CHICAGO AND ITS CESS-POOLS OF INFAMY

BY

SAMUEL PAYNTER WILSON

Author of “Chicago by Gas Light”, “Wilson’s Epitome
of Historical and Chronological Facts” and
“Wilson’s Concise History.”

DEDICATED
TO THE GOOD
MEN AND WOMEN OF THE WORLD
WITH THE HOPE THAT THE
VICIOUS MAY BECOME BETTER
MEN AND WOMEN

CHICAGO
SAMUEL PAYNTER WILSON
SIXTEENTH EDITION

MR. SAMUEL PAYNTER WILSON.
Chicago, Ill.

My Dear Friend:—

I have read your book with great interest. It tells the truth, though no book can tell all the truth. You have been a great help to our community by the practical and useful service you have rendered in the investigation of vice and the bringing of those responsible for it to justice. Our city is the better for your work.

I hope your book will do much good. If parents but knew the dangers that confront their boys and girls in our great cities, they would at least take some ordinary precautions before turning children adrift amid these perils.

Very sincerely yours,
MORTON CULVER HARTZELL,
President of the Douglas Neighborhood Club.

Contents.

PREFACE

Chicago is to the West what New York is to the East. It is not only the Great Metropolis of the western states, but is the chief attraction upon this continent, the great center to which our people resort for business, and pleasure, and as such, is a source of never-failing interest.

This being the case, it is natural that every American should desire to visit Chicago, to see the city for himself, behold its beauties, its wonderful sights, and participate in the pleasures which are to be enjoyed only in the metropolis. Thousands avail themselves of this privilege every year; but the great mass of our people know our chief city only by the description of friends and the brief accounts of its sights and scenes which occur from time to time in the newspapers of the day. Even those who visit the city bring away but a superficial knowledge of it, as to know Chicago requires months of constant study and investigation. Strangers see only the surface; they cannot penetrate into its inner life, and examine the countless influences at work every day in shaping the destiny of the beautiful city. Few even of the residents of the metropolis, have either the time or means for such investigation. Few have a correct idea of the terrible romance and hard reality of the daily lives of a vast portion of the dwellers in Chicago, or of the splendors and luxury of the wealthier classes.

One of the chief characteristics of Chicago is the rapidity with which changes occur in it. Those who were familiar with the city in the past will find it new to them now. The march of progress and improvement presses on with giant strides, and the city of today is widely separated from that of a few years ago. Only one who has devoted himself to watching its onward career, in prosperity, and magnificence or in misery and crime, can form any idea of the magnitude and character of the wonderful changes of the past twenty-five years.

The volume now offered to the reader aims to be a faithful and graphic pen picture of Chicago and its countless sights, its romance, its mysteries, its nobler and better efforts in the cause of humanity, its dark crimes, and terrible tragedies. In short, the work endeavors to hold up to the reader a faithful mirror in which shall pass all the varied scenes that transpire in Chicago by sunlight and by gaslight. To those who have seen the great city, the work is offered as a means of recalling some of the pleasantest experiences of their lives; while to the still larger class who have never enjoyed this pleasure, it is hoped that it will be the medium of acquiring an intimate acquaintance with Chicago in the quiet of their homes.

This volume is not a work of fiction, but a narrative of well-authenticated, though often startling facts. The darker sides of Chicago life are shown in their true colors, and without any effort to tone them down. Foul blots are to be found upon the life of the great city. Sin, vice, crime and shame are terrible realities there, and they have been presented here as they actually exist.

Throughout the work, the aim of the author has been to warn those who wish to see for themselves the darker side of city life, of the danger attending such undertaking. A man who seeks the haunts of vice and crime in Chicago takes his life in his hand and exposes himself to dangers of the most real kind while in quest of knowledge.

Enough is told in this volume to satisfy legitimate curiosity, and to convince the reader that the only path of safety in Chicago is to avoid all places of doubtful repute. The city is bright and beautiful enough to occupy one’s time with its wonderful sights and innocent pleasures. To venture under the shadows is to covet danger in all its forms. No matter how “Wise in his own conceit” a stranger may be, he is but a child in the hands of the disreputable classes of the great city.

In the preparation of this work the author has drawn freely upon his experiences, the result of a long and intimate acquaintance with all the various phases of Chicago life. He ventures to hope that those who are familiar with the subject will recognize the truthfulness of the statements made and that the book may prove a source of pleasure and profit to all who may honor it with a perusal.

But to destroy the pitfalls, and to blot out forever the vicious places that yawn for the youths of our land, is the chief aim in spreading in plain view the picture here presented.

The monsters may snort and foam, and clap their chubby hands for a while, and laugh at the destruction they have wrought, but we say to them, the ship is not wrecked yet, and in the lull of the storm, we bid our readers to be of good cheer.

The publication of any book must deal largely in facts and if in presenting these dreadful pictures to the public they may be the means of saving some mother’s boy or girl from the “brands of eternal burning,” we shall feel that we have accomplished that which money cannot buy—a clear conscience.

SAMUEL PAYNTER WILSON.

CHICAGO

Twenty-five years in Chicago! What amazing tragedies, and heart-rending scenes have been cast to the winds in that quarter of a century! Could a departed spirit of the earlier days be transported to modern Chicago, the grand panorama would amaze it, even though it be endowed with universal wisdom.

Many historical landmarks have given way to multitudinous mountains of brick and mortar. Where once stood the “low grocery,” now are erected monuments of commerce. Vicious places, where lips have touched wine sweetened by vile and despicable men, are now splendid buildings, churches, temples of learning and other great structures.

The growth and development of Chicago is without parallel, and without precedent. Its future has been often prophesied, but not always understood. When we undertake to trace the causes that have led to its commercial supremacy, and those that are now operating to increase its prosperity, we are met by singular and fatuous circumstances, which it was impossible to foresee and not easy to comprehend. One thing is, however, certain, that the anticipations of the most sanguine have always been more than realized, while the prognostications of the doubtful have only been remembered for their fallacy.

The progressive growth of the city has been often capricious, so far as locality is concerned, but the important factor of topography has always asserted itself, in spite of all efforts to ignore it in the interests of individual projects.

The people of Chicago represent every nationality upon the Globe, and thus give to the city the cosmopolitan character which is one of its most prominent features. But no city on the continent is so thoroughly American as this. The native population is the ruling element, and makes the great city what it is, whether for good or for evil. The children and grandchildren of foreigners soon lose their old world ideas and habits and the third generation sees them as genuine and devoted Americans as any in the city.

The besetting sin of the foreign born citizen is their race for wealth; the very struggle for existence is so eager and intense here, that the people think little of public or religious affairs, and leave their city government, with all its vast interests, in the hands of a few politicians. They pay dearly for this neglect of such important interests. They are taxed and plundered by political tricksters, and are forced to bear burdens and submit to losses which could be avoided by a more patriotic and sensible treatment of their affairs.

The race for wealth is a very exciting one in the great city. The interests at stake are so vast, the competition so constant and close, that men are compelled to be on the watch all the time, and to work with rapidity and almost without rest. Every nerve, every muscle, every power and faculty of body and mind, is taxed to the utmost to discharge the duty of the day. Go into any of the large establishments of the city during business hours and you will be amazed at the ceaseless rush and push of clerks and customers. It is one of unending drive. They cannot always stand the strain upon them, and die off by the hundreds. at a time of life when they ought to be looking forward to a hearty old age.

A gentleman once said to the writer of these pages:

“I came to Chicago at the opening of the World’s Fair to seek employment. I came up the Mississippi River as far as St. Louis, full of hope and confidence. The trip up the river gave new life to this feeling. I knew I was competent, and I was resolved to succeed. I landed at one of the nearby depots and taking up my valise started up town. I turned into State Street, and as I did so, found myself in a steady stream of human beings, each hurrying by as if his life depended upon his speed, taking no notice of his fellows, pushing and jostling them, and each with a weary, jaded, anxious look upon his face. As I gazed at this mighty torrent I was dismayed, I got as far as State and Madison Streets, and then I put my valise upon the pavement, and leaning against a convenient lamp-post, watched them as they passed me by; they came by hundreds, thousands, all with eager, restless gait that I now know so well; all with the weary, anxious, careworn expression I have mentioned, as if trying to reach some distant goal within a given time. They seemed to say to me, 'we would gladly stop if we could, and rest by the way, but we must go on and on and know no rest.’ I asked myself what chance have I here? Can I keep up with this mighty, eager, restless throng, or will they pass me, and leave me behind?” “Well,” he added, with a sad smile, “I have managed to keep up with them, but I tell you it’s a hard strain. We are all living too fast; we are working too hard, we grind, grind at our treadmills all day and we grind too hard, we break down long before we should, this haste, this furious pace at which we are going, at business, at pleasure, at everything, is the great curse of Chicago life.”

Now, my friend’s opinion is shared in by hundreds, thousands of the most sensible men of the city, but they are powerless to save themselves from the curse they know to be upon them. So they must join the crowd, and rush on and on, seeking the glittering prize of wealth and fame.

The common opinion that Chicago is the paradise for humbugs and tricksters is somewhat overdrawn. These people do abound here, beyond a doubt; but they are short-lived. They flourish today and are gone tomorrow, they take no root, and have no hold upon any genuine interests; they attain no permanent success. It is only genuine merit that succeeds in the great city. Men are here subjected to a test that soon takes the conceit out of them. They are taken for just what they are worth, and no more, and he must show himself a man indeed, who would take his place among the princes of trade, or among the leaders of thought and opinion. He may bring with him from his distant home the brightest of reputations, but here he will have to begin at the very bottom of the ladder and mount upward again. It is slow work, so slow that it tries every quality of true manhood to its utmost.

It is said that Chicago is the wickedest city in the country. It is the second largest, and vice thrives and reigns supreme in crowded communities. How great this wickedness is we may see in the subsequent portions of this work. If it is the wickedest city, it is also one of the best on the continent. If it contains thousands of the worst men and women in our land, it contains also thousands of the brightest and best of Christians. In point of morality, it will compare favorably with any city in the world. It is unhappily true that the devil’s work is done here upon a large scale; but so is the work of God upon an even greater scale. If the city contains the gaudiest, the most alluring, and the vilest haunts of sin, it also boasts of the noblest and grandest institutions of religion, of charity, and virtue.

I have spoken of the energy of the people in matters of business; they are, in all respects the most enterprising in the Union. They are bold and self-reliant; they take risks in business from which others shrink, and carry their ventures forward with a resolution and vigor that cannot fail of success. It is this that has made Chicago great; its people take a large, liberal view of matters; they are cosmopolitan in all things.

As a place of residence to those who have the means to justify it, Chicago is a most delightful city. Its attractions are many and it possesses a peculiar charm, which all who have dwelt within its borders feel.

To the dweller in Chicago, State Street is what the Boulevards are to the Parisians. It is the center of life, gayety and business; the great artery through which flows the strong life-current of the metropolis. From the Chicago River to Twelfth Street it is thronged with a busy crowd of workers, restless pleasure-seekers, the good and the bad, the grave and the gay, all hurrying on in eager pursuit of the “show street” of the city, and certainly no more wonderful sight can be witnessed than this grand thoroughfare at high noon. As night comes on the great hotels, restaurants and business emporiums, send out a blaze of light, and are alive with visitors. The crowd is out for pleasure at night, and many and varied are the forms which the pursuit of it takes. Here is a family—father, mother and children—out for a stroll to see the sights they have witnessed a hundred times, and which never grow dull; there is a party of theatre-goers, bent on an evening of innocent amusement; here is a “gang of roughs,” swaggering along the sidewalks, jostling all who come within their way; here a party of young bloods, out on a lark, are drawing upon themselves the keen glances of the stalwart policeman, as he slowly follows them.

