houses in a search after proofs of his

demoniacal power.

While the police force is so closely leagued with pool rooms, and

subjected to the power of the money their keepers are willing to pay for

permission to carry on their demoralizing business, it is a matter of

impossibility to destroy them. Vice works incessantly; the means for its

destruction are employed spasmodically. New York City furnishes an

astonishing instance of the political power exercised by a combination of

the law breakers.

The Lexow committee demonstrated the almost total depravity of an officer,

charged with a command over its "Tenderloin."

The city labored and Greater New York was born. It would seem that greater

crime and greater political power in the criminal classes were born at

the same birth. That officer became Chief of Police of the expanded

metropolis. He had been indicted under the scathing revelations against

him made by the Lexow committee, and yet despite the evidence of his

depravity, and the protests of the Society for the Prevention of Crime, he

was, through the power of politics and crime, foisted upon the new

municipality as the ranking officer of its police organization. The result

was inevitable. New York, the greater, is now declared to out-Satan New

York, the lesser. A new committee is probing into its police management.

At the outset of its proceedings it wrung from this officer replies so

self condemning as to stagger one's faith in the possibility of such a

quality as obedience to official oath in a police officer.

The Chief was asked: Q. Perhaps you can tell how it is and why it is, that

even while this committee is sitting in session here, the pool rooms are

open all around us, and I have in my pocket money that my men won in the

pool rooms?

A. Perhaps some of my men have it, too. They are looking after it just the

same as you are.

Q. But the pool rooms are running?

The Chief did not answer, but complained to his questioner that he had not

been informed of the facts "officially."

The examination then proceeded as follows, viz.:

Q. Do you mean to say, as Chief of Police, with the men and money at your

command, you can't close the pool rooms?

"No," replied the Chief, "we do the best we can, as we did when you were a

Commissioner."

"I closed the pool rooms," shouted his questioner. "You did not," retorted

the Chief; "they were alleged to be, on reports of commanding officers,

then as now."

"Yes," said the questioner, "but there was some fatality about that

business, if you know what I mean."

"Some forced fatalities," sneered the Chief. "Well, sir," said the

questioner, "here are three great evils of importance--gambling houses,

pool rooms and policy shops--and you cannot recall from your own

recollection--you who are in charge of the enforcement of the laws--a

single arrest in any one of these classes of crimes within a month. What

do you do for your salary as Chief?"

A. "I look after the force as a whole; I look after all reports that come

in touching all matters of the kind you refer to and all kinds of crime."

The questioner called the Chief's attention to a newspaper and some

advertisements it carried. In spite of the questioner's declaration that

the paper was a Tammany organ, and that all Tammany men were supposed to

buy it and read it, the Chief declared that he never had done so. The

questioner made the Chief a present of a copy of the paper, and asked him

to read over the massage advertisements. The Chief thanked him and said,

"I will attend to these places because I do not believe in such disguises

for disorderly houses. Such places are usually in tenement houses and

flats. I will attend to them and drive them out."

"Will you make the same pledge about pool rooms," demanded the questioner

quickly?

"That I cannot promise," replied the Chief.

"Why can't you promise it?" asked the questioner.

"Because they conduct that sort of business in places where we can't get

at them, and you know it, but I will try and stamp it out."

Chicago and New York methods quite agree, with the advantage in favor of

New York. In the latter city, the Chief of Police "will try" to stamp pool

rooms out. In Chicago, the Chief, in his reply to similar questions, said:

"While a man may come to my office and give information that a certain

individual is violating the law somewhere and it is a trivial offense, I

do not pay so much attention to it as I do when a report reaches my office

that a man has committed a serious crime, such as murder, that a serious

crime has been committed on the outside. I should naturally abandon that

part of it, and take up the more serious offense, and I have been looking

up serious crimes, such as burglary, robbery and the hold-up people, and I

have made a desperate effort to suppress that."

It was in this connection reference was made by the committee to the fact

that one of Chicago's policemen had shortly before been arrested for

holding up a citizen and robbing him in the daylight hours, which called

forth the reply already quoted in these pages to the effect that this

particular star had been tried, that he was a member of the police force

for ten years, was a good officer, but got drunk and became a "little

indiscreet." For this he was dismissed from the force, but reinstated

because "many people" vouched for him. It seems almost incredible that

that man is today a member of Chicago's police force; yet such is the

shameful fact.

Without the aid of the telegraph, the daily newspaper and the race cards,

pool rooms and book making could not survive. They are the means of giving

vitality to this form of gambling. The telegraph furnishes the press with

"events" all over the country, upon which pools and books are made up. The

news of the result of a particular race is flashed by wire at once from

the race track to the pool rooms all over the land. There is scarcely a

daily newspaper in any city that does not devote a page of its issue to

sporting events. Many of them have their "forms" or "forecasts" of races,

which are the guesses of their sporting men as to the probable results of

each race to be run on a particular track. The race card is distributed

every evening throughout the city; to cigar stores, saloons and billiard

halls. It contains the "results" of the day, together with information as

to the entries for the following day's races. Through these sources the

sporting community keeps in touch with the world.

A Chicago afternoon newspaper upon the occasion of the opening of a race

track in an adjoining state presented in its issue its "Form of Today's

Races." To those unacquainted with the lingo of the track its guesses are

delightfully humorous.

Predicting the possible result of the first race, the form says: "B. L.

looks the best of the lot on paper. If the trip from the east did not take

the edge off H. S. he should win easily, as he showed considerable

sprinting ability in his last out. L. P. has a burst of speed which may

put her inside of the money and with a good boy up is worth a show bet.

The others are a poor lot and of uncertain quality, so that the finish

will probably be B. L., etc." Of the second it remarks: "Of these

youngsters which have started C. has been the most consistent and is

undoubtedly the best, but T. is rounding too rapidly and may run ahead of

the mark. F. A. is a sprinter, but if pinched does not like the gaff. M.

E. and M. are green ones, and this is the first time they have faced the

barrier, so there is no line on them. C. T. and F. A. should be the order

of the finish." It says of the third race: "M. is a soft spot, and, if

fit, she should win as she pleases. It looks as if the real race should be

for the place and the show money, and will likely be between M. and A. H.

and T. are also partial to the going, but as the latter has not started

recently, T. should be the better if any of the others named are

scratched. The result will likely be M. A., etc." Of another, a colt race,

its forecast is, "H. is such a good colt that he looks like a 2-to-5 shot

in this bunch, and that will be about what the books will lay against him.

