CHAPTER IV.

Previous

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.

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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.


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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