All sorts of people are out and the scene is enlivened beyond description. Moving rapidly through the throng, sometimes in couples, sometimes alone, and glancing swiftly and keenly at the men they pass, are a number of flashily-dressed women, generally young and prepossessing. One would never take them for respectable women, as they do not intend that you shall. These are the most degraded of the “lost sisterhood.” The men of the city shun them; their prey is the stranger, and should they succeed in attracting the attention of a victim they dart off down the first side street, and wait for their dupes to join them.

Woe to the man who follows after one of these creatures. The next step is to some of the low dives which still occupy too many of the so-called “hotels” in the business district or perchance to the back room of some pretentious saloon, where bad or drugged liquor steals away the senses of the luckless victim, and robbery or even worse violence, too often ends in the adventure. These women have gone so far down into the depth of sin, that they scruple at nothing which will bring them money.

The throng fills the street until a late hour of the night, then the theatres pour out their audiences to join in, and for an hour or more the restaurants and cafes are filled to their utmost capacity; then as midnight comes on, the street becomes quieter and more deserted. The lights in the buildings are extinguished, and gradually upper State Street becomes silent and deserted—Chicago has gone to bed.

Chicago Society

Good and Bad.

Society in Chicago is made up of many parts, a few of which we propose to examine.

The first-class is unfortunately smallest, and consists of those who set culture and personal refinement above riches. It is made up of professional men and their families, lawyers, clergymen, artists, authors, physicians, scientific men and others of kindred pursuits and tastes. Compared with the other classes, it is not wealthy, though many of its members manage to attain competency and ease. Their homes are tasteful and often elegant, and the household graces are cultivated in preference to display, the tone of this class is pure, healthy and vigorous, and personal merit is the surest passport to it. It furnishes the best types of manhood and womanhood to be met with in the metropolis and its homelife is simple and attractive. In short, it may be said to be the saving element of society in the city, and fortunately it is a growing element, drawing to it every year new members, not only from the city itself, but from all parts of the country. It is this class which gives tone to the moral and religious life of the city. Its members are generally sufficiently well-off in this world’s goods to render them independent of the forms to which others are slaves; they are always ready to recognize and lend a helping hand to struggling merit, but sternly discountenance vulgarity and imposture. They furnish the men and women who do the best work and accomplish the greatest results in social and business life and their names are honored throughout the city.

The second-class consists of those who have inherited large wealth for one or more generations of ancestors. They are generally people of culture, nothing of shoddyism or snobbery about them. Their houses are filled with valuable works of art and mementoes. Having an abundance of leisure they are free to cultivate the graces of life, and they constitute one of the pleasantest patrons of society in the city. The class is not large, but it is constantly receiving new members in the children of men who have made their way in the world, and have learned to value money at its true worth. They make good citizens, with the exception of an easy going indifference to political affairs, are proud of their city and country, and do not ape the airs or costumes of foreign lands.

The third largest class, that which may be said to give Chicago’s fashionable society its peculiar tone, consists of the “newly rich.” These are so numerous, and make themselves so conspicuous, that they are naturally regarded as the representative class of Chicago society. They may be known by their coarse appearances, and still coarser manners, their loud style and ostentatious display of wealth. Money with them is everything, and they judge men, not by their merits, but by their bank account. They are strangers to the refinements and small, sweet courtesies of life, and for them substitute a hauteur and a dash that lay them open to unmerciful ridicule. Some of them are without education or polish, and look down upon those who are less fortunate than themselves, and fawn with cringing servility upon the more aristocratic portion of society. To be invited to an entertainment of some family of solid repute in the fashionable world, to be on visiting terms with those whose wealth and culture rank them as the true aristocracy, is the height of their ambition. This they generally accomplish, for money is a passport to all classes of Chicago society. The better elements may laugh at the “newly rich,” but they invite them to their houses, entertain them, are entertained in return, and so do their share in keeping the “newly rich” firm in its position on the Avenues and Lake Shore Drive.

The “newly rich” look down with supreme contempt upon the institutions which have enabled them to rise so high in the social scale. It is from them one hears so many complaints of the degeneracy of society, and it is the frown from them that chills the ambitious hopes of rising merit; lacking personal dignity themselves, they ridicule it in others.

Some strange changes of names are brought about by a translation to the upper circles. Plain John Smith becomes John Smythe, and perhaps Smyythe. Sam Long, who began life by driving a dray, is now Mr. Samuel Longue. A coat of arms suddenly makes its appearance, for the establishment in the city which deals in such matters is equal to any emergency, and often a pedigree is manufactured in the same way.

A mansion on Lake Shore Drive or in any of the more pretentious avenues, newly acquired wealth is liberally expended in fitting up the new house; and then the fortunate owners of it suddenly burst upon society as stars of first magnitude. They are ill-adapted to their new position, it is true, rude and unrefined, but they have wealth and are willing to spend it, and money is supposed to carry with it all the virtues and graces of fashionable life. This is all society requires, and it receives them with open arms, flatters and courts them, and exalts them to the seventh heaven of fashionable bliss.

Lucky are they who can manage to retain the positions thus acquired. It too often happens that this suddenly gotten wealth goes as rapidly as it came. Then the star begins to pale and finally the family drops out of the fashionable world. It is not missed, however; new stars take their places, perhaps to share the same fate, thus this class of society is not permanent as regards its members. It is constantly changing. People come and go, and the leaders of one season may be conspicuous the next only by their absence.

Sometimes even this class of society takes a notion to be exclusive, and then it is hard to enter the charmed circle.

Some years ago, a gentleman, a man of brains and sterling merit, who had risen slowly to fortune feeling himself in every way fitted for social distinction, resolved to enter society, and to signalize his entree by a grand entertainment. At that time he lived in a not very fashionable street, but he did not regard this as a drawback. He issued his invitations and prepared his entertainment upon a scale of unusual magnificence, and at the appointed time his mansion was ablaze with light, and ready for the guests. Great was his mortification, not one of those invited set foot within his doors. In his anger he swore a mighty oath that he would yet compel Chicago society to humble itself to him. He kept his word, became one of the wealthiest men in the city, indeed one of the merchant princes of the land, and in the course of a few years, society, which had scorned his first invitations, was begging for admission to his sumptuous fetes. He became a leader of society, and his mandates were humbly obeyed by those who had presumed to look down upon him. It was a characteristic triumph; his millions did the work.

Poverty is always a misfortune. Chicago brands it as a crime; consequently no poor man, or even one of moderate means, can hold a place in Chicago society. Indeed it would be impossible for any one not possessed of great wealth to maintain a position in what is termed “high-toned” society here. To do this it requires an almost fabulous outlay of money. As money opens the doors of the charmed circle, so money must keep one within it. Thus Chicago (as in most large cities) has become the most extravagant in the world. In few cities on the globe are such immense sums spent.

Extravagance is the besetting sin of metropolitan social life. Immense sums are expended annually in furnishing the aristocratic mansions, in dress, in entertainments, and all sorts of folly and dissipation. It is no uncommon thing for a house and its contents to be heavily mortgaged to provide the means of keeping its occupants in proper style. The pawnbrokers drive a thriving trade with the ladies of position who pledge jewels, costly dresses, and other articles of feminine luxury, to raise the money for some functional folly. Each member of society strives to outshine or outdress, his or her acquaintances, and to do so requires a continual struggle and a continual drain upon the bank account. Men have been led to madness and even suicide and women to sin and shame, by this constant race for social distinction, but the mad round of extravagances and folly goes on and on, the new comers failing to profit by the sad experiences of those who have gone before them.

The love of dress is a characteristic of the Chicago woman of fashion. To be the best dressed woman at a ball, the opera, a dinner, or on the street, is the height of her ambition. To outshine all other women in the splendor of her attire or her jewels, is to render her supremely happy. Dresses are ordered without regard to cost, and other articles of luxury are purchased in proportion.

Now this is well enough for those who can afford it, but the majority of the Chicago fashionables cannot stand the strain long. As we have said, their great wealth melts steadily under such demands upon it, until there is nothing left but bankruptcy and ruin and of the eternal grind. From time to time the business community is startled by the failure, perhaps the suicide of some normally well-to-do merchant or banker. The affair creates a brief sensation and is soon forgotten. The cause is well-known, “living beyond his means,” or “ruined by his family’s extravagance.” Men suffer the tortures of the damned in their efforts to maintain their commercial standing, and at the same time to provide their families with the means of keeping their place in society. They are driven to forgery, defalcation, and other crimes, yet they do not achieve their object. Ruin lays its heavy hand upon them and the game is played out.

As for Madame, she must have money. The husband may not be able to furnish it, and there may be a limit even to the pawnbroker’s generosity; but money she must have. Fashionable life affords her the means. She sells her honor for filthy lucre; she finds a lover with a free purse, and willing to pay for the favors. She acts with her eyes open, and sins deliberately, and from the basest of motives. She wants money and she gets it. Sometimes the intrigue runs on without detection and Madame shifts from lover to lover, according to her needs. Again there is an unexpected discovery; an explosion follows. Madame’s fine reputation goes to the winds, and there is a gap in society.

No wonder so many fashionable women look jaded, have an anxious, half-startled expression, and seem weary. They are living in a state of dread lest their secrets be discovered and the inevitable ruin overtake them.

Some strange things happen at these fashionable gatherings. Let your memories run back to the early eighties and you will recall an incident of a robbery in the very midst of festivities. In most instances the articles taken are of value that can be easily secreted, the criminal as a rule, is no vulgar thief, but is one of society’s privileged and envied members. The papers of that date recorded the following:

“In the dingy back room of a renowned detective was the scene of an impressive spectacle several weeks ago. In the presence of the gentlemen, one a well-known detective, the other a prominent merchant—knelt a fashionably dressed man of middle age, confessing a shameful story of crime, and imploring mercy.

“I admit all,” he cried. “I stole the property, but I cannot restore it, I was driven to the deed in order to maintain my position in society. My means had largely left me, and I could not resist temptation.”

“This statement fell like a thunderbolt upon the merchant, who had known the speaker long and favorably. To the detective, however, it was not at all unexpected, as he had already satisfied himself as to the guilt of the man. The stealing which was here confessed was one of those crimes in higher circles of society.”

Only a decade has elapsed since the family of a well-known lawyer living on a prominent Avenue, gave a social entertainment to which persons of high standing in society were invited. The following morning it was discovered that rings, watches and jewelry worth several hundred dollars was missing. The most careful search and close examination of servants forced the conclusion upon the family that the robbery had been committed by some one of the guests, although this seemed incredible, as every name upon the list of those present seemed to forbid the thought of suspicion. The affair was put into the hands of private detectives, who were unable, however, to obtain the slightest clew to the thief of the property.

Yet it is not the professional thieves that those who get up fashionable entertainments chiefly fear. The most dangerous class, because the most numerous, are included among the invited guests and are called, when detected, kleptomaniacs.