Of course, he has dicky legs, but the soft undergoing will undoubtedly

suit his underpinning. The finish should be H. K., etc." The final race is

thus placed in the form: "At the best this is a bad lot, and hardly worthy

of doping, as so much depends on the jockeys and start that any one of the

probable starters has a chance to get the big end of the purse."

To this necessity has journalism come at last! While it urges the

suppression, in thundering tones, of all manner of gambling, it is driven,

by the necessity of competition, to aid the most injurious of gambling's

many attractive methods. Another Chicago newspaper, the columns of which

every morning contain the world's news of sporting events, said a short

time ago, editorially: "Chief K----'s assurance that he will do his best

to suppress gambling will be accepted in good faith. He has made a start

in that direction, and the farther he goes the more plainly he will see

that for the police to suppress gambling is a mere matter of lifting their

hands. Gambling of the sort that the police department is expected to

suppress does not flourish save by the connivance of police officers. It

is quite true that to extirpate the vice of gaming is beyond the power of

the police. Nobody has expected them to do that. While the board of trade

and the stock exchanges remain open one form of the vice will be practiced

publicly beyond the reach of the police. And so long as cards and dice

boxes are to be procured, degenerate human nature will practice the vice

in secret. But the police can stamp out the open and flagrant practice of

gambling in forms inhibited by the law as easily as they can wink at it.

It is a matter of saying "Yes" or "No." A poolroom or a policy shop may

open now and then, but it will quickly shut again if the police are in

earnest."

The assistance derived from the telegraph and newspaper by the gambling

fraternity is commented upon by a modern writer, his subject being "The

Ethics of Gambling." He remarks, "But it is time to emphasize the fact

that the real supports of the gambling habit in its present enormous

extent are the telegraph and the newspaper. Half the race courses in the

country would be abandoned almost immediately if newspapers were

forbidden to report on betting, and if telegraph offices declined to

transmit agreements to bet, or information which is intended to guide

would-be bettors. How this is to be done it is not for me to say. My

present object and duty are exhausted in pointing out the fact that the

national life is being deeply injured, the State seriously weakened by the

wide spread of the gambling habit, and further, that this habit in its

present extent and intensity, is nourished most by the daily press and the

telegraph. It must certainly be in the power of the State to deal with

this, the most potent instrument by which the gambling fiend fights his

way into home after home throughout the length and breadth of the

country."

"Hold up" men find Chicago their least dangerous and, perhaps, their most

profitable field of operations. In all the various forms of this robbery

upon the street in day or at night time, or in raiding saloons and stores,

it is merciless in its methods. Robbery accomplished, brutality follows.

The criminals who resort to it at night, not satisfied with acquiring

their victim's property, usually knock him unconscious with the butt end

of a revolver, with a billy or sand bag, or blind him with cayenne pepper,

and in that hapless condition leave him to be found, no matter what may be

the state of the weather. This form of criminality is a winter's

occupation. It is occasionally, but rarely, followed in the summer months.

Women are held up in the streets at midday, in the evening when returning

home from labor, on the street cars, and at the doors of their own homes,

and within them. No class is exempt from the attacks of these marauders.

The poor suffer with the rich. They are of such frequent occurrence that

it is believed not one-fourth of their number is reported to the police.

The inefficiency of the force to prevent them is proverbial, and that

inefficiency finds much of its origin in the utter disregard of the rules

of the department requiring patrolmen to travel their respective beats.

The discipline of the force in this respect is nothing; it is worn away by

abrasion.

The colder the night and the warmer the nearest saloon or kitchen range,

there will the patrolman be found. In the former case he is merely

dreaming of his duty; and in the latter, he is engaged in a terrific

struggle between love and duty. Some back door of a house of ill fame is

open to him for shelter, for wine, and oftentimes for food. The

good-hearted landladies of these abodes know full well that one way to

reach the patrolmen stationed in their neighborhood is through their

stomachs, not because they are officers, but because they are men. In

localities away from the bagnios, some servant girl, friendly to the

"copper," protects him from the inclemency of the weather. To her he gives

his time and his devotions at the city's expense. If on some, or on any

winter's night, an observation flight could be taken through the air, and

over the city, by the Chief, that official would believe his occupation

was gone; for, except here and there as some of his subordinates were

wending their way at the appointed hour to a patrol box to report, he

would fancy he was a general deserted by his army. Closer inspection

would, however, reveal to him that never an army had such comfortable

winter quarters as has his. While the patrolman thus enjoys his siesta,

or indulges in his love making, the hold up man lies in wait on the

unguarded beat, to slug and rob the first belated wayfarer whom he may

confront.

The number of hold ups in Chicago in the year 1898, it is believed,

exceeded in number those of any two large cities in the United States

combined. The press, in fact, claims that their number was greater than in

all of the cities of the United States. They were of almost daily

occurrence. They are just as numerous, and just as ingenious and murderous

in design, since the continued administration was inaugurated, as before.

In the morning edition of the daily press of April 11th, 1899, the

re-elected Mayor's felicitations to the council in his annual message

delivered on the previous evening were published in these words:

"The people of Chicago have reason to congratulate themselves on the

successful manner in which the police department has coped with crime. It

is acknowledged on all hands that Chicago is a singularly good place for

thugs and thieves to avoid, and this notwithstanding the fact that the

size of the police force is utterly inadequate."

The evening papers of the same date report the following as examples of

how the thieves and thugs avoid Chicago:

"L. was arrested early yesterday morning for alleged participation in a

daring hold up, which occurred near the corner of Van Buren and State

streets about an hour before. A cab containing Mr. and Mrs. L. B., who

live on Pine street, and Mrs. C. D., of North Clark street, approached the

curb. As the three occupants alighted four or five men rushed at them. One

drew a revolver and shouted: "Hands up." The other made a dash at Mrs. D.,

who displayed some valuable jewelry, and snatched a watch worth $225 and a

diamond ring valued at $125. The highwaymen then disappeared around the

corner."

"Attacked by Three Negroes.--Stanton Avenue police are looking for three

negroes who held up Albert T., of 37th street, at 33rd and Dearborn

streets last night and relieved him of $4.00 and a watch. T. was standing

under the shadow of a building at the corner when three negroes

approached him. One of them drew a revolver and threatened T., while the

other two searched him. Many people were passing at the time, but the

party escaped all notice in the deep shadows."

"As Thomas L. and Joseph S. left Ald. K.'s saloon early today, S. says he

was robbed of $2.45--all the money he had."

