All Night Saloons—Character of—Thieves, Thugs and Prostitutes in—Visitors—Country Buyers, Transients, Delegates, Youth and Old Age—Women in—Character of—Basement Saloons—Scenes in—Private Rooms—Scenes in All Night Saloons—Dancing—Music—Morning Hours—Robberies, Etc., Planned—Girls Entrapped—Young Men Ruined—Quarrels—Raids—Drinking—Surroundings of—Houses of Ill Fame—Assignation Houses—Slumming Parties—Fads—Salvation and Volunteer Army—Inmates of—How Managed—Practices in—Superstitions—Luck Powders—Sources of Supply—Patrons of—Wholesale House Entertainers—Police Protection—Diseases—Attempts at Reform—People Indifferent.
All Night Saloons—Character of—Thieves, Thugs and Prostitutes in—Visitors—Country Buyers, Transients, Delegates, Youth and Old Age—Women in—Character of—Basement Saloons—Scenes in—Private Rooms—Scenes in All Night Saloons—Dancing—Music—Morning Hours—Robberies, Etc., Planned—Girls Entrapped—Young Men Ruined—Quarrels—Raids—Drinking—Surroundings of—Houses of Ill Fame—Assignation Houses—Slumming Parties—Fads—Salvation and Volunteer Army—Inmates of—How Managed—Practices in—Superstitions—Luck Powders—Sources of Supply—Patrons of—Wholesale House Entertainers—Police Protection—Diseases—Attempts at Reform—People Indifferent.
The breeding ground of disorder and crime is to be found in the all night saloons.
Despite the stringent ordinances prohibiting the “open door” after midnight, in the most dissolute districts throughout the city, along the streets and avenues of the north, west and south divisions,under ground and on its surface, these dens invite the depraved of both sexes to enter, remain, dissipate and carouse through the night. Murders, robberies and assaults are the necessary outcome of the unlimited drinking, the ribald language, the senseless jealousies, and the heated passions of the motley crowds which are at all times the fascinated patrons of these joints. A more rigid rule has recently been applied to the larger of the down town, or business district, basement saloons. Music is prohibited, and the closing midnight hour respected. These are but the depots for the all night saloons. When they close, the gathered crowds of dissolute women dissolve and betake themselves to the after midnight haunts, there to continue their calling—the solicitation of male visitors for drinks, meals and the ultimate purpose of their solicitation—prostitution. The male frequenters of these resorts belong to all classes of society. The “steady” visitors are thieves, thugs, pickpockets, gamblers, variety actors, “rounders,” that large and constantly growing class in great cities which is ceaselessly observing the shady side of life, “seeing the elephant,”and not infrequently becoming intimately acquainted with the beast, and pimps, who fatten upon the sinful earnings of abandoned women, whose fondness for their masters increases in proportion to the violence the masters visit upon their slaves. The transient custom is comprised of not only the old rounder, but also of those of younger experience, bursting, or not far advanced, into manhood; those who with a wide knowledge of the ways and wickedness of the world, more than their years warrant, are out for a “good time;” the observer of those ways; the “chiels” who are among them taking notes; clerks, cabmen and their “hauls;” the country buyer under the guidance of the entertainer of the wholesale house with whom the buyer is dealing; the delegates to conventions, out to view the town; the passer through the burg who has heard of the lights and shadows of Chicago; the swallow-tailed youth, and the middle-aged gentleman fresh from escorting to her home the virtuous female companion of the evening’s entertainment, the melodrama, the opera, or the social function. The women range from the one who has just “startedout” to the most despicable and depraved member of the sex. The former is the observed of all observers, the object of conspicuous attention, and a veritable prize to be won by the most dashing attack and the most liberal offer. She is under the tuition of her female guide, who instructs her “what she has to do that she may not be raw in her entertainment.”
The basement saloons in the down town district with their brilliant electric lighting equipment, their reflecting mirrors and hardwood finishings, combine, in most instances, the facilities of the rum shop and the restaurant.