The White Slave Traffic

The revelations made by investigators should be given as wide a currency as possible. The extent of the White Slave traffic and the machinery by which it is maintained, should be brought home, not only to the officials sworn to deal with crime, but to parents sworn under higher law to guard their young.

Thousands of girls from the country are entrapped each year, and the pitiful fact is that the parents of a large majority of these unfortunates are unaware of their fate. As a consequence of this state of public ignorance, the traffic proceeds unchecked, save by the efforts of persons willing to give time and money for the procuring of evidence and prosecuting the offenders.

What is greatly needed as a supplement to vigorous prosecution of offenders is a campaign of education. Writers, clergymen and officials should take up this appalling evil and instruct parents as to the reality and extent of the danger. In small towns there is virtually no knowledge of this terribly increasing traffic of buying and selling and securing girls for houses of prostitution.

The problem is enormous, but by educational means it can be largely solved. The responsibility for a broad and systematic campaign of enlightenment rests chiefly with the parents, who should become enlightened upon the subject by reading and inquiry, and then instruct their children upon the educational lines to the end that they may know the sad realities and gravity of the evil and its conditions.

The vampires who deal in human bodies must and will be punished. These wretches, who, for a few dollars, will dig so low down in the quagmire of rottenness must be sent to prison. If fathers and mothers could be brought to a realization that thousands of young and tender girls are being sold to vultures for immoral purposes, they would raise a wave of indignation that would sweep around the world.

It is notable, and a commendable fact that the government, through its agents and courts, is accomplishing results that will, it is hoped, forever crush this awful business, and drive the keepers of these cess-pools of vice and shame into the sea of everlasting ignomy.

The sole aim in writing upon the White Slave subject is to definitely call the attention of the men and women of the United States, and especially those of the larger cities, to the vicious, and thoroughly organized white slave traffic of today, and its attendant, far-reaching, horrible results upon the young man and womanhood of our land. During a constant investigation, covering several years’ time in the central slum districts of Chicago, I have gained much actual knowledge of the questions of poverty, drink and prostitution among the lost men and women of this great city. Have become personally acquainted with very many of them, visiting them, listening to their heart stories and growing to know much of their inside lives and have learned a real tender interest and pity for them in their remorseful, helpless, hopeless condition. Statistical references have been taken from the writings of United States District Attorney Sims, Ernest A. Bell, Judge John R. Newcomer, Clifford G. Roe and others engaged in prosecuting and reform work, all of whom I thank earnestly and wish well in what they are accomplishing for good where it is so desperately needed in this submerged underworld of our city.

After these years of experience, and after having visited in various capacities, disguised, etc., many of the worst haunts of vice and houses of prostitution in Chicago, I personally came to this conclusion: There is small chance for a girl, once having been sold into or entered upon a life of prostitution, to ever escape therefrom. Invariably she is kept in debt to her masters, excessive bills for parlor clothes, board, dentistry, laundry and all conceivable expenses are kept charged up against her. She is under constant threat of personal violence and blackmail in every form (her owners securing, whenever possible, some knowledge of her home and friends and continually holding this knowledge as a dagger over her), and then there are the ever-present whoremasters and madams with drugs and drinks and bolts and bars, guarding every possible avenue of escape with blows and curses and brutality beyond conception. Very few young girls enter a life of prostitution voluntarily, and few, once entering, ever escape.

The recent examination of more than two hundred “white slaves” by the office of the United States District Attorney of Chicago has brought to light the fact that literally thousands of innocent girls from the country districts are every year entrapped into a life of hopeless slavery and degredation because parents in the country do not understand conditions as they exist and how to protect their daughters from the “white slave” traders who have reduced the art of ruining young girls to a national and international system. I sincerely believe that nine-tenths of the parents of these thousands of girls who are every year snatched from lives of decency and comparative peace and dragged under the slime of an existence in the “white slave” world have no idea that there is really a trade in the ruin of girls as much as there is trade in cattle or sheep or the other products of the farm. If these parents had known the real conditions, had believed that there is actually a syndicate which does as regular, as steady and persistent a “business” in the ruination of girls as the great packing houses do in the sale of meats, it is wholly probable that their daughters would not now be in dens of vice and almost utterly without hope of release excepting by the hand of death.

It is only necessary to say that the legal evidence thus far collected establishes with complete moral certainty these awful facts: That the white slave traffic is a system—a syndicate which has its ramifications from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific ocean, with “clearing houses” or “distributing centers” in nearly all the larger cities; that in this ghastly traffic the buying price of a young girl is $15.00 and that the selling price is generally about $200.00—if the girl is especially attractive, the white slave dealer may be able to sell her for $400.00 or $600.00; that this syndicate did not make less than $200,000 last year in this almost unthinkable commerce; that it is a definite organization sending its hunters regularly to scour France, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Canada for victims; that the man at the head of this unthinkable enterprise is known among his hunters as “The Big Chief.”

Judge John R. Newcomer of Chicago, said before the National Purity Congress at Battle Creek, Michigan:

“Within one week I had seven different letters from fathers, from Madison, Wisconsin, on the north, to Peoria, Illinois, on the south, asking me in God’s name to do something to help them find their daughters, because they had come to Chicago and they had never heard from them afterward.

“If you mean by the 'white slave’ traffic the placing of young girls in a brothel for a price, it is undoubtedly a real fact, based upon statements that have been made in my court during the past three months by defendants, both men and women, who have pleaded guilty to that crime, and in a sense it is both interstate and international.

“Not one, but many shipments, of which I have personal knowledge, based upon testimony of people who have pleaded guilty, many shipments come from Paris and other European cities to New York; and from New York to Chicago and other western points; and from Chicago as a distributing point to the West and Southwest; and on the western coast coming into San Francisco and other ports there. No, it is a real fact; and it is something that we have got to take notice of, and something that, while it may have been developed largely during the past ten years, the national government itself has recently taken notice of its existence.”

Mr. Clifford G. Roe, formerly Assistant State’s Attorney, who has prosecuted very many cases against the traffickers in women, said before the union meeting of ministers called to consider the white slave traffic, at the auditorium of the Young Men’s Christian Association, February 10, 1908:

“A great many persons are yet skeptical of the existence of an organized traffic in girls. They seem to think that those advocating the abolition of this trade are either fanatics or notoriety seekers. They doubt the truth of the impossibility of escape and content themselves with the thought that girls use the plea of slavery to right themselves with their parents and friends when their cases are made public.

“However, if these same people could have been in the courts of Chicago during the past year their minds would be disabused of the idea that slavery does not exist in Chicago.

“The startling disclosures made in nearly a hundred cases ought to arouse not only the citizens of Chicago, but the whole country to the highest pitch of indignation.”

Chicago’s Soul Market.

“O, he keeps a bunch of 'fillies’ in the shanty down near the corner of Monroe and Peoria streets, and they’re not foreigners, either. They’re your nice American girls. No wonder he can make a bet like that on a mere chance, from a roll of yellow-backs.” The speaker was a madam of a Peoria street resort, the listeners a motley crowd of women gathered in the rear room of a popular saloon and gambling house not far from the corner of Green and Madison streets on the seething, congested west side of Chicago. These women assembled in that screened back room to risk their hard-earned or evil-gotten money on the horses of the Louisville race track.

There sat the little eighteen-year-old, brown-eyed milliner, her dissipated face hollow and drawn from worry and lack of sleep and an insufficient quantity of nourishing food, while near her a white-haired old woman in shabby black was tightly grasping two quarters, her entire worldly possession. Just across sat a well-dressed woman restaurant keeper, a young Eastern Star, and half a hundred others, above all of whom shone the yellow-haired madam of the Peoria street resort, the star patron of that great gambling room for women, each one of whom was eagerly beckoning the well-groomed bookmaker, feverishly anxious to get her pittance on the race track favorite, when a connecting door was pushed suddenly open and in rushed a fashionably-dressed, brutal-faced young Russian Jew, holding loosely an immense roll of money. Tens, twenties, hundreds—he came with them until three hundred dollars had been placed to win upon a “clocker’s tip” in that day’s last race in Louisville.

There was a grim, deadly silence, eating, unbearable silence in that gambling room as they waited the ring of the telephone and the name of the winner. Again the yellow-haired madam’s voice screamed shrilly out, for she was indeed ill at ease, her money was on the favorite—“Yes, a bunch of American 'fillies’ peddled out at fifty cents an hour to all comers, black and white, sick or sound. No wonder he can make a play like that on an outside chance.”

Three hundred dollars! My heart stood still almost. The thought flashed through my brain that that wager meant hundreds of hours of shame and slavery and horror to those girls in the shanties down on Peoria Street, some mother’s girl, every one of them. I sat still for a little while and watched the fevered, anxious throng about me. My heart kept going faster and faster until I could bear it no longer. American “fillies” and body and soul under a brutal Russian Jewish whoremonger! I slipped quietly out into the street; night was coming on as I walked down Madison street and south on Peoria. Yes, there were the shanties—poor, wretched hovels, every one of them. Out shone the flickering red lights, out came the discordant, rasping sound of the rented piano, out belched the shrieks of drunken harlots, mingled with the groans and curses of task-masters in a foreign tongue, attracting the attention of the hundreds of laborers, negroes and boys, as they walked home on Peoria street from their day’s work. On I went until I came to the little shed just north of the slum saloon occupied by one S——, and checking my steps I looked around me on the squalid, wretched scene. I was in the midst of prostitution at its lowest—the heart-breaking dregs of Chicago’s twenty-two thousand public women. Yes, there they were—the fair young American girl, the stolid Russian Jewess, the middle-aged, syphilitic harlot, living, prostituting, dying, like so many hurt, broken moths around that great Red Light—Chicago’s west side soul market—their poor, wretched bodies, sold day and night at from twenty-five to fifty cents an hour to all comers who could pay the pitiful price demanded by their brutal, soulless masters; and as I looked the burning fire of intense pity entered my soul for these drug and drink-sodden, diseased, chained slaves—my sisters in Christ in this great free American Republic—and so with a heart full of consuming desire to know more of the real lives of these scarlet women and to help them, if possible, I began at once a thorough personal investigation of Chicago’s public slave market, visiting these people in various capacities whenever occasion offered; talking with them, gaining their much-abused confidence until I gradually learned the inside lines of the saddest story America has ever known since the black mothers of our Southland were torn from their black and white babies and with shrieks of agony and heartstrings bleeding and souls rent with blackened horror were sold to death on the plantations of Louisiana and Mississippi, and I want to tell you who read this and who think there is little truth in the now much agitated question of white slavery in America, that in the dives and dens of our city’s underworld I have heard shrieks and heart cries and groans of agony and remorse that have never been surpassed at any public slave auction America has ever witnessed, as these girls, many of them, oh! so young, realizing their awful fate with scalding tears and moans of horror, shut out from their hearts and lives father or mother, or husband and child and turned their sob-shaken, tortured bodies to face the months or years of final, relentless wretchedness and woe, to be at last thrown out sick and broken to die in some alley or be carted off to Dunning poorhouse to gradual physical decay and a pauper’s burial, and grave and obliteration, while those who sold them just a few years before go out in their diamonds and fine linen and their great automobiles to buy up more girls (it might be your daughter—father, mother—or it might be mine) to fill up the vacancy in the ranks of this vast army of white slaves. A woman said to me the other day, and it was a lofty, sneering tone, too: “I doubt if these women are ever coerced or even imposed upon.” Listen! read, then listen! Sitting in my office one afternoon, I listened, my blood almost freezing, to the following story, vouched for by Mr. C——, an immigration inspector and brother of a well-known Chicago reform-worker, and here it is as he told it to me: “One evening some time ago I was looking up a case down in the Twenty-second street red-light district, and visited and inspected, looking for immigrant girls held illegally at a certain house of the lower class in that neighborhood of prostitution. While in the house I noticed a young woman lying very ill (in the last stages of consumption, if I remember the story exactly) and in a semi-conscious condition, and to my horror upon inquiry I learned that in the rush hours of business this helpless, painracked young woman was open to all comers holding an accredited room check.” My friends, there are true stories heard and known every day around the city’s seething, blood-red soul market that cannot be put in print—stories though, that, were they to become known, would make decent Chicago rise as one man and cry with a voice outspeaking Fort Sumpter, “White Slavery in Chicago and America must cease!”