"Robbed in a Saloon.--August J., bound for Minneapolis from Finland, came

to Chicago last evening. He met a woman, and the two went to Samuel M.'s

saloon on State street, where J. claims the woman held him up at the point

of a revolver and took all his money--$25. J. reported the matter to the

Harrison street police, and Officers C. and S. arrested Albert B., the

bartender. He was arraigned before Justice F. today on a charge of being

accessory to robbery. The woman has not been arrested."

Following this, two men boarded an outgoing railroad train at night, and

at one of its stopping stations captured a passenger who was standing on

the rear platform of a coach, dragged him away, robbed him of a small sum

of money, a lady's gold watch, took a plain gold ring from his finger,

then bound and gagged him and threw him into an empty freight car near by.

Within three weeks after the publication of this effusive compliment to

the police, a citizen sent the following communication to an evening

paper, which, together with the comments of that paper upon it, is here

inserted, as the best criticism of the Mayor's optimistic view of the

efficiency of his police force:

"April 26, 1899.--Editor the J.: Not fewer than 15 flats and residences in

the district bounded by West Adams street, Kedzie avenue, Homan avenue and

Washington boulevard have been plundered recently. The thieves reside at

----, a fact well known to the police, but all the efforts of the

suffering tax payers are unavailing in having them arrested.

"The police authorities will not act. The rascals have been at their

present abode (----, first flat) since early last autumn. Their landlord

is (well, I won't mention his name) well known.

"Our community has become so terrorized that no one dares remain out after

dark. Can't you assist us in our troubles? The police don't act.

"RESIDENT OF THE DISTRICT."

The comments of the paper read as follows, viz.:

"The author of the above is a well-to-do West side manufacturer. He says

in a note which came with this communication: 'Do not under any

circumstances couple my name with it. We are all afraid of our lives,

believing that the thieves are so desperate that they would murder any one

disclosing their method and abode.'

This is the district in which George B. Fern and Cora Henderson met their

deaths under such mysterious circumstances.

Here is a partial list of the happenings of recent date in this one

neighborhood, the first four named cases being within one business block:

GEORGE B. FERN, dry goods merchant, 1393 West Madison street; found in his

store with bullet hole in his head, mask and revolver with one chamber

empty at his side; police say he committed suicide; coroner's jury

returned a murder verdict; the grand jury also declares it was a case of

murder.

CORA HENDERSON, blind woman, 1385 West Madison street; found dead in her

house, hole in her skull; murder theory worked upon by police; later

theory advanced that she might have met her death by a fall.

F. W., tailor, West Madison street; robbers drove up to his store in broad

daylight while he was eating in a restaurant next door and intimidated

clerk with revolver, loaded in tailor's cloth, drove away.

W. H. D., West Madison street, grocer; hole drilled in his safe; burglars

scared away when D. came to open store.

MRS. FRANK W., Washington boulevard, house entered; $200 stolen.

MRS. MARGARET D., Washington boulevard; house entered; $200 worth of

property taken.

MRS. WARREN F. H., Warren avenue; house entered; $500 worth of property

taken.

MRS. CHARLES C., Washington boulevard; hearing a noise at her front door,

went onto the porch; a burglar who had been trying to force an entrance

into the second story dropped at her side, revolver in hand; he escaped,

frightening off pursuers with his revolver.

DR. F. F. S., West Monroe street and Homan avenue; two men attempted to

hold him up in his office; frightened away by the arrival of a patient.

PROF. CHARLES E. W., Chicago Piano college; chased by mounted foot pad.

MRS. ELIZABETH H. T., M. D., Warren avenue; swindled out of $60 by men who

had a 'sure thing' on the races.

JOHN V., West Monroe street; swindled by same game.

WILLIAM H. P., bookkeeper for C. S. & Co., West Monroe street; house

robbed.

HERMAN W., West Monroe street; house robbed of diamonds, jewelry and

silverware; Mrs. W. coming home, encounters robbers as they were leaving;

they politely raised their hats and walked on.

H. S. B., real estate, West Adams street; candidate for president of M.

club; house robbed.

ARTHUR W. C., Illinois Credit Company, West Adams street; house robbed.

JOHN G., grocer; attempt made to swindle him out of $100 by men with 'tip'

on races.

The above list was obtained by a brief canvass of the neighborhood.

The house given as the abode of the "thieves" is situated right in this

neighborhood, which is one of the best residence districts. It is a gray

stone structure and is said to be owned by a well known West side

politician. In this place lives at least one of the men who have swindled

numerous West side residents of this district by means of the 'tips' on

the races. These men, it is said, have operated successfully for a year,

few of their victims making complaint on account of the unenviable

publicity the affair would thus attain. This gang, too, has headquarters

in a West Madison street block within a few doors of the Fern store.

This neighborhood is included in the Warren avenue police district. None

of the officers at this station, or any of the Central station detectives

familiar with the case, believes that the 'jockeys' have anything to do

with the 'holdups' and robberies of flats, and laugh at the idea advanced

by the author of the letter to The J--."

The names and addresses of these victims are printed in full in the

newspaper referred to, but for obvious reasons they are not used in

reproducing the article.

Immediately following the publication of this startling list of crimes, a

grand jury submitted to the court the following report. The reader can

harmonize, as best he may, this official statement, with that of a

lighthearted and self satisfied Mayor who controls, or does not control,

as one's thought may elect, the Chicago police force.

"In closing our work the members of the jury desire to report to your

honor some slight comment on the various matters which have been brought

to our attention during our session, and to submit for recommendation to

the proper authorities suggestions that may check the amount of crime

which has been brought to our notice.

"Our city seems to be the asylum of habitual criminals of all classes, who

have terrorized the people to an alarming degree. We would particularly

call attention to several instances within our knowledge where persons

have been found dead, investigation made by the proper authorities,

verdicts rendered according to the evidence with recommendations by the

coroner's jury that the guilty be brought to justice. These deeds wherein

the perpetrators in several instances have not been detected are largely

due to the fact that this city is made an asylum for habitual criminals,

and we strongly recommend that every measure be taken to close the gates

of the city to such people.

"Were the statute of the state regarding the arrest of vagabonds more

strictly enforced by the proper authorities the number of habitual

criminals at large could be largely reduced and Chicago made a less

attractive place of residence for this class. The law itself is broad and

ample in its provisions. Places under the guise of saloons, duly licensed,

are merely rendezvous for thieves, murderers and prostitutes, and

notwithstanding the fact that such vile places are well known to the

authorities they are permitted to continue without molestation. The

defilement of our youths of both sexes should receive the severest penalty

of the law. It is our duty to protect and guard the manhood and womanhood

of the young.