Here, from noon hour of the day until midnight, come and go the “sporty” women, who have not yet reached the lower degree of a brothel, the “roomers,” “the cruisers” of the street, the so-called keepers of manicure parlors, baths and dressmaking establishments, all bent upon a “mash” in its broadest sense, or a “pick up” of any male greenhorn, or sport, who can be ensnared by their wiles. Maintaining a semblance of decorum, they pass the earlier hours of the evening in drinking with the“guests” and in flitting about from table to table, with which each place is abundantly supplied. The conversation is loud, and at times boisterous. Its subject matter is beyond repetition in polite circles. Lecherous glances, libidinous gestures, open invitations, characterize the behavior of the audience. Sometimes personal liberties are attempted, but invariably suppressed by the management. From the private rooms come sounds of hilarity, and the intermixture of words of protest, inducement and vulgarity. The withdrawals of couples are marked, and their early return and ruffled appearance suggest patronage of not distant “hotels,” where no questions are asked. Generally, as the midnight hour approaches, the crowd decreases, signs of intoxication increase, and the exodus to the all night resorts is about completed as that hour is struck.
When the downtown basement resorts close, the profitable work of the all night joints commences. The attendants in them are joined by squads from the more pretentious and less favored half-night competitors. These resorts, as a rule, are all equipped with private rooms, and many of them,in summer, have a so-called garden attached. Some have vaudeville performances to attract crowds, which end after the midnight hour. Many have a “Ladies’ Entrance,” but most visitors pass through the bar to the sitting room beyond. The so-called music of the cracked piano and strident male voices now commences, and the hat is passed around by the artists and performers, for contributions for payment for their services, the “house” paying nothing for such services, but permitting the artists to “work” the crowd. Boys of sixteen, and under, join in the gaieties as buck, wing and jig dancers, and also pass the hat. As the hours lengthen, as the liquor begins its effect, freedom of action enlarges, and restraint is removed. Those attitudes at table indicative of respectability are abandoned for others hinting at the widest license, or actually, which is not infrequently the case, illustrating that license, so far as familiarities of the person are concerned. The dance begins, with all its contortions of the body derived from the couche-couchee exhibitions of the World’s Fair times, enlarged upon by the grossness of the two-step waltz of the slums.Strolling bands of negro musicians, scraping the violin and strumming the guitar and mandolin, or the home orchestra, composed of these dusky minstrels, add their alleged harmonies to the occasion, and, with nasal expression, roll of coon songs in the popular rag time, with their intimations of free love, warmth of passion and disregard of moral teachings. At times, with assumed pathos and mock dignity they warble a sentimental song with some allusion to “Mother,” “Home,” or “Just Tell Them That You Saw Me.” The spree goes on, with fresh additions from the bagnios. Women with the most repulsive signs of prolonged dissipation, of advanced disease, with the upper parts of the body exposed, not perhaps more than is customary at a fashionable charity ball, join in with salacious abandon. These women, in the phrase of the Bard of Avon, belong to the class of the “custom shrunk,” of one of whom a Roman satirist wrote:
“* * * but now,That life is flagging at the goal, and likeAn unstrung lute, her limbs are out of tune,She is become so lavish of her presence,That being daily swallowed by men’s eyesThey surfeit at the sight.She’s grown companion to the common streets—Want her who will, a stater, a three obolo piece,Or a mere draught of wine, brings her to hand!Nay! place a silver stiver in your palm,And, shocking tameness! She will stoop forthwithTo pick it out.”
As the morning hours draw nigh blear-eyed men and women in all stages of intoxication, creep to their holes to sleep away the day for a renewal of their orgies when darkness again falls.
In these all night saloons robberies and burglaries are planned, and hold-ups arranged for. To them young girls are enticed when homeward bound from summer gardens and midwinter balls. Plans are laid for their ruin through drink, and the excitement of an experience new to them, which hide from their view all danger signals. Women are beaten and stabbed in them. Here young men begin their careers of dissipation, of lechery, and, perhaps, of crime, amid surroundings so contrary to the examples of home life, that before they are awareof it, they have become hopelessly enamored of what is termed a sporting life.