During my years of study of this question of prostitution I learned to know personally many of the characteristic white slaves of the west and south side “levees.” One “Alice” I shall never, never forget. Beautiful, aside from her dissipation, a high-school graduate, grammar and syntax perfect, manner exquisite, “Alice,” seduced at eighteen, was at the age of twenty-one away down the line in the west side levee underworld. I used to talk many times with Alice as she sat in the back parlor of the “house” on Peoria street that gave her shelter, awaiting her call of “next” to go “upstairs” with whatsoever—negro, white or Chinese—might buy possession for one dollar (one of our dollars of the Republic on which is eternally stamped the blessed words, “In God we trust”) of her beautiful body for one hour. Smoking, always smoking her doped Turkish cigarette, Alice told me much of her life, both in years gone forever and of a daily “levee” existence. She told me of a father and mother and a beautiful home, of a lover who came into it and led her away by night into “levee” slavery—of awful disgrace and inheritance, of a little baby that she only knew one hour, of hours of insane remorse and anguish, until at last she would stand and scream and scream with mental pain until some whoremonger knocked her senseless, and then she told me how she would crawl away to a nearby shanty saloon and drink herself helpless, to forget. As far as I know, Alice is still on Peoria street, and oh, men and women, there are twenty-two thousand of these “Alices,” your sisters and mine, in Chicago’s great blasting soul market today. United States Attorney Sims puts the average life of a prostitute at ten years or less, while other excellent authorities as low as five years, as these women must constantly drink any and all drinks purchased for them (as much of the business revenue is from the sale of these drinks) by visitors, thus forcing them at all times into a continual half-drunken condition, rendering them helpless to control or resist the abnormal, sickening, mind and body-wrecking demands made upon them. Very few women live therein an average more than three, four or six years, and at the end of that time twenty-two thousand pure young girls gathered from prairie homes and village firesides and from our own suburban and city families must march out in this great soul market to take the place of the broken wretches whose decaying bodies are cast into the refuse of our alleys and sewers to become the menace of every girl and boy and drunken man who comes within their clutches or sets foot within their alley hovels.

The End of the Way.

At about ten o’clock on Saturday evening, September 19th, I boarded a West Madison street car and, transferring north at Halsted street, alighted at Lake and walked west to L——'s saloon. I discovered in the wine and back rooms of the wretched place a crowd of perhaps fifty drunken, dirty men and women, young white girls, huddled in with the worst mob of negroes, whites and Chinese I have seen in Chicago’s slums, all cursing, drinking, singing and blaspheming in plain view and hearing of the street. I stopped a moment to make sure I was making no mistake in what I saw and then crossed the street to interview the dark-eyed little foreigner who at its door was boldly soliciting trade for the saloon and its adjacent evils just opposite. I walked down to Peoria and south on that notorious street. In the row of houses running from Lake to Randolph street there are approximately 300 white slaves, and diseased, crippled prostitutes of the lowest class, dumped from the city’s cleaner dives. And on that night it was almost impossible to push one’s way through the mass of men and boys—whites, negroes, Turks and Pollocks, gathered in front of these public abominations. At the corner of Randolph and Peoria streets several earnest looking men and women were holding a little gospel street meeting, and stopping with them, I counted during the thirty minutes I stayed there, six hundred and forty (approximately) men and boys stop in front of or enter this horrible flesh market. As I left the scene a young girl in a drunken, filthy condition, slipped out of an alley and followed me, asking me to help her, and as we sat on the steps of Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral, corner of Washington boulevard and Peoria street, she told me the worst, heart-breaking story of wrong and vice and ruin I have ever listened to. As I left that West Side levee of vice I knew I had seen prostitution at its lowest ebb and that out from these holes of horror finally went those awful alley women of the night to sell their souls to any young boy or drunken man who could give them a few cents or even the price of a drink of whiskey.

This girl was turned over to the Chicago Rescue Mission, cleaned and clothed and fed and pointed to Jesus Christ. Her story was investigated and found true and after receiving medical attention she was quietly returned to her country home.

Mr. J. J. Sloan, when he was superintendent of the John Worthy School (which is the local municipal juvenile reformatory), reported that one-third of the street boys sent to him were suffering from the loathsome diseases and distempers of the red-light district, nor is this to be wondered at when we consider the fact that sexual commerce may be purchased almost anywhere in the South State street and West Side alleys for the remarkably low price of ten cents, or even a glass of beer or whisky from the gonorrheal and syphilitic denizens thrown out long ago from the better class houses of prostitution to live off the half drunken men and young boys to be found in swarms along South State, Halsted and South Clark streets. Almost invariably the street boy hunting these underworld sections of our city is first led into sexual sin by one of the crippled, half rotten, yet painted vampires of the street whose only care or hope is a crust of free lunch and enough whisky or “dope” to drown for a time at least, the last throb of heart and conscience and keep life a few days longer within her wretched body, and the boy, having purchased for the small fee his own destruction, trails out again into the night and on into disease and crime and prison, and finally death.

The average parent of today has little idea of the temptations which constantly surround and beset the growing boy. I recall a case in Des Moines, Iowa, where a little degenerate girl of sixteen, caused the moral, and in several cases physical, ruin of five young boys, all this happening in an exclusive east side neighborhood and under the watchful care of honest parents and friends, so what must be the temptation thrown out to the young boys of our city when through block after block of our certain districts they must come in direct contact with those whose only mission is to ruin and debauch. It should be the direct object morally and politically, of every father and mother in this city to banish these human parasites—these leeches who suck the life blood of our boys—from Chicago’s streets.

Listen, father, mother, there are twenty-two thousand poor, dearly-beloved young girls growing up in our midst today who within five years must, under the present business system of white slavery, put aside father, mother, home, friends and honor and march into Chicago’s ghastly flesh market to take the place of the twenty-two thousand helpless, hopeless, decaying chattles who now daily behind bolts and bars and steel screens, satisfy the abominable lust of (approximately) two hundred and ten thousand brutal, drunken adulterers.

I believe, as I write, that the final solving of this reeking, hideous question lies in the moral and Christian teaching and protection of the growing girls of our land. I believe in a rigidly enforced law that keeps girls under legal age and unattended off the down-town streets at night after a reasonable hour. Harry Balding, the convicted white slaver, in his confession before Judge Newcomer and Assistant State’s Attorney Roe, says: “We would be sent out by resort keepers to work up some girls, for whom we were paid from $10 to $50 each, though the cash bonus was much more. The majority of them were girls we met on the street. We would go around to the penny arcades and nickle theatres and when we saw a couple of young girls we would go up and talk with them. I will say this for myself—I never took a girl away from her home; the girls I took down there I met in the stores or on the streets.” There is a league of masonry worldwide that makes it possible for a mason anywhere in trouble or distress, to raise his hand toward the heavens with a certain sign and if there be a brother mason within reach, that brother, no matter of what nationality, kindred or tongue, is sworn to give him all needed protection. Listen, father, mother, sister, listen brother! Today from beneath Chicago’s awful moral sewerage which has sucked their hearts and souls and bodies under, a thousand trembling hands are held up to high heaven, and to you for help, hands reeking with the blood on which some whoremonger has fattened; the hands though of your sisters and of mine, and I believe that here in Chicago, the greatest market for white slaves on the continent, should be formed a league that would become worldwide, of earnest, law-abiding men and women whose efforts united with those of the proper police, municipal and Federal authorities, would make it practically impossible for a girl to be sold into or compelled to lead an immoral life, and through whose influence such open public flesh markets as our “red-light” and levee district would be banished forever from Chicago streets. I believe in helping, God knows, with heart and hand and money, every fallen woman in our land whom there is the slightest chance to help in any way, but I believe first of all in using every known measure to keep our girls from falling. You and I live beneath the only flag in all the world that has never known defeat, and the very basic principle upon which that flag is builded is human liberty and human protection, and so by personal work, by song, prayer and by the power of the cross let us set ourselves to help these helpless ones in our midst until the angels shall take up the story of shame and bitterness and wrong and bear to all the world and to heaven itself the swift acknowledgement that you are your brother’s keeper.

Smashing The Traffic

There are some things so far removed from the lives of normal, decent people as to be simply unbelievable by them. The “white slave” trade of today is one of these incredible things. The calmest, simplest statements of its facts are almost beyond the comprehension or belief of men and women who are mercifully spared from contact with the dark and hideous secrets of “the under world” of the big cities.

You would hardly credit the statement, for example, that things are being done every day in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and other large cities of this country in the white slave traffic which would, by contrast, make the Congo slave traders of the old days appear like Good Samaritans. Yet this figure is almost a literal truth. The man of the stone age who clubbed a woman of his desire into insensibility or submission was little short of a high-minded gentleman when contrasted with the men who fatten upon the “white slave” traffic in this day of social settlements, of forward movements, of Y. M. C. A. and Christian Endeavor activities, of air ships and wireless telegraphy.

Naturally, wisely, every parent who reads this statement will at once raise the question: “What excuse is there for the open discussion of such a revolting condition of things in the pages of a household magazine? What good is there to be served by flaunting so dark and disgusting a subject before the family circle?”

Only one—and that is a reason and not an excuse! The recent examination of more than two hundred “white slaves” by the office of the United States district attorney at Chicago has brought to light the fact that literally thousands of innocent girls from the country districts are every year entrapped into a life of hopeless slavery and degradation because parents in the country do not understand conditions as they exist and how to protect their daughters from the “white slave” traders who have reduced the art of ruining young girls to a national and international system. I sincerely believe that nine-tenths of the parents of these thousands of girls who are every year snatched from lives of decency and comparative peace and dragged under the slime of existence in the “white slave world” have no idea that there is really a trade in the ruin of girls as much as there is a trade in cattle or sheep or the other products of the farm. If these parents had known the real conditions, had believed that there is actually a syndicate which does as regular, as steady and persistent a “business” in the ruination of girls as the great packing houses do in the sale of meats, it is wholly probable that their daughters would not now be in dens of vice and almost utterly without hope or release excepting by the hand of death.

The purpose of all our laws and statutes against crime is the suppression of crime. The protection of the people, of the home, of the individual, is the purpose which inspires the honest and conscientious prosecutor. This is what the law is for, and if this result of protection to individuals and home can be made more effective and more general by a statement such as this, then I am willing to make it for the public good. And the most direct and unadorned statement of facts will, I think, carry its own conviction and make everything like “preaching” or denunciation superfluous.