"The continued violation of the ordinance fixing the closing hours of

saloons is a great factor in the number of crimes committed in the city,

and we earnestly recommend a strict enforcement of the ordinance."

Apparently, a few of these criminal gentry regard Chicago as a safe field

for their labors!

Boys in their teens, men and women, both black and white, the latter of

the strong armed class, comprise this coterie of criminals. The strong

armed women, generally negresses, have the developed muscles of the

pugilist and the daring of the pirate. They entice the stranger into dark

passage ways, that innocent stranger, so unfamiliar, but so willing to be

made familiar with the wickedness of a great city, who seeks out its most

disreputable quarters and scours its darkest byways, to report to his

mates, on his return to his country home, the salacious things that he has

heard of, and a few of which he witnessed. In these dark and dangerous

ways the strong armed women garrote and rob their victims, or they entice

the innocent, but lustful, stranger to their rooms, and there, through the

panel game, or by sheer strength or drugged potations, appropriate the

innocent stranger's valuables. Mortified and humiliated, the stranger

usually has nothing to say to the police of the affair. Then the

emboldened strong armed women go upon the street in couples, and rob in

the most approved methods of the highwayman. Alone, one of these notorious

characters is said to have pilfered to the extent of $60,000. She was, and

is, a terror to the police force. Released from the penitentiary not long

ago, she is now undergoing trial for a fresh offense. Approaching a

commercial traveler from behind, she is charged with having nearly

strangled him, and then robbed him of his money and jewelry.

"Only one man ever got the best of E. F.," said detective Sergeant C. R.

W., of Harrison street station, who had arrested E. F. frequently.

"Once she held up a cowboy and took $150 from him. He came up to the

station hotfoot to report the robbery. We were busy and a little slow in

sending out after E., whereupon the cowboy allowed he'd start out after

her on his own hook. He met her down by the Polk street depot, and the

moment he spotted her he walked right up close to her and covered her with

two six-shooters.

"You've got $150 of my money, now shell out nigger," he said.

"Go and get a warrant and have me arrested then," replied the big colored

woman, who wanted time to plant the coin.

"These are good enough warrants for me," returned the cowboy

significantly, as he poked the revolvers a trifle closer to her face.

"Now, I'm going to count twenty, and if I don't see my money coming back

before I reach twenty, I'll go with both guns."

"When he reached eighteen, E. weakened. She drew out a wad and held it out

toward him. But the cowboy was wise and would not touch the roll till she

had walked to the nearest lamplight under the escort of his two guns and

counted out the $150. Then he let her go and came back to the station and

treated."

Conductors of street cars are often the victims of the hold up men. Here

in Chicago they invented the plan of placing the saloonkeeper in the ice

chest, while the looting of the place went on. In another instance a baker

was imprisoned in a hot oven. Women in their homes are thrust into

closets, gagged and bound, while their houses are ransacked and their

property stolen.

The want of an energetic police is the cause of the prevalence of such

abominable offenses as hair clipping, or the severing from the heads of

young girls upon the public streets their braids of hair. One of these

perverts was arrested and excused himself upon the ground that it was a

mania with him, and that the temptation to cut off the braids of hair from

every young girl he met, was almost irresistible. If detectives, instead

of lounging around their daily haunts for drinking purposes, loafing in

cigar stores, and playing the pool rooms, were mingling with the crowds

upon the streets, offenses of this character would be nearly impossible,

although this particular weakness seems to lead its impulsive perpetrators

to less crowded thoroughfares, and selects the hours of going to and

returning from school, as the most favorable parts of the day for its

gratification. It may be prompted by a morbid desire, but it is none the

less a serious offense, which, as yet, the criminal law has not defined,

and has therefore not provided a proper penalty for its punishment. No

evidence, so far as it is known, has yet been adduced to show that the

braids of hair are ever sold to dealers in that article, such as wig

manufacturers, etc. If such evidence should be forthcoming, the ingenuity

of the average criminal for the discovery of new methods of despoliation

will receive additional confirmation.

One peculiar method of protection to the criminal classes is in vogue. A

new thief arrives in the city; his arrival is noticed by a detective and

the fact reported to headquarters. The thief is invited to visit the

Chief. Upon his appearance, permission is given him to remain, provided he

"does not work his game" within the city. He can plunder all the

neighboring towns he may select, but the price of his remaining in

security in Chicago is, that he shall be good and gentlemanly to its

people. The "Safe Blowers' Union" has its home in Chicago, from which it

radiates, as the spokes of a wheel, to the circumference of its limit of

operations. It is a trust; a protective association. It pays for the

privilege. It attacks the country bank, blows it, in the silence of the

night, to pieces with dynamite if necessary, and murders if interfered

with. It returns with its loot to the city, makes its dividends among its

membership, police included, and awaits the pressing necessity for a

renewal of its suburban raids. It is under the king's mighty shield, the

king of the criminals, over whom he reigns with leniency, and whose gifts

he accepts with condescension.

The fakes of a great city are beyond enumeration. There are fake

information bureaus, fake advisory brokers, fake safe systems of

speculation, fake music teachers, fake medical colleges, fake law schools,

fake lawyers, fake "Old Charters for Sale," fake corporations, fake relief

and aid societies, fake preachers and fake detective agencies. The latter,

and the street fakers, are friendly with the police. So are the fruit

vendors, and the all night lunch counters on wheels. The latter stand

where the officers say they shall stand, and the location once found, the

officers at once become landlords.

As to private detective agencies, without reference to agencies of an

established local and national reputation, they are principally

constituted of thieves, pickpockets, blackmailers, and porch climbers.

In the trial of a case before the Criminal Court of Cook County, a few

months ago, a witness acquainted with their inside history, swore that

there were men connected with these fake organizations who would commit

murder for $50. They enter into conspiracies to ruin the private character

of men and women in divorce cases, and for blackmailing purposes. Three of

these hounds were lately convicted of conspiracy in less than one hour, by

a jury in the same court. These three worthies comprised the entire

agency. Their punishment was fixed at imprisonment in the penitentiary.

They were employed in getting revenge on a man, who was supposed, by their

employer, to have been the cause of his discharge from his commercial

position. In getting this revenge they fell upon their shadow, pummelled

him with great severity, and badly injured him. So grievous was the

offense, that the State's Attorney demand no less a punishment than the

jury awarded.