The flippantly spoken word provokes a heated reply, a jealous woman, surcharged with drink, precipitates a squabble that swells into a free fight, a free fight brings an indiscriminate firing of revolvers, and the consequent death—the murder—of some of the rioters follows. Then, and not until then, do the police raid the place. For a few weeks it is kept under the ban, but gradually the law’s grip is relaxed, signs of the old life revive, and soon the same scenes made more joyous and boisterous at the “new opening” are again enacted, to run the same course until another felony is committed, and another temporary closing of the doors enforced.
That the all night saloon where such depravity is permitted to hold sway is a menace to the peace, the sobriety, and the safety of the community, is a self evident proposition.
A minister in one of his sermons said, “The police wink when you call their attention to the fact that hundreds of saloons are running wide open allnight. It is after midnight that the majority of the crimes are committed, and yet these places are allowed to run after hours, and have the protection of the police.”
The beardless boy and the habitual drunkard are, alike, supplied with drink without question. The former is flattered by being called “a dead game sport,” and the latter tickled with the oft-bestowed title of “old sport.”
Many of these notorious dens are located in the midst of a forest of houses of ill fame. The depraved inmates of these houses, partly clad, are the most indecent visitors to the all night saloons. Perched upon the bar, or peering out from the private wine rooms, they shout their infamous language at the visitors, with invitations to indulgence in the most bestial of practices.
Slumming parties, composed of respectable men and women whose morbid curiosity has been aroused by tales of the inconceivable vices forming the night-life of the demi-monde, are not infrequently found “going down the line” dropping into the houses of prostitution, viewing the bar, the privaterooms, the dance hall, the crap games and the vicious surroundings of the all night pest holes. To slum has, in a measure, become a fashionable fad. Its purpose is, not to carry into these haunts the example of a better life, but to cater to a dangerous spirit of inquiry, upon the principle that excitement, even though it be found in the midst of the garbage boxes of vice, is relished now and then by the best of mankind. The only indication of a world outside, in which Christian principles prevail, is occasionally to be found, when some of the women garbed in the simple uniform of either the Salvation or Volunteer Army, engaged in rescue work, or in scattering a hopeful word, through the medium of their publications, pass among the crowd, receiving in most instances respectful attention, and, at times, but rarely, a jeer from some drunken sot or wrecked woman.
The houses of ill fame, whose stained glass windows with suggestive female figures in the nude advertise the abode of the scarlet woman, are as luxuriously furnished as is the home of the wealthy and respectable citizen. These “creatures of sale,”as Shakespeare puts it, are as clearly distinguished in public as members of the demi-monde, as if the Julian laws were in operation in Chicago. In early Rome, under these laws, the courtesan was compelled to dye her hair blue or yellow. Like the Grecian courtesan whose distinctive mark of her calling was blonde hair, the strumpet of today generally favors a fashion coming down from the past ages. The passer-by of these abodes of sensuality is invited by open solicitation or unmistakable gesture to enter them, especially by the more degraded of the women. A studied decorum is maintained in some of the parlors of the older establishments, presided over by a proprietress advanced in years, plentiful in wealth, and dictatorial in management. Harsh rules are prescribed for the maintenance of the condition of slavery into which the girls have fallen. Debts to the house tie them to it by bands too strong to be easily broken, in what are termed the aristocratic branches of this nefarious trade. These women are none the less free from indulgence in unnatural practices than are those of houses of reputed lower degrees of depravity. Whiteand colored alike revel in the same scenes of carnality which, fragments of history state, prevailed in the declining days of Rome and of Greece. The inmates of the lowest of these houses, both in dress, or in the absence of it, and in deportment, follow the habits of the Dicteriades, or low down prostitutes, of Piræus in the time of Pericles. Their appearance in the reception parlors in a state of nudity, and their filthiness in practice is a renewal of the habits of the Lesbian lovers of the fifth century; or of the flute players of the Athenian banquets, accounts of whose indecent dancing and depraved ways are found in the most erotic chapters in ancient literature. From them come the terms applying to the devotees in these days of sodomitic indulgence, forming part of the slang of the neighborhood where they live a debauched and beastly existence.