The evidence obtained from questioning some 250 girls taken in Chicago houses of ill repute leads me to believe that not fewer than fifteen thousand girls have been imported into this country in the last year as white slaves. Of course this is only a guess—an approximate—it could be nothing else—but my own personal belief is that it is a conservative guess and well within the facts as to numbers. Then please remember that girls imported are certainly but a mere fraction of the number recruited for the army of prostitution from home fields, from the cities, the towns, the villages of our own country. There is no possible escape from this conclusion.

Another significant fact brought out by the examination of these girls is that practically every one who admitted having parents living begged that her real name be withheld from the public because of the sorrow and shame it would bring to her parents. One said: “My mother thinks I am studying in a stenographic school,” another stated, “My parents in the country think I have a good position in a department store—as I did have for a time, and I’ve sent them a little money from time to time; I don’t care what happens so long as they don’t know the truth about me.” In a word, the one concern of nearly all those examined who have homes in this country was that their parents—and in particular their mothers—might discover, through the prosecution of the “white slavers,” that they were leading lives of shame instead of working at the honorable callings which they had left their homes and come to the city to pursue. There are, to put it mildly, hundreds—yes, thousands—of trusting mothers in the smaller cities, the towns, villages and farming communities of the United States who believe that their daughters are “getting on fine” in the city, and too busy to come home for a visit or “to write much,” while the fact is that these daughters have been swept into the gulf of white slavery—the worst doom that can befall a woman. The mother who has allowed her girl to go to the big city and work should find out what kind of life that girl is living and find out from some other source than the girl herself. No matter how good and fine a girl she has been at home and how complete the confidence she has always inspired, find out how she is living, what kind of associations she is keeping. Take nothing for granted. You owe it to yourself and to her and it is not disloyalty to go beyond her own words for evidence that the wolves of the city have not dragged her from safe paths. It is, instead, the highest form of loyalty to her.

Again, there is, in another particular, a remarkable and impressive sameness in the stories related by these wretched girls. In the narratives of nearly all of them is a passage describing how some man of their acquaintance had offered to “help” them to a good position in the city, to “look after” them, and to “take an interest” in them. After listening to this confession from one girl after another, hour after hour, until you have heard it repeated perhaps fifty times, you feel like saying to every mother in the country: Do not trust any man who pretends to take an interest in your girl if that interest involves her leaving your own roof. Keep her with you. She is far safer in the country than in the big city, but if, go to the city she must, then go with her yourself; if that is impossible, place her with some woman who is your friend, not hers; no girl can safely go to a great city to make her own way who is not under the eye of a trustworthy woman who knows the ways and dangers of city life. Above all, distrust the “protection,” the “good offices” of any man who is not a family friend known to be clean and honorable and above all suspicion.

Of course all the examinations to which I have referred have been conducted for the specific purpose of finding girls who have been brought into this country from other lands in defiance of the federal statute, passed by Congress February 20, 1907. This act declares that any person who shall “keep, maintain, support or harbor” any alien woman for immoral purposes within three years after her arrival in this country shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and shall be liable to a fine of $5,000 and imprisonment for five years at the discretion of the court. When the department of justice at Washington decided that this law was being violated, the United States district attorney at Chicago was instructed to take such action as was necessary to apprehend the violators of the act and convict them. One of the first steps required was the raiding of the various dives and houses of ill-fame and the arrest of the girl inmates as well as the arrest of the keepers and the procurers of the white slaves.

While the federal prosecution is officially concerned only with those cases involving the importation of girls from other countries—there being no authority under the present national statutes for the federal government to prosecute those concerned in securing white slaves who are natives of this country—it was inevitable that the examination of scores of these inmates, captured in raids upon the dives, should bring to officers and agents of the department of justice an immense fund of information regarding the methods of the white slave traders in recruiting for the traffic from home fields.

Whether these hunters of the innocent ply their awful calling at home or abroad their methods are much the same—with the exception that the foreign girl is more hopelessly at their mercy. Let me take the case of a little Italian peasant girl who helped her father till the soil in the vineyards and fields near Naples. Like most of the others taken in the raids, she stoutly maintained that she had been in this country more than three years and that she was in a life of shame from choice and not through the criminal act of any person. When she was brought into what the sensational newspapers would call the “sweat box,” it was clear that she was in a state of abject terror. Soon, however, Assistant United States District Attorney Parkin, having charge of the examination, convinced her that he and his associates were her friends and protectors and that their purpose was to punish those who had profited by her ruin and to send her back to her little Italian home with all her expenses paid; that she was under the protection of the United States and was as safe as if the king of Italy would take her under his royal care and pledge his word that her enemies should not have revenge on her.

Then she broke down, and with pitiful sobs related her awful narrative. That every word of it was true, no one could doubt who saw her as she told it. Briefly this is her story: A “fine lady” who wore beautiful clothes came to where she lived with her parents, made friends with her, told her she was uncommonly pretty (the truth, by the way), and professed a great interest in her. Such flattering attentions from an American lady who wore clothes as fine as those of the Italian nobility, could have but one effect on the mind of this simple little peasant girl and on her still simpler parents. Their heads were completely turned and they regarded the “American lady” with almost adoration.

Very shrewdly the woman did not attempt to bring the little girl back with her, but held out hope that some day a letter might come with money for her passage to America. Once there she would become the companion of her American friend and they would have great times together.

Of course, in due time the money came—and the $100 was a most substantial pledge to the parents of the wealth and generosity of the “American lady.” Unhesitatingly she was prepared for the voyage which was to take her to the land of happiness and good fortune. According to the arrangements made by letter the girl was met at New York by two “friends” of her benefactress who attended to her entrance papers and took her in charge. These “friends” were two of the most brutal of all the white slave drivers who are in the traffic. At this time she was about sixteen years old, innocent and rarely attractive for a girl of her class, having the large, handsome eyes, the black hair and the rich olive skin of a typical Italian.

Where these two men took her she did not know—but by the most violent and brutal means they quickly accomplished her ruin. For a week she was subjected to unspeakable treatment and made to feel that her degredation was complete and final.

And here let it be said that the breaking of the spirit, the crushing of all hope for any future save that of shame, is always a part of the initiation of a white slave. Then the girl was shipped on to Chicago, where she was disposed of to the keeper of an Italian dive of the vilest type. On her entrance here she was furnished with gaudy dresses and wearing apparel for which the keeper of the place charged her $600. As is the case with all new white slaves she was not allowed to have any clothing which she could wear upon the street.

Her one object in life was to escape from the den in which she was held a prisoner. To “pay out” seemed the surest way, and at length, from her wages of shame, she was able to cancel the $600 account. Then she asked for her street clothing and her release—only to be told that she had incurred other expenses to the amount of $400.

Her Italian blood took fire at this and she made a dash for liberty. But she was not quick enough and the hand of the oppressor was upon her. In the wild scene that followed she was slashed with a razor, one gash straight through her right eye, one across her cheek and another slitting her ear. Then she was given medical attention and the wounds gradually healed, but her face was horribly mutilated, her right eye is always open and to look upon her is to shudder.

When the raids began she was secreted and arrangements made to ship her to a dive in the mining regions of the west. Fortunately, however, a few hours before she was to start upon her journey the United States marshals raided the place and captured herself as well as her keepers. To add to the horror of her situation she was soon to become a mother. The awful thought in her mind, however, was to escape from assassination at the hands of the murderous gang which oppressed her.

Evidence shows that the hirelings of this traffic are stationed at certain points of entry in Canada, where large numbers of immigrants are landed, to do what is known in their parlance as “cutting out work.” In other words, these watchers for human prey scan the immigrants as they come down the gang plank of a vessel which has just arrived, and “spot” the girls who are unaccompanied by fathers, mothers, brothers or relatives to protect them. The girl who has been spotted as a desirable and unprotected victim is properly approached by a man who speaks her language and is immediately offered employment at good wages, with all expenses to the destination to be paid by the man. Most frequently laundry work is the bait held out, sometimes housework or employment in a candy shop or factory. The object of the negotiations is to “cut out” the girl from any of her associates and to get her to go with him. Then the only thing is to accomplish her ruin by the shortest route. If they cannot be cajoled or enticed by promises of an easy time, plenty of money, fine clothes and the usual stock of allurements—or a fake marriage, then harsher methods are resorted to. In some instances the hunters really marry the victims. As to the sterner methods, it is of course impossible to speak explicitly, beyond the statement that intoxication and drugging are often used as means to reduce the victims to a state of helplessness, and sheer physical violence is a common thing.

When once a white slave is sold and landed in a house or dive, she becomes a prisoner. The raids disclosed the fact that in each of these places is a room having but one door, to which the keeper holds the key. In here are locked all the street clothes, shoes and the ordinary apparel of a woman.

The finery which is provided for the girl for house wear is of a nature to make her appearance in the street impossible. Then added to this handicap, is the fact that at once the girl is placed in debt to the keeper for a wardrobe of “fancy” clothes, which are charged to her at preposterous prices. She cannot escape while she is in debt to the keeper—and she is never allowed to get out of debt—at least until all desire to leave the life is dead within her.

The examination of witnesses have brought out the fact that not many of the women in this class expect to live more than ten years, after they enter upon their voluntary or involuntary life of white slavery. Perhaps the average is less than that. Many die painful deaths by disease, many by consumption, but it is hardly beyond the truth to say that suicide is their general expectation. “We’ll all come to it sooner or later,” one of the witnesses remarked to her companions in the jail, the other day, when reading in the newspaper of the suicide of a girl inmate of a notorious house.

A volume could be written on this revolting subject, but I have no disposition to add a single word but what will open the eyes of parents to the fact that white slavery is an existing condition—a system of girl hunting that is national and international in its scope, that it literally consumes thousands of girls—clean, innocent girls—every year; that it is operated with a cruelty, a barbarism that gives a new meaning to the word fiend; that it is imminent peril to every girl in the country who had a desire to get into the city and taste its excitements and its pleasures.

The facts stated here are for the awakening of parents and guardians of girls. If I were to presume to say anything to the possible victims of this awful scourge of white slavery it would be this: “Those who enter here leave hope behind;” the depths of debasement and suffering disclosed by the investigation now in progress would make the flesh of a seasoned man of the world creep with horror and shame.

Why Girls Go Astray

Right at the outset let me say in all frankness that I would never, from personal choice, write upon a subject of this character. Its sensationalism is personally repellant to me and cannot fail to be of actual protective benefit to many homes; and to withhold the facts and disclosures which have come to me as investigator would be to deprive the innocent and the worthy of a protection which might save many a home from sorrow, disgrace and ruin.

The results of this work and of the explanations of the conditions uncovered in this book have brought to me a gratifying knowledge of the practical rescue work being done by the settlement and “slum” workers of Chicago. They are not only specialists in this field, but they are as devoted as they are practical.

So far as the matter of sensationalism is concerned, that may be disposed of in the simple statement that the naked recital, in the most formal and colorless phraseology, of the facts already brought to light by the “white slave” prosecutions are in themselves so sensational that the art of the most brilliant orator, or the cunning of the cleverest writer, could not add an iota to their sensationalism. And it may as well be said here that it is quite impossible to even hint in public print of the revolting depths of shame disclosed by this investigation. Behind every word that can be said in print on this topic is a world of degradation of which the slightest hint cannot be given.