They manufacture testimony in divorce proceedings, at the suggestion and

upon the request of the parties willing and desirous of cutting the

matrimonial tie; or, upon the instigation of one of the parties, they will

endeavor to entrap and compromise the other. They revel in the destruction

of the character of a good woman, as the vulture revels in the foulness of

a carrion. The man of wealth must be on his guard against their attacks,

for they would as lief magnify his peccadillos into felonious crimes and

attempt his plunder by blackmail, as they would accept the earnings of the

Mistresses Overdone, the exhausted bawds, whose pimps they are.

Theirs is only another but a more vicious form of depravity than that

practiced by the panel house keepers, who send their single workers upon

the streets to entice men to their abodes, where they are met by the

expert workers of the game. While thus entrapped, and indulging in the

sensuality which aids so readily in his allurement, the adroit "creeper"

enters the room through a movable panel, or by some other prearranged

method of ingress, and takes the watch, the coin, or "any other old thing"

of value, found about the removed and scattered clothing of the greenhorn.

The police are as well acquainted with these "single workers" as they are

with the street walkers. They know their haunts, and their fields of

labor. The hotels, and places where crowds are gathered in the early

evening, attract the "single workers" as the most promising ground for a

successful capture.

"Badger games" are not infrequently played in Chicago. Such as are

successful are generally kept from the police records, through the

preference of the blackmailed subjects to say nothing about them, in dread

of their personal exposure. A man, generally one of means and standing, is

marked for conquest. The first class hotel is the scene of operations of

the female in the case. Fashionably dressed, handsome, with jewels for

adornment, she strikes up a flirtation with the selected person. Fool

like, as most men are in the case of handsome and well gowned women, he

responds to the invitation, an acquaintance is formed and an assignation

made. The place is of the woman's selection and known of course to her

paramour, styled her husband. The room is entered, compromising situations

reached, when, suddenly, the indignant husband appears, the woman screams

in terror, and a storm rages. It is calmed by the payment of the price

demanded for concealment, and the "sucker" escapes with a load removed

from both his pocketbook and his mind.

A noted instance of this kind happened to a wealthy and prominent

merchant, whose indiscretions in the acceptance of inducements for sexual

enjoyment held out to him by a stylish and beautiful woman, and his

blindness in not observing his surroundings, enabled the fake husband to

photograph him in _flagrante delicto_. Under threats to distribute the

pictures it is reported he paid $10,000 for them and the negative. This is

a fact easily susceptible of proof. One at least of these proofs did not

accompany the package he received, which was supposed to contain all of

the pictures.

Photographing from the nude is not the fad of the harlot alone. Women

infatuated with their shapes begin with the exposure of a beautiful foot,

arm or well rounded bust, then a leg, etc., etc., until they stand before

the camera almost in _puris naturalibus_. These pictures are taken for

pure self admiration, the love of self study and comparison with the forms

of celebrated actresses, or the paintings of the masters, famous in art

for their conceptions of the perfect woman. They differ from those obscene

pictures designed for sale, for which purpose the depraved couple are

photographed in situations, attitudes and conditions, natural and

unnatural, which appeal to the grossest instincts in man, and shock, also,

the moral sense of every one not in himself a sexual pervert.

The latter are eagerly sought after, are quite salable, and are carried

about the persons of fast young men about town, with intent, upon

opportunity, to influence the passions of women. They are the solace of

the aged sport, who, having lost all recollection of the ordinary affairs

of his youth, still fondly retains the memory of the amours of his younger

days, and of the orgies of his middle age. Then recalling with sadness the

first appearance of the lamentable indications of his decline, he

contentedly yields the passing of his power--"sans teeth, sans eyes, sans

taste, sans everything."

These are the men, who, if they had lived in the early days of the Roman

Empire at or about the date of the Floralian games, would have been the

principal patrons, or, if at the time of the prevalence of the

Bacchanalian mysteries, the prominent members, of societies organized for

the purpose of gratifying unnatural desires; or if they had been Romans in

the declining days of that empire would have figured as the most frantic

and most lustful of the worshippers of Priapus.

The methods of the vendors of obscene literature are innumerable, and all

are formed along the lines of extreme caution and cunning. They are keen

judges of human nature, quick to detect the inquisitive stranger, or the

sporting gent of the town, and adroit in introducing their filthy stock.

The purchaser is more than liable to be swindled in the deal, as the fakir

requires immediate concealment of the purchase, which, when examined by

the vendee in the quiet of his own room often turns out to be a harmless

work resembling only in the binding the supposed purchase.

The confidence men, who invite the incoming visitor to view the scene of

the great explosion on the lake front, and suggest trips to other places

where startling events have not occurred, discover, by skillful

questioning, the weaknesses of their dupe. They arouse his innate, but

dormant, wish to take a chance at some game that seems to him certain of a

rich return. He is easily induced to play and allowed to win a small

stake, merely to excite greater interest and establish the conviction that

he can "beat the game." Naturally he plunges ahead, until the moment

comes, set by his trappers, when he is cheated, robbed and goes "flat

broke." The dupe may, or may not, report his loss to the police. If he

does, and it happens to be one of consequence, detectives may be detailed

to search for the swindlers; but if the loss is small in amount, however

important to the loser, the dupe is more likely to be laughed at than

aided by the officers of the law.

To this class belong cabmen who rob drunken men, and "divvy" with the

police; commission houses, which secure consignments of goods for sale by

false representations; grocery grafters, who solicit throughout the

country orders for groceries, claiming to represent wholesale houses, ship

an inferior grade and collect C. O. D. at the prices charged for the

superior grade; Board of Trade sharks, who "welch" their clients' money by

charging up fictitious losses, when the figures will not appear to lie;

the false claimants for personal injuries alleged to have been caused

through the negligence of wealthy corporations, such as street car lines,

manufacturing companies and rolling mills, or by the city, from defective

sidewalks, unguarded street excavations, etc., etc.; bakers who sell

unlabeled and underweight bread; the gold brick and gold filings sharper;

the electric and mining stock swindler, and the advertiser seeking a

governess to accompany himself and family abroad. These men have

"irresistible tendencies" to work their several games. They cannot help

it, they say. Like kleptomaniacs, or "Jack the Hair Clipper," they are

impelled by nature to the commission of their crimes. In their own

judgment they ought not to be punished, because they are the victims of

defective brains. But they are just as cunning as the hair clipper, just

as conscious that they are law breakers as he was when he mailed to the

Chief of Police in his own words the following note, enclosing some of the

braids of hair he had clipped from the head of a young girl, viz:

"A clue for J. K.'s cheap skates. Will send more when I get cheap

stuff like this.

Jack."