The superstitions of the Grecian and Roman courtesan are carried into the beliefs of those of modern days. What the philters or love charms were to the former, luck powders are to the latter. They are known along the levee as “Sally White’sBrand” and “Sally White’s Mixed Luck.” The former is regarded as particularly lucky. It is a compound of “Sally’s” own prescription, and is secretly sprinkled on the floor, at stated periods, as luck is sought after, or is burned in a room and the fumes inhaled. The latter is a mixture of perfumed oils and is used in the bath. The women are the frequent buyers of Sally’s prescriptions, avoiding purchasing on a Friday.
The sources from which come the supply to the ranks of courtesans, whether inmates of the aristocratic, the middle, or the lowest grades of their temples of vice, are many, various and damnable. Aside from the mere desire to gratify passion, which medical writers maintain constitutes but a small percentage of those who join the army of prostitutes, attributable to an innate sense of virtue in the modern woman, cabmen, in spite of the municipal ordinances, have been known to drive women entering the city to these brothels on the pretext they were hotels. The procuress is at work all the while.
“Thou hold’st a place for which the paind’st fiendOf hell would not in reputation change.Thou art the damned doorkeeper to everyCoistril that comes inquiring for his Tib;To the choleric fisting of every rogueThy ear is liable; thy food is suchAs hath been belched on by infected lungs.”
The department stores, in which starvation wages are paid to girls and women, who are subjected to the attentions of designing men, invited to lunch, induced to drink; whose love for dress and whose vanity are worked upon; those whose want of education in the relations of the sexes brings about their speedy fall; the servant turned out from her employment ruined by her employer or his son; the seamstress; the victims of unhappy marriages and cruel homes; those compelled by poverty or necessity, and who support dependent relatives; the “chippies” of modern days; the massage parlor graduates; all contribute their distressed quotas to this ever increasing tribe of prostitutes.
It gathers in recruits from the overflow of the assignation houses, which are scattered over thiscity in astonishing profusion. They are found in boulevard castles and in back alley huts. They do not differ in character from those of all cities. Through them come the cast-off women, who, having satisfied the temporary infatuation of their seducers, find themselves victims of false promises, and the graduates from homes wrecked by the discovery of their daylight intrigues. So relentless a warfare is waged upon these private, and in some instances most exclusive, resorts, by the lynx-eyed police, that in the year 1897, nineteen keepers of such places were arrested! Some improvement is noticeable in their suppression from the fact that in 1894 seventeen, in 1895 five, and in 1896 fifteen keepers were arrested! Interference with this style of accommodation is, therefore, possible in Chicago, at or about the time of the arrival of the millennium!
Singular to say there are moralists who assign the prostitute a position of usefulness in modern civilization. One of the most distinguished of English writers, in tracing the effects of Christianity upon mankind and its beneficent influences in social life, says: “Under these circumstances there hasarisen in society a figure which is certainly the most mournful, and, in some respects, the most awful upon which the eye of the moralist can dwell. That unhappy being whose very name is a shame to speak, who counterfeits, with a cold heart, the transports of affection, and submits herself as a passive instrument of lust, who is scorned and insulted as the vilest of her sex, and doomed for the most part to disease and abject wretchedness, and an early death, appears in every age as the perpetual symbol of the degradation and the sinfulness of man. Herself the supreme type of vice, she is ultimately the most efficient guardian of virtue. But for her the unchallenged purity of countless happy homes would be polluted, and not a few, who in the pride of their untempted chastity think of her with an indignant shudder, would have known the agony of remorse and of despair. On that one degraded and ignoble form are concentrated the passions that might have filled the world with shame.
She remains, while creeds and civilizations rise and fade, the external priestess of humanity, blasted for the sins of the people.”