If there are any who are inclined to feel that the term “white slave” is a little overdrawn, a little exaggerated, let them decide on that point after considering this statement: “Among the 'white slaves’ captured in raids since the appearance of this book, is a girl who is now about eighteen years of age. Her home was in France, and when she was only fourteen years old she was approached by a 'white slaver’ who promised her employment in America as a lady’s maid or companion. The wage offered was far beyond what she could expect to get in her own country—but far more alluring to her than the money she could earn was the picture of the life which would be hers in free America. Her surroundings would be luxurious; she would be the constant recipient of gifts of dainty clothing from her mistress, and even the hardest work she would be called upon to do would be in itself a pleasure and an excitement.

“Naturally she was eager to leave her home and trust herself to one who would provide her with so enriching a future. Her friends of her own age seasoned their farewells to her with envy of her rare good fortune.

“On arriving in Chicago she was taken to the house of ill-fame to which she had been sold by the procurer. There this child of fourteen was quickly and unceremoniously 'broken in’ to the hideous life of depravity for which she had been entrapped. The white slaver who sold her was able to drive a most profitable bargain, for she was rated as uncommonly attractive. In fact, he made her life of shame a perpetual source of income, and when—not long ago—he was captured and indicted for the importation of other girls, this girl was used as the agency of providing him with $2,000 for his defense.

“But let us look for a moment at the mentionable facts of this child’s daily routine of life and see if such an existence justifies the use of the term 'slavery.’ After she had furnished a night of servitude to the brutal passions of vile frequenters of the place, she was then compelled to put off her tawdry costume, array herself in the garb of a scrub-woman, and, on her hands and knees, scrub the house from top to bottom. No weariness, no exhaustion, ever excused her from this drudgery, which was a full day’s work for a strong woman.

“After her scrubbing was done she was allowed to go to her chamber and sleep—locked in her room to prevent her possible escape—until the orgies of the next day, or rather night, began. She was allowed no liberties, no freedom, and in the two and one half years of her slavery in this house she was not even given one dollar to spend for her own comfort or pleasure. The legal evidence collected shows that during this period of slavery she earned for those who owned her not less than eight thousand dollars!”

If this is not slavery, I have no definition for it.

Let us make it entirely clear that the white slave is an actual prisoner. She is under the most constant surveillance, both by the keeper to whom she is “let” and the procurer who owns her. Not until she has lost all possible desire to escape is she given any liberty.

Before me, as I write, is a letter from a father which is a tragedy in a page. He begins the note by saying that the warning has aroused him to inquire after his “little girl.” There is a pathetic pride in his admission that she was considered an uncommonly “pretty girl” when she left her home to take a position in Chicago. Her letters, he states, have been more and more infrequent, but that she does occasionally write home, and sometimes encloses a small amount of money. From the tone of the father’s note it is evident that, while he is a trifle anxious, he asks that his daughter be “looked up” rather to confirm his feelings of confidence that she is all right than otherwise.

A glance at the address where she was to be found left no possible question as to the fate which had overtaken this daughter of a country home. So far as a knowledge of the girl’s mode of life is concerned, no investigation was necessary—the location named being in the center of Chicago’s “red-light” district.

However, the case was placed in the hands of a settlement worker, and at this moment the girl is waiting, in a place of safety, for the arrival of her father, who is on his way to take her back to the mother and brothers and sisters who have supposed that she was holding a respectable, but poorly paid position. They will, however, welcome a very different person from the “pretty girl” who went out from that home to make her way in the big city. She is pitifully wasted by the life which she has led and her constitution is so broken down that she cannot reasonably expect many years of life, even under the tenderest care. What is still worse, the fact cannot be denied that her moral fibre is much shattered, and that the work of reclamation must be more than physical.

The “White slaves” who have been taken in the course of the present prosecution have, generally, been very grateful for the liberation and glad to return to their homes. It has been necessary for their own protection as well as for other reasons—to commit some of these unfortunates to various prisons pending the trial of the cases in which they are to appear as witnesses, and practically every one of them gives unmistakable evidence that imprisonment is a welcome liberation by comparison with the life of “white slavery.”

Now, as to the practical means which parents should use to prevent this unspeakable fate from overtaking their daughters. They cannot do it by assuming that their daughter is all right and that she will take care of herself in the big city. In a large measure it seems impossible to arouse parents—especially those in the country—to a realization that there is in every big city a class of men and women who live by trapping girls into a life of degredation and who are as inhumanly cunning in their awful craft as they are in their other instincts; that these beasts of the human jungle are as unbelievably desperate as they are unbelievably cruel, and that their warfare upon virtue is as persistent, as calculating and as unceasing as was the warfare of the wolf upon the unprotected lamb of the pioneer’s flock in the early days of the Western frontier.

I cannot escape the conclusion that the country girl is in greater danger from the “white slavers” than the city girl. The perusal of testimony of many “white slaves” enforces this conclusion. This is because they are less sophisticated, more trusting and more open to the allurements of those who are waiting to prey upon them.

It is a fact which parents of girls in the country should remember that the “white slavers” are busy on the trains coming into the city, and make it a point to “cut out” an attractive girl whenever they can. This “cutting out” process consists of making the girl’s acquaintance, gaining her confidence and, on one pretext or another, inducing her to leave the train before the main depot is reached. This is done because the various protective and law and order organizations have watchers at the main railroad stations who are trained to the work of “spotting,” and quickly detect a girl in the hands of one of these human beasts of prey. Generally these watchers are women and wear the badges of their organizations.

But suppose that the girl from the country does not chance to fall in with the “white slaver” on the train, that she reaches the city in safety, becomes located in a position—or perhaps in the stenographic school or business college which she has come to attend—and secures a room in a boarding house. No human being, it seems to me, is quite so lonely as the young girl from the country when she first comes to the city and starts in the struggles of life there without acquaintances. All her instincts are social, and she is, for the time being, almost desolately alone in a wilderness of strange human beings. She must have some one to talk to—it is the law of youth as well as the law of her sex to crave constant companionship. And the consequences? She is sentimentally in a condition to prepare her for the slaughter, to make her an easy prey to the wiles of the “white slave” wolf.

The girl reared in the city does not have this peculiar and insidious handicap to contend with; she has been—from the time she could first toddle along the sidewalk—educated in wholesome suspicion, taught that she must not talk with strangers or take candy from them, that she must withdraw herself from all advances and, in large measure, regard all save her own people with distrust. As she grows older she comes to know that certain parts of the city are more dangerous and more “wicked” than others; that her comings and goings must always be in safe and familiar company; that her acquaintanceships and her friendships must be scrutinized by her natural protectors and that, altogether, there is a definite but undefined danger in the very atmosphere of the city for the girl or the young woman which demands a constant and protected alertness.

The training is almost wholly absent in the case of the country girl; she is not educated in suspicion until the protective instinct acts almost unconsciously; her intercourse with her world is almost comparatively free and unrestrained; she is so unlearned in the moral and social geography of the city that she is quite as likely, if left to her own devices, to select her boarding house in an undesirable as in a safe and desirable part of the city; and, in a word, when she comes into the city her ignorance, her trusting faith in humanity in general, her ignorance of the underworld and her loneliness and perhaps home-sickness, conspire to make her a ready and an easy victim of the “white slaver.”

In view of what I have learned in the course of the recent investigation and prosecution of the “white slave” traffic, I can say in all sincerity, that if I lived in the country and had a young daughter, I would go to any length of hardship and privation myself rather than allow her to go into the city to work or to study—unless that studying were to be done in the very best type of an educational institution where the girl students were always under the closest protection. The best and surest way for parents of girls in the country to protect them from the clutches of the “white slaver” is to keep them in the country. But if circumstances should seem to compel a change from the country to the city, then the only safe way is to go with them into the city; but even this last has its disadvantages from the fact that, in that case, the parents would themselves be unfamiliar with the usages and the pitfalls of metropolitan life, and would not be able to protect their daughters as carefully as if they had spent their own lives in the city.

More About the Traffic in Shame

The dragnets of the inhuman men and women who ply their terrible trade are spread day and night and are manipulated with a skill and precision which ought to strike terror to the heart of every careless or indifferent parent. The wonder is not that so many are caught in this net, but that they escape! “I count the week—I might almost say the day—a happy and fortunate one which does not bring to my attention as an officer of the state a deplorable case of this kind,” said Mrs. Ophelia Amigh.

Just to show how tightly and broadly the nets of these fishers for girls are spread, let me tell you of an instance which occurred to a girl from this institution:

This girl, whom I will call Nellie, is a very ordinary looking girl, and below the average of intelligence, but as tractable and obedient as she is ingenuous. She is wholly without the charm which would naturally attract the eye of the white slave trader.

Because of her quietness, her obedience and her good disposition, she was, in accordance with the rules of the institution, permitted to go into the family of a substantial farmer out in the west and work as a housemaid, a “hired girl”—her wages to be deposited to her credit against the time when she should reach the age of twenty-one and leave the Home.

She had been in her position for some time and was so quiet and satisfactory that one Sunday when the family were not going to church, the mistress said:

“Nellie, if you wish to go to church alone you may do so. The milk wagon will be along shortly and you can ride on that to the village—and here is seventy-five cents. You may want to buy your dinner and perhaps some candy.”

When Nellie reached town and was on her way past the railroad station to the church, the train for Chicago came in, and the impulse seized her to get aboard, go to the city and look up her father, whom she had not seen for several months. She went to the city and hardly stepped from the train into the big station when she heard a man’s voice saying, “Why, hello, Mary!”

Instantly—foolishly, of course—she answered him and replied:

“My name is not Mary, it’s Nellie.”

“You look the very picture,” he responded, “of a girl I know well whose name is Mary—and she’s a fine girl, too! Are any of your folks here to meet you?”

“No,” she answered, “my father’s here in the city somewhere, but he doesn’t know I’m coming. I’ve been working out in the country for a long time and I didn’t write him about coming back.”

Her answers were so ingenuous and revealing that the man saw that he had an easy and simple victim to deal with. Therefore his tactics were very direct.

“It’s about time to eat,” he suggested, “and I guess we’re both hungry. You go to a restaurant and eat with me and perhaps I can help you to find your father quicker than you could do it alone.”

She accepted, and in the course of the meal he asked her if she would like to find a place at which to work. “I know a fine place in Blank City,” he added. “The woman is looking for a good girl just like you.”

“Yes, I’d be pleased to get the place, but I haven’t any money to pay the fare with,” was her answer.

“Oh, that’s all right,” he quickly replied. “I’ll buy your ticket and give you a little money besides for a cab and other expenses. The woman told me to do that if I could find her a girl. She’ll send me back a check for it all.”

After he had bought the ticket and put her aboard the train going to Blank City, he wrote the name of the woman to whom he was sending her, gave her about $2 extra and then delivered this fatherly advice to her:

“You’re just a young girl, and it’s best for you not to talk to anybody on the train or after you get off. Don’t show this paper to anybody or tell anybody where you’re going. It isn’t any of their business anyway. And as soon as you get off the train you’ll find plenty of cabs there. Hand your paper to the first cab driver in the line, get in and ride to Mrs. A——'s home. Pay the driver and then walk in.”