Of this same class are men who conduct "diploma mills" and make doctors,

especially in one day. They sell their parchments as freely as a

saloonkeeper does his beer, and then claim that because a college confers

distinctive degrees upon men of prominence, without a course of study and

examination, they are justified in launching doctors by the score upon

unsuspecting communities, "without study and examination," to discredit

the medical profession, and send men, women and children to premature

graves. Like McTeague, who acquired his knowledge of dentistry from the

seven volumes of "Allen's Practical Dentist," they obtain their knowledge

of diseases from quack publications, newspapers and magazine articles.

They use nothing but "the purest of the earth's productions in their

treatment, and no minerals or poisonous materials of any kind are ever

permitted to enter your system." Their prices range from "one dollar up."

"A positive guarantee is given in every case treated, so you have nothing

to risk in any way. Your money back on demand if not satisfied." They can

wash kidneys so clean, that if you are a woman and have not extended your

arms in years, after taking the first box of kidney pills you "can raise

them, and twist your hair," and after the second, "dress yourself, perform

your household duties," and "life will again take on a bright hue" for

you. Bald heads respond to the "remarkable effects" of their discoveries,

with joyful alacrity. Gray hair goes into hiding, and "thick and lustrous

eyebrows and eye lashes" blossom forth on one application, as lilac bushes

do in the spring time at the first touch of the warmth of the sun's rays.

Their remedies are "no longer experiments, they are medical certainties."

They "create solid flesh, muscles and strength, clear the brain, and make

the blood pure and rich." For humanity's sake, distinguished Mayors,

ex-Mayors, city treasurers, scholars, soldiers, ex-state senators and

senators, representatives, lawyers and judges, lend their beaming

countenances, when fully restored to health, for the uses of these quacks,

until the daily press has become a portrait gallery of rebuilt and

revitalized men, who, if disease had the clutch upon them they so

felicitously describe--in the stereotyped words of the quack--ought to

have been dead, buried and mourned long ago. These distinguished men in

American life, are merely selling their faces for promotion purposes, much

as the titled Englishman sells his title.

Of all the sources of police graft, in addition to pool rooms and policy

shops, gambling is the most prolific. There are in Chicago over 7,000

saloons and nearly 2,000 cigar stores. The number of gambling houses

proper is unknown, but the list swells into the hundreds. The saloon and

cigar stores have as a general rule a gambling annex. Gambling houses

proper, as known some years ago, have no longer the permanency they then

had. Roulette and faro, especially, are sleeping, and awaken only at

infrequent intervals. The negro game of craps, and the national game of

poker, particularly stud poker, have become the substitutes for the wheel

and the lay out. In two-thirds of the saloons and cigar stores poker and

stud poker are played, and in many of the saloons, especially the all

night variety, the crap table is part of the necessary equipment. It is

estimated that poker games are in progress in over eight thousand of the

saloons, cigar stores, barber shops and bakeries, every night, while

gambling houses with the roulette and faro barred, add over one thousand

to the number. Craps are shot even at the doors of some of the theaters.

All this is known to the police, tolerated by the police, and taxed by the

police. Take the average cigar store for illustration. In the rear are

rooms neatly fitted up and supplied with three or more poker tables. The

rake off to the house goes on just as in the regularly equipped gambling

house. The games are played by men of all classes in life below the

society men and men of wealth, who get their amusement at the club. The

clubs all forbid poker, but the tabooing order is "more honored in its

breach than its observance." In the cigar stores and saloons, workingmen,

artisans, clerks, and the loafing skin gambler, participate in the game.

The latter is quickly spotted, and placed under the ban. The proprietor

requires the games to be square, in so far as he can control them. The

losses of the cigar store players are more severe upon them than are

those of the gamblers who play for higher stakes. The wages of the

workingman, clerks and artisans are their only gambling capital. They have

no bank accounts to draw upon. The home suffers; wife and children are the

indirect victims. Theirs is a cash game. When wages are exhausted, the

unearned wage is mortgaged to the loan "sharks." These greedy and

heartless wretches lure the clerk earning a fair salary to borrow from

them at reasonable rates, and upon a "strictly confidential" basis. The

employer is not to know of the transaction. The clerk is soon in the

shark's strong jaws. He must pay what is demanded, or the employer, the

rules of whose establishment forbid dealings with the "shark," will be

made aware of the violation of his rules, and the clerk's embarrassment

commences. Rather than risk discharge from his position, and to escape

from the "shark" jaws, the frightened clerk pays in monthly installments

double the amount of his loan, plus a sum for a fee to an attorney who was

never retained. All this is so much blood money, flowing from the wounds

made by the "shark's" sharp teeth.

The minor is not prevented in the cigar store joints from gaming any more

than he is prevented from drinking at the saloon bar. Nightly, over this

vast city, young men are succumbing to the terrible fascination of gaming.

Nightly, temptations, almost irresistible, are preying upon their minds.

The honesty of their intentions is gradually undermined, and almost before

they awaken to a realization of the truth, they have committed some theft

and commenced a downward career. Men who filled high positions of trust

and earned large salaries are today inmates of the state penitentiary, led

away by the fascination and excitement of the gaming table. The evils of

gambling, the intensity of the love of the average man for indulgence in

its exhilaration, the wide spread use of it in the home, the club, the

stag parties, and so on down to the lowest joints in the slums, have been

the themes of every writer who attempts to depict the daily life of great

cities.

It exists in the form of prizes in progressive euchre parties, in social

gatherings, in the raffles of the church fairs, the voting for the most

popular man or woman, as city or county stenographer, popular firemen or

policemen; in guessing contests in the solution of puzzles; or wherever

the element of chance enters into the affairs of life, from which

amusement is sought to be drawn. Whether it is a wheat deal on the board

of trade in which millions are involved, or the cast of the dice by

newsboys and boot blacks in the alleys and upon the sidewalks of the city,

the controlling passion is there--the passion for gain at the whim of

chance. Judgment may prompt the wheat deal, but unless judgment promises

large profits the incentive to engage in the manipulation of the markets

is absent. The possible toil and mental worry is overlooked in the hope of

great gain without correspondingly prolonged labor. Millions fly away in

great gambling speculations as easily and as swiftly as the penny of the

newsboy takes its flight from one to the other of the inveterate little

gamblers, to be found among these sharp witted waifs of the street. It

goes on in billiard halls, where "hap hazard" is openly played; at saloon

bars where the loser at dice "pays for the drinks." It is to be seen in

beer halls, summer gardens, among well dressed people who carry the dice

with them, of the usual size, or smaller, with fancy box-guard, and who

"shake" for the drinks and dinners, not so much as a matter of gambling,

as for the zest it gives to their party, or their outing. It controls

political picnics in the fakers' attractions that follow them, and in the

prizes offered to the winner, of boys' and girls', women and fat men's,

races, or for which artistic cake walkers and ragtime dancers compete.