The entertainer of the wholesale house who conducts his country customer to see the sights of the town, whenever and wherever such sights are to be seen, “where everything goes,” pays the expenses of the round of debauchery from the fund provided by his firm; while from the floating, passing, male visitors, no less than from the resident male dwellers, young and old, rich and poor, come the thousands of dollars which go to the support of the lewd woman of the town, from the street walker, up through the mistresses and the shady wives, to the best dressed and most brazen wanton in the palaces—the “swell” houses so styled. The unrevealable indecencies which attend these infamous resorts are within the knowledge of the police, under any and every municipal administration. At times their pressure upon these unfortunates is heavier than at others. The necessity of raising campaign funds, the personal wants of the blackmailers of the police force, the revenges to be gratified for some jealousy aroused, or favor refused, all contribute to increase the weight of oppression. Meanwhile, in the absence of municipal regulations, whichseem abhorrent to the average American mind as a recognition of the legalization of vice, diseases are wide spread, until, in the language of a distinguished physician, the most destructive of them have reached the blood of “the best and noblest families of the land.” Lecky, in his History of European Morals, speaking of the horrible effects incident to the non-regulation of houses of this character, says: “In the eyes of every physician, and, indeed, in the eyes of most continental writers who have adverted to the subject, no other feature of English life appears so infamous as the fact that an epidemic, which is one of the most dreadful now existing among mankind, which communicates itself from the guilty husband to the innocent wife, and even transmits its taint to her offspring, and which the experience of other nations conclusively proves may be vastly eliminated, should be suffered to rage unchecked, because the legislature refuses to take official cognizance of its existence, or proper sanitary measures for its repression.”
The protests of Christian organizations and of societies for the suppression of vice seem to be invain. The city ordinances prohibiting, for instance, the employment of females in massage parlors patronized by men, and others, intended to keep the conduct of all manufactories of vice within limits, if not to accomplish their suppression, are not attempted to be enforced.
Some mitigation of the evils of police aggression has been brought about, as has been observed, by placing police magistrates under a salary sufficiently large to induce them to partly abolish the practice of wholesale midnight arrests, with their consequent fees and bailors’ exactions. These fees are now accounted for more rigidly and paid over to the city, whether they are the result of daylight or midnight arrests. These evils are not, however, wholly eradicated, nor will they be, until an aroused public sentiment shall give as much attention, public service, and personal endeavor, to the attainment of that most desirable end, as is given to the building of an armory, the establishment of lake front parks, Greater Chicago, the passage of revenue bills, and the defeat of the attempt to obtain public franchises without compensation to the granting municipality.
Whatever will tend to create wealth for the individual, to increase the volume of trade, or add to the attractiveness of the city in the improvement or adornment of its public parks, the energetic and pushing citizen aids with his personal services, and abundant wealth. Its moral attractions receive, in so far as the repression of villainy and of disgusting vice is concerned, but little, if any, personal or pecuniary assistance from the people. At a recent meeting of the Law Enforcement League, a clergyman, who had freely given his time and services in behalf of the objects of that association, begged for the paltry sum of $250 with which to carry on the work. It was received by contribution from his audience after repeated appeals. Had it been a meeting for stock subscriptions to some corporation promising large returns, or for the purpose of building a monument to some former day hero, or author, the appeal would not have had to fall upon the ears of the people repeatedly. The request would have been granted upon its first presentation. “This work,” said the preacher, “cannot be carried on by sympathy, or applause, or resolutions,or expressions of good will. There is nothing but hard cash that counts in the practical work of enforcing the law.”
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.
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 ofChicago, 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 strictenforcement 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 theprevention 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 forcelaugh 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 asit 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 bandof 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 sightlesseyes 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 thecourage 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, inthe 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 theeyes 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 graspedworn 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 areposted 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 adesperate 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 fundsof 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 Illinoisenacted 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 keeperof 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’srights, 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 andgreater 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 arrestin 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 madeby 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 thatdoes 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 isworth 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 softundergoing 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 policeofficers. 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 wereforbidden 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, usuallyknock 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 patrolmanbe 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 toavoid, 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 ofa 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 himaway, 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.