Believing that she was being furnished a position by a remarkably kind man, the poor girl followed his direction implicitly—and landed the next day in one of the most notorious houses of shame in the state of Illinois outside of Chicago. How she was found and rescued is a story quite apart from the purpose which has led me to tell of this incident—that of indicating how tightly the slave traders have their nets spread for even the most ordinary and unattractive prey. They let no girl escape whom they dare to approach!

Crime in Chicago

Strange as it may seem, men and women of certain grades of intellect and temperament deliberately devote themselves to lives of crime. These constitute the “professional criminals,” who make up such a terrible class in the population of every great city. In Chicago this class is undoubtedly large, but not so large as many people assert. That it is active and dangerous, the police records of the city afford ample testimony. It is very hard to obtain any reliable statistics respecting the professional votaries of crime, but it would seem, after careful investigation, that Chicago contains about 3,000 of them. These consist of thieves, burglars, fences and pickpockets.

In addition to these we may include under the head of professional criminals, the following:

Women of ill-fame, 20,000, keepers of gambling houses and of policy and lottery offices about 600, making in all about 23,600 professional law breakers. This is a startling statement, but unhappily true.

The population of Chicago is more cosmopolitan than that of any city in the union and the majority of the people are poor. The struggle for existence is a hard one, and offers every inducement for crime. The political system which is based more or less upon plunder, presents the spectacles of dishonesty. The professionals are not ignorant men and women, however. Among them may be found many whose abilities, if properly directed, would win for them positions of honor and usefulness. There seems to be a fascination in crime to those people, and they deliberately enter upon it.

The principal form which crime assumes in Chicago is robbery. The professionals do not deliberately engage in murder or the graver crimes; though they do not hesitate to commit them if necessary to their success or safety. They prefer to pursue their vocation without taking life; and murder, arson, rape and capital crimes are, therefore, not more common here than in other large cities. Robbery, however, is a science here, and it is of its various forms the following pages will treat.

The professional criminals in Chicago constitute a distinct community; they are known to each other, and seldom make any effort to associate with people of respectability. They infest certain sections of the city where they can easily and rapidly communicate with each other, and can hide in safety from the police.

Chicago thieves are of two sorts—those who steal only when they are tempted by want, or when an unusual opportunity for successful thieving is thrown their way, and those who make a regular business of stealing. A professional thief ranks among his fellows according to his ability. Many professional thieves are burglars. They drink to excess and commit so many blunders that they are easily detected by the police. They gamble a great deal. When successful they quarrel over their booty, and often betray each other. A smart thief seldom drinks and never allows himself to get under the influence of liquor. He tries to keep himself in the best physical trim; and is always ready for a long run when pursued, or a desperate struggle when cornered. He must always have his wits about him. A thief of this class makes a successful bank robber, forger, or confidence swindler. Professional thieves seldom have any home. Many of them find temporary shelter in a dull season in houses of ill-repute. They associate with and are often married to disreputable women, many of whom are also thieves. The smartest thieves do not have homes, for the reason that they dare not remain long in one place for fear of arrest. During the summer, Chicago thieves are to be found at all summer and sea-shore resorts. Later in the season they attend the county fairs and agricultural shows, and any place where large crowds assemble and come back to the city at the beginning of winter. They are fond of political meetings and reap a rich harvest at some of these gatherings.

If I were asked whether there were any place in the city where thieves were educated in their business, I would answer, “No.” It would be impossible for such places to exist without being discovered. Thieves educate themselves, or get their knowledge by associating with other thieves more experienced than themselves. Those people who believe in the existence of schools where boys are taught the art of picking pockets, have got their belief from works of fiction like Dickens’ “Oliver Twist.” The dram-shops and brothels of the city where the thieves congregate, are the only places which can be called schools of crime.

For the purpose of communicating with each other, the professional thieves have a language, or argot, which is also common to their brethren in other large cities. It is generally known as “patter,” and is said to be of Gypsy origin. A few phrases, taken at random from a leaflet handed me, will give the reader an idea of it. “Abraham,” Jew; to sham, to pretend sickness; “Autumn cove,” a married man; “Autumn cacler,” a married woman; “Bag of nails,” everything in confusion; “Ballum rancum,” a ball where all the damsels are thieves and prostitutes; “North and South,” State street; “Booked,” arrested; “City College,” Harrison Street Station; “Consolation,” assassination; “Dopie,” a girl; “Drawing,” picking pockets; “Family man,” a receiver of stolen goods; “Gilt-dabber,” a hotel thief; “Madge,” private place; “Ned,” a ten dollar gold piece; “Plate of meat,” man with fat pocket-book; “Poncess,” a woman who supports a man by her prostitution, and so on.

The professional thieves are thoroughly familiar with the language, and can speak to each other intelligibly, while a bystander is in total ignorance of their meaning.

The professional thieves are divided into various classes, the members of which confine themselves strictly to their peculiar line of work. They are classed by the police, and by themselves, as follows: Burglars, bank sneaks, safe blowers, sneak thieves, confidence men and pickpockets. A burglar will rarely attempt the part of a sneak thief and a pickpocket will seldom undertake burglary.

Bank Burglars.

A burglar stands at the head of the professional class, and is looked up to by its members with admiration and respect. He disdains the title of “thief” and boasts that his operations require brains and nerve to an extraordinary degree. The safe blowers are also classed by the police as burglars, and are acknowledged by the craft as confederates. The country banks and the larger business houses are their “Game.” They disdain smaller operations. When a plan to rob a bank has been formed, the burglar proper calls a safe blower to his aid. One man often prepares the way by opening a small account with the bank and drawing out his deposits in small amounts. He visits the place at different hours of the day, learns the habits of the bank officers and clerks, and makes careful observations of the building and the safes in which the money is kept. Frequently a room in the basement of the bank building, or in an adjoining building is hired and occupied by a confederate. When all is ready, a hole is cut through the floor into the bank room; the services of the safe blower are called into action. The former takes charge of the operation when the safe is to be blown open. He drills holes in the door of the safe by the lock and fills them with gunpowder or other explosives, which are ignited by a fuse. The safe is carefully wrapped in blankets to smother the noise of the explosion, and the windows of the room are lowered about an inch from the top to prevent the breaking of the glass by the concussion of the air. The explosion destroys the lock, but makes little noise, and the door of the safe is easily opened. When it is desirable not to resort to an explosion the safe blower makes the safe fast to the floor by strong iron clamps, in order that it may bear the desired amount of pressure. He then drills holes in the door, into which he fits jack screws worked by levers. These screws exert tremendous force, and soon burst the safe open. Sometimes, when small safes are to be forced open they use only a jimmy and a hammer, wrapping the hammer with cloth to deaden the sound of the blows. The safe once opened, the contents are at the mercy of the burglars. They never attack a safe without having some idea of the booty to be secured, and the amount of risk to be run. Saturday night is generally chosen for such operations. If the work cannot be finished in time to allow the burglars to escape before sunrise on Sunday, they continue it until successful, and boldly carry off their plunder in broad daylight.

The Bank Sneak.

The bank sneak is simply a bond robber. He confines his operations to stealing United States and other bonds, preferring coupon to registered bonds, as they can be more easily disposed of.

He frequents a bank for a long period, and patiently observes the places where the bonds and securities are kept; this he manages to do without suspicion, and when all is ripe for the robbery, he boldly enters the bank, makes his way unobserved to the safe, snatches a package of bonds, adding to it a package of notes, if possible, and escapes. If the plunder consists of coupon bonds, it is easily disposed of; but registered bonds require more careful handling. Generally when the bank offers a reward for their recovery, the thief enters into communication with the detective appointed to work up the case, and compromises with the bank by restoring a part of the plunder on condition that he is allowed to keep the rest and escape punishment.

Sneak Thieves.

The sneak thieves are the lowest in the list of professional robbers. They confine their operations, principally to private dwellings and retail stores. They are in constant danger of detection and arrest, and are more often secured by the police than any other classes we have mentioned. The dinner hour, which in the winter is after dark, is their favorite time for entering houses. They gain entrance by open doors or windows, or by false keys, and take everything within their reach. A favorite practice of sneak thieves is to call at a house advertised for rent, and ask to be shown the rooms. Another plan is to visit the offices of physicians and other professional men, and to steal articles of value in the waiting rooms while they are left alone. The majority of those who steal from stores are women, who take articles from the counters, while the clerks are busily engaged in laying out goods for their inspection. The practice of “shop-lifting” has become so common that many of the leading stores keep special detectives to watch the customers.

Confidence Men.

Confidence men make use of the credulity of country people and strangers in the city. A favorite plan is to watch the hotels, and get the names and addresses of the guests. The method is as follows: Mr. Smith comes to Chicago, puts up at some prominent hotel, and after dinner saunters out for a stroll. A confidence man who has been on the watch for his appearance, meets him some blocks away from the hotel, and, rushing up to him says, “Why, Mr. Smith, how glad I am to see you. When did you arrive? How did you leave them all in Smithville?” Mr. Smith is taken by surprise at being recognized in the great city, and if he is at all credulous, the confidence man has no trouble in making him believe they have met before. The swindler joins him in his stroll after a few moments of conversation, confides to him that he can draw a large prize in a lottery and invites him to accompany him to the lottery office and see him receive the money. On the way they visit a saloon and enjoy a friendly drink together. Another stranger now drops in, and is introduced to Mr. Smith by the swindler. The newcomer draws the swindler aside and exchanges a few words with him, whereupon the latter tells Smith that he owes the stranger a sum of money, and has unfortunately left his pocket-book at his office. He asks his unsuspecting victim to lend him the amount until they reach the lottery office, when he will return it. Smith produces the money, which is handed to the newcomer, who then takes his departure, and the friends resume their stroll towards the lottery office. On the way the swindler manages to elude his victim, who seeks him in vain, and goes back to his hotel a sadder but wiser man. Strange as it may seem, this is one of the most successful tricks played in the city. It is often varied, but is never attempted upon a resident of the metropolis.

Pickpockets of Chicago.

The pickpockets of Chicago are very numerous. The term pickpocket is regarded by the police as including not only those who confine their efforts to picking pockets and stealing satchels and valises, but also gradations of crime which approach the higher degrees of larceny from the person, and highway robbery. The members of this class of the thieving fraternity are well-known to the police and the detectives are kept busy watching them. Their likenesses are contained in the “Rogues Gallery” at police headquarters, and the authorities know the thieves well, as their careers embrace generally, long records of crime. Instances are not rare in which a whole family, from the oldest to the youngest, is equally deep in crime, the little one having been thoroughly and systematically educated by their parents in the different branches of stealing, beginning with the simple picking of the pocket of some unwary person, and finally becoming able to commit the most daring burglaries.

The police endeavor to have all known professional thieves constantly under surveillance, but the task is a difficult one. In addition to constantly changing their places of abode, they are in and out of the city frequently. Several saloons and localities, however, have become notorious as resorts for pickpockets. Saloons on State street, Wabash avenue, West Madison street, and Halsted street are frequented most by this class of thieves. Great dexterity is sometimes acquired by pickpockets. Acting in the capacity of a newsboy they have been known to skillfully extract a watch from a customer’s pocket while offering a paper for sale.

Harrison Street Police Station. Attempted Suicide.