Civil and criminal trials are even chosen as events upon which to place a

wager. The frequency of elections, the daily horse racing contests

throughout the world, base ball games in season, prize fights between

professionals, club athletic contests, policy shops with their daily

drawings, and lotteries, all arouse the cupidity of the seeker after quick

gains without physical labor. "Bet you five" settles many a mathematical,

historical, political or economic proposition, contrary to the truth.

Races, accompanied by the usual retinue of book makers, are conducted by a

wealthy club, many of whose members are leaders in civic bodies formed

for the betterment of local government, and consequently for the

suppression of vice. Grand juries report month after month their inability

to obtain the co-operation of the police in gathering evidence against

gamblers and landlords whereon to found indictments. Each grand jury when

empanelled hears from the bench the monotonous song "Gentlemen, bucket

shops exist, investigate them," together with such musical accompaniment,

as may be added by the judge, in the way of moralizing upon their

wickedness.

Fashionable women have their down town clubs. There they meet, smoke

cigarettes, take their drinks from the sideboard "just like men," gamble

for excitement, lose their pin-money and diamonds with the abandon of a

virgin, "willing to be rid of her name."

The vice and fascination of gambling are so well known and understood by

great merchants that they employ a corps of detectives to keep watch over

their confidential employes, whose movements are the subject matter of

daily reports to their employers. The bond companies, which insure the

honesty of clerks and managers entrusted with the handling of money,

receive from their spotters the earliest reports of the actions of

employes indicative of living beyond the yearly salary paid them by the

houses with which they are connected.

Gambling, although condemned by all moralists as a degrading vice, is

recognized by some as aiding the development of certain qualities of

immeasurable service in the intensity of the struggle for business

existence prevailing in the aggressive commercialism of this age. Lecky

asserts: "Even the gambling table fosters among its more skillful votaries

a kind of moral nerve, a capacity for bearing losses with calmness, and

controlling the force of the desires, which is scarcely exhibited in equal

perfection in any other sphere." Whatever may be the meaning of the phrase

"controlling the force of the desires," it is certain that among the young

men of today, in all classes of society, the desires for intoxicants and

sensuality are past control when associated with gambling. In its most

seductive forms its principal aids are the gilded saloon, and the harlot's

enslaving smile. The necessity for means with which to gratify aroused

passion in both respects, comes through contact with the gaming table;

hence, the houses of ill repute, assignation houses and the innocent

looking "Hotel" nestling in the middle of the down town business blocks,

are the direct allies of the gambling hells in the development of

crime--in adding to, rather than in "controlling" the force of the

desires. "Sensuality," said a distinguished writer, "is the vice of young

men and of old nations." Another, tracing the effects of gaming on human

passions, wisely observes, "the habit of gambling is very often allied

with, and is even an incentive to, the practice of other vices, whose

darkness is beyond dispute. The ordinary aspect of a return from a race

meeting will fully confirm this. There we find that drunkenness,

licentiousness and gambling go hand in hand, a well assorted trio whose

ministry to separate passions is not inconsistent but consistent with

mutual incitement and co-operation in the destruction of the honor and

purity and strength of men."

While gambling is not now conducted "openly," a word which has reference

only to the maintenance of down town establishments in which faro and

roulette were formerly played, it is conducted under police protection all

over this city in forms more inviting, more disastrous to the embryotic

gamblers who patronize it, than if the large establishments were in full

operation as of yore. The latter could not invite the younger class of

gamblers to enter the play, because of their lack of capital; the smaller,

widely scattered, and police guarded, cigar store and saloon games, accept

smaller sums of money, parts of a dollar, for a stack of poker chips, from

the anxious entrant to the game. Prior to the last election a leading

evening newspaper accused the city executive with farming out the slum

district to two aldermen of unsavory reputation, with leave to them to

extort money from gaming houses, high and low, within its limits, for

their personal benefit, in consideration of their opposing, in the

council, the passage of ordinances relating to the extension of street car

privileges. Its condemnation of this bargain was severe, and yet, later

on, it was the most persistent of that executive's supporters for

re-election.

The coon gamblers, thieves, thugs and pimps were all on the staffs of

these aldermen. They followed these worthies into the campaign, under the

leadership of the eminently respectable newspaper referred to. Inspired by

such leadership "Spreader," "Sawed Off," "The Cuckoo," "Book Agent,"

"Deacon," "Grab All," "Duck," "Shoestring," "Scalper," "Humpty," "Hungry

Sid," "Seedy," "Talky," "Whiskers," "Noisy," "Fig," "Old Hoss," "Slick,"

"Ruby," "Sunday School," and "Mushmouth," captains in the corps of sports

felt themselves respectable, led their followers from the barrel and

lodging houses with a rush to the polls, and achieved a startling victory.

Over all this horrible saturnalia of vice, the colors of the police force

float in token of protection. The brave men of that force, morally

degraded by the obedience they are compelled to yield to unworthy

superiors want merely the opportunity to perform their full duty, not only

as patrolmen but as patriotic American citizens. The time when they will

be permitted to do so seems far distant, unless an aroused public opinion

shall speedily pronounce against the further continuation of a policy of

protection to crime and debauchery supported by the men chosen to war

unceasingly with both.

The dens of the sexual pervert of the male sex, found in the basements of

buildings in the most crowded, but least respectable parts of certain

streets, with immoral theaters, cheap museums, opium joints and vile

concert saloons surrounding them, are the blackest holes of iniquity that

ever existed in any country since the dawn of history. A phrase was

recently coined in New York which conveys--in the absence of the

possibility of describing them in decent language--the meaning of the

brute practices indulged in these damnable resorts, and the terrible

consequences to humanity as a result of unnatural habits--"Paresis Halls."

No form of this indulgence described by writers on the history of morals,

no species of sodomy the debased minds of these devils can devise, is

missing from the programme of their diabolical orgies. In divine history

we read of the abominations of the strange women of Israel, with their

male companions, in their worship of Moloch, Belphegor and Baal, and of

the death penalties pronounced by Moses against the participants in them.

To suppress the brutish immorality, and prevent the spread of disease

arising from it, the Jewish law giver put to death all his Midianite

female captives except the virgins. Profane history tells of the infamies

of the Babylonian banquets, of the incestuous and "promiscuous combats of

sensuality" of the Lydians and the Persians; of the Athenian Auletrides,

or female flute players, who danced and furnished music at the banquets of

the nobility and wallowed in the filth of every sensual indecency, and of

the polluted condition of Roman life, prior to, and as the Christian era

dawned, but in all the untranslatable literature of eroticism no

description of the debaucheries of the ancients, if freely interpreted

into English from the dead languages in which they are preserved, could

depict the nastiness these yahoos are reported as having introduced into

our midst, and rendered more hateful and disgusting by the squalor of

their underground abodes. The young are lured by them, ruined in health

and seared in conscience. The very slang of the streets is surcharged with

expressions, derived from, and directly traceable to, the names of these

unmentionable acts of lechery.

Not content with the private and crafty pursuit of their calling, they

must flaunt it in the faces of the public and under the very eyes of the

police, in a series of annual balls held by the "fruits" and the "cabmen,"

advertised by placards extensively all over the city. At these

disreputable gatherings the pervert of the male persuasion displays his

habits by aping everything feminine. In speech, walk, dress and adornment

they are to all appearances women. The modern mysteries of the toilet,

used to build up and round out the female figure, are applied in the

make-up of the male pervert. Viewed from the galleries, it is impossible

to distinguish them from the sex they are imitating. Theirs is no

maid-marian costume; it is strictly in the line of the prevailing styles

among fashionable women, from female hair to pinched feet. The convenient

bar supplies the liquid excitement, and when the women arrivals from the

bagnios swarm into the hall, led in many instances by the landlady, white

or black, and the streets and saloons have contributed their quotas, the

dance begins and holds on until the morning hours approach. The acts are

those mainly suggestive of indecency. Nothing, except the gross language

and easy familiarity in deportment, coupled with the assumed falsetto

voice and effeminate manners of the pervert, would reveal to the

uninformed observer what a seething mass of human corruption he is

witnessing. As the "encyclopedia of the art of making up" puts it, "the

exposed parts of the human anatomy" usually displayed in fashionable

society are counterfeited so perfectly, the wigs are selected and arranged

with such nicety, the eyebrows and lashes so dexterously treated, and the

features so artistically touched with cosmetics, as to make it very

difficult, at first glance, to distinguish between the impostor and the

real woman. The big hands and tawdry dresses, the large though pinched

feet and the burly ankle, betray the sex of the imitating pervert.

No reason, except that the police are paid for non-interference with these

vice pitted revels, can be given for their toleration. The city's

officials are either in collusion with their projectors, they are

incompetent, or are the willing tools of these stinking body scavengers.

These beasts look with disdain upon the votaries of natural pleasures, and

have an insane pride in their hopeless degradation.

The opium joints are closely related sources of iniquity to the pervert's

haunts. Under one of the worst of the all night saloons, conducted by a

politician of the first ward, who belongs to the party of the Bath House

and Hinky Dink, and who "touched" the Hon. Richard Croker of New York for

a small loan, the largest of these execrable cellars is protected. It is

but a step from the wine rooms of the saloon to the solace of the pipe.

The depraved of both sexes in those moments when despair seizes them, when

some recollection of childhood, or of home, arouses in them the dormant

good still remaining in their hearts, when, as they look into the future,

they can discern no ray of hope, but are appalled at the frightful end

which must be theirs, shut out the horrors of their situation in life by

seeking a paradise built upon "the baseless fabric of a vision." In this

joint, since reference to it was written, a man died from the effects of

smoking the pipe. The woman who accompanied him, the bartender and the

keeper of the joint were placed under arrest. The police expressed

amazement at the revelation of the existence of the joint, as did the

proprietor of the saloon. It was, of course, closed, and a number of other

like resorts were then raided. Press comments upon this death appeared as

follows:

"In spite of the fact that there are plenty of laws against them, opium

dens and objectionable grogshops are among the hardest things in the world

to exterminate. The only reasonable explanation for this is that their

proprietors must have influence with officers who are employed by the

people to execute the laws. 'The police close these places,' said an

officer despairingly, referring to dens like that in which the man Adams

died Sunday night, 'but they spring up again in a day.'

"The police seem to be downcast over it. Yet the causes of the 'springing

up' are as plain as the nose on one's face, and the means of removing them

as evident as one's hand.

"Access to the den in which Adams died was had through the delectable O.

saloon, operated by S. V. P., and the den itself was rented by V. P. The

levee statesman says he had no idea his basement was used for an opium

den. He thought the procession of drunken and dazed men and women who

tottered through his saloon and went down his basement stairs all night

were going for their laundry.

"V. P.'s statement is entitled to as much consideration as the guileless

protestations of the gentleman who is caught with the chicken under his

coat. V. P. is responsible for the opium den and as soon as the law lays a

hand, in earnest, on the landlord the opium dens will cease 'springing

up.'

"The police knew that an opium den was running in V. P.'s basement. They

had been amply warned of it. If they had raided the place a few times and

sent the proprietor and inmates to the bridewell it would have stayed

closed.

"There is a little virtue in sticking to one's native vices. Western races

come honestly by drunkenness and gambling. But why tolerate the deliberate

importation and cultivation of this strange oriental bestiality? This

ingrafted vice must make its own soil. Why should the police treat it so

leniently? A hundred-dollar fine for every person found in an opium joint

and a modicum of police activity, with the demanding of a strict account

from the guilty landlord, will quickly put a damper on the opium dens.

Every month that they are tolerated they get a firmer root."

These resorts are patronized by others than the fallen women and the

criminal classes. Like slumming, it is a fad "to hit the pipe just once"

by some adventure seeking people in other walks of life. The habit of

opium smoking is easily acquired, and, when acquired, the smoker becomes a

slave to its use. There are between two and three hundred of these smoking

rooms in Chicago. The number of persons addicted to smoking opium cannot

be stated with accuracy. Estimates vary from ten to twenty thousand, the

number probably lies between these two estimates. In the Chinese quarters

the penetrating odor of opium smoke is plainly perceptible and is thrown

off from the garments of passing Chinamen, or is detected as one enters a

restaurant or laundry presided over by the oriental. The "dope" soon

affects the complexion, and the features wear a dejected appearance. The

movements of the victims are listless, almost lifeless. In the saloon

referred to, a constant procession of men and women, old and young, come

and go up and down the stairway to the region below. It is not guarded

with any degree of care, because it is protected from the law's

aggression, except occasionally, when by way of diversion it is pulled.

Then its patrons get a quiet tip to keep away, consequently few occupants

are found. The old pipes and a small quantity of the dope are graciously

permitted to be borne away in triumph by the officers. New supplies are

provided, and the baleful business resumes its accustomed routine.