The Police

A Night at Harrison Street Station.

Though honest men sometimes do not seem able to put their fingers upon a policeman at the instant they want him, rogues find far oftener that the policemen are on hand when not wanted.

In the earlier days of police history, when politics were eliminated from the force, the ordinary policeman was more effective, and guarded the “beat” upon which he traveled with a jealous eye. Wander where he might, the ruffian could not get away from the law. This constant surveillance exasperated bad characters. They chafe under the restraint, make feeble efforts to rebel, but it is useless. The power of the police over the evil circles of society is enormous; they have a mortal fear of the force. They know that behind that silver star there resides indomitable courage, and in that close buttoned coat are muscles of iron and nerves of steel.

The “Boiler Avenue Boys” and roughs were all cowards and they knew it. They dare not meet half their weight in righteous pluck.

I have seen a great bully cringe and cry under a policeman’s open-hand cuffing. Very likely he had a bowie-knife, or revolver, or slung-shot—or all three in one, as I saw one night on Fourth avenue—in his pocket at the time, yet he does not attempt to use it on the officer of the law, the occasional exceptions to this are rare and notable. How many times has a single policeman arrested a man out of a crowd, and not one of his fellows raised a finger to help him; they dare not, they have too wholesome respect for law, for that revolver in the pocket; most of all they are awed by the cool courage of the man who dares to face them on their own ground.

Yet in spite of all this the policeman’s life is full of danger. He must patrol streets which are known to be dangerous, narrow alleys, where a well-delivered blow from a slung-shot, a skillfully aimed thrust from a knife, or a bullet from a revolver, would make an end of him before he could summon help. He is an object of hatred, as well as of fear, to the dangerous classes, and they do not hesitate to take advantage of him. Often some brave fellow is set upon by a gang of toughs and beaten or wounded. Yet, whatever danger, the policeman must face it all, and to the honor of the force be it said, he does not shirk. Whatever their faults may be, cowardice cannot be charged against the police of Chicago.

I remember well a tough basement saloon in Clark street; it had been growing worse and worse and one dismal November evening, hearing a disturbance, Captain Mulligan and the officer on that post went in. There were about fifty persons, men and women, of every color and nationality, all of the worst characters, and some notorious in crime. The captain took in the situation at a glance, and determined without a thought to arrest the whole party. Placing his back to the front door he covered the back door with his revolver, and threatened death to the first person who moved. Then he sent the patrolman to the station for help, and for fifteen long minutes held that crowd of desperadoes at bay. They glared at him, squirmed and twisted in their places, scowled and gritted their clenched teeth, and tried to get at their knives and tear him to pieces; but all the while the stern mouth of that revolver looked at them, and looked them out of countenance, and the steady nerve behind it held sway over their brutal ferocity. It was a trial of nerve and endurance. Captain Mulligan stood the test and saved his life. They could have shot him a hundred times. Certainly it was not because they had any scruples against it, for the first two prisoners sent to the station killed Officer Burns with a paving stone before they had gone two blocks. Captain Clare made an almost precisely similar single-handed raid on the famous “Burnt Rag” saloon in Boiler avenue one winter night in the Seventies.

Let us take our seat beside Sergeant Cameron. It is 10 o’clock and the night cold and keen without, but the room is brightly lighted, warm and comfortable. With the exception of a few early lodgers who have been given quarters, no one has put in an appearance, and we begin to wonder if it is to be a dull night after all. The sergeant smiles, and remarks that there will be business enough in the next three hours.

The door opens as he speaks, and a woman in a faded black dress, a battered bonnet, and a very dirty face, enters, and hesitatingly approaches the desk.

“Can I have a night’s lodging, sir” she asks.

The sergeant makes no reply for a minute, but gazes at her with curious interest, and then asks abruptly: “When did you wash your face last?”

“I washed it in Bridgeport, sir,” she answered, “an’ I come from there today, and never a drop o’ water have I seen.”

“Give her a lodging,” says the sergeant, nodding to an officer standing by. “But see here,” he added to the woman, “what are you doing in this district?”

“Ah! it’s a long story, sir,” she begins. “It was a man that was the cause of it, an’ bad luck to him. He left me after deceivin’ me, an’ I’ve come here to find him.”

“How did he deceive you?”

“Oh, the way they always do. He got the best of me because I was innocent, an’ he promised to marry me. When he was tired of me he walked out, an’ I’ve never seen him since.”

“Where do you expect to find him?”

“Here in this city; I’d know his skin on a bush, an’ I’ll find him or die.”

“Well, you had better take a rest for tonight.”

The woman goes off to her hard bed in the lodging room, and the office is silent again; but only for a short while. The door opens again, and this time with a crash, and an officer enters, with a prisoner in his vice-like grasp. The man’s coat is pulled over his head, his hat is gone, the blood is running from his nose, and his gait so unsteady that he would certainly fall to the floor but for the firm hold of the policeman. His shirt front is covered with blood and beer, and his eyes are bruised and bloodshot.

“Well, officer, what is it?” asks the sergeant, taking up his pen, as the patrolman drags his prisoner to his desk.

“Drunk and disorderly, sir,” replied the patrolman. “Wanted to fight everybody he met on the street. He got pretty badly damaged in being put out of Schlosheimer’s saloon, and I had to take him in charge.”

“What is your name, and where do you live?” asked the sergeant of the prisoner.

The man gives his name and address, in a sort of incoherent manner, and is sent back to a cell, while the sergeant jots down the circumstances of his arrest in his “Blotter.”

The door opens again, and a woman neatly draped in mourning, and with a pale, sad face, enters timidly, and approaches the desk. In a low voice she asks the sergeant if he can tell her of any respectable place in the neighborhood where she can obtain a lodging at a moderate price. Her manner is that of a lady, and the sergeant listens with respect to her request, and gives her the address of such a place as she desired. In the same low tone she thanks him, and disappears, and the stern face of the officer of the law for a moment has a troubled expression.

The door is thrown open violently once more, and two flashily-dressed women enter, and hurry forward to the desk. Their faces are flushed, they are greatly excited, and have evidently been drinking. They begin their story together, talking loudly and angrily. They will not stand it any longer, they declare. Madame Loraine owes them money, and they “are going to have it or raise h—l.” The sergeant, having listened patiently, mildly interposes with the hope that nothing of the kind will be raised in the station house, and then asks:

“How much does she owe you?”

“Seventy-five dollars,” they reply in one voice.

“And why don’t she pay you?”

“Because she thinks by keeping herself in our debt we won’t leave her,” they respond together, “and we want a policeman to come along and make her hand over.”

The sergeant considers for a moment and then declares the matter does not come within the jurisdiction of the police, and that he can do nothing for them. They stare at him in blank amazement for a while, and then flounce out of the room, loudly cursing the whole police force, and the sergeant in particular.

The next comer is in charge of another officer. He is very dirty and wretchedly drunk. His tall hat is smashed in, and there is mud sticking in his hair. He is placed before the desk.

“Drunk and disorderly, sir,” says the patrolman. “I found him trying to climb a telegraph pole in front of Pottgieser’s saloon. He said he always went to his room by way of the fire escape, when he came home late.”

The prisoner is silent, but tries to listen to the officer, and fixes upon the sergeant as solemn a look as his bleared eyes will permit. He is too drunk to give his name, and is sent to a cell, where he is soon in a drunken slumber.

Toward midnight, a poor woman, shabbily dressed, with a thin, well-worn shawl around her head enters, and approaches the desk.

“Can you tell me if anything has been heard of my husband yet?” she asks—the same question she has repeated every day for the past week.

“No, ma’am, nothing,” answers the sergeant, briefly; but his eyes as he glances at the poor sorrowful creature, have a pitying look in them.

“What is your husband’s business?”

“He was a stevedore, sir.”

“And you were married to him how long?”

“Eleven years and over, sir, we had four children, all dead now but the youngest. He was a good husband to me; but he took a drop too much now and then, and was cross and noisy. He left the house three weeks ago, and we have never seen him since.”

“Did he leave you any money?”

“He left us nothing, sir. The child and myself live on the charity of neighbors; but we can’t expect to live that way always.”

“Well, I’ll speak to the captain,” says the sergeant, kindly, “and see what can be done for you, and if a dollar will do you any good, here it is.” And the good-hearted sergeant passes a silver coin over the desk, and sends the woman away sobbing out her expression of gratitude.

Loud voices are heard on the station steps as the woman passes out, the door is thrown open, and six well-dressed men enter, accompanied by two policemen. They approach the desk, talking excitedly, and charge and counter-charges, mixed with much slang and profanity, are brought before the sergeant, who sits steadily gazing at the party, waiting for a return of something like order. There is a lull in the talking, and one of the policemen states that two of the men have been engaged in a drunken assault at a political primary held in the neighborhood, and that the other two have come to prefer charges against them. The charges are made and entered in the “Blotter,” and the accused prefer counter-charges against the other two, but as the policemen do not sustain them, the accusers are suffered to depart, and the accused are sent to a cell where they raise a tremendous racket.

As the officers are departing for their beats again, two more enter, this time having in custody two handsomely dressed, fashionable looking youths, whose flushed faces show they have been drinking, but not enough to prevent them from feeling the shame of their position.

“Drunk and disorderly, sir,” says the officer, “Knocked an old woman’s peanut stand in the street, knocked all her stuff into the mud and then tried to run away.”

“But, sergeant,” pleads one of the youths, “it was only for a lark, you see. We will make it all right in the morning with the old woman.”

“Your names and addresses?” asks the sergeant, coldly.

They are given, but are evidently fictitious.

“It was only a lark, sergeant,” begins the young man who spoke before, “we didn’t mean——.”

“Lock them up,” says the sergeant, cutting him short, “you can state all that to the court in the morning.”

And they were led away.

The silence that has fallen over the room after the young men have been led out is rudely broken by the hasty entrance of an officer from the direction of the cells. He is pale and excited.

“Sergeant,” he exclaims, “the woman in number ten has committed suicide. She’s hung herself.”

The sergeant springs up, tells the officer to take charge of the room, and hurries to the cells. We follow him. The door in number ten is wide open, and the doorman is in the act of cutting down the woman, who has suspended herself by the means of a line made of her garters. He lays her on the floor, in the cell, and he and the sergeant bend over and gaze into the bloated face. The woman is not dead and exhibits signs of returning life. Efforts are made to restore her, and are successful. As she recovers her consciousness she raises herself on her elbow, and glaring around savagely, curses bitterly the men who have saved her from death, and begs for a drink of whisky. No liquor is given her, however, and when the officers are satisfied she is out of danger, she is hand-cuffed, to prevent her from attempting further violence. The rest of the night she keeps the place lively with her yells and blasphemous cries.

We return to the desk with the sergeant, who enters the occurrence in the “Blotter.” We are scarcely seated when two of the worst looking tramps to be found in Chicago enter, and come up to the desk.

“Cap’n,” exclaims one of them in a thick voice, “let’s have a shake-down for the night?”

“All right,” says the sergeant, “show these men back.”

The tramp who has spoken, encouraged by the ready granting of his request, says coolly, “You hain’t got a chew of tobaccer, Cap’n, you can let a fellow have?”

“No, I hain’t,” answers the sergeant, imitating the voice and expression of the tramp; “but I’ll send you in an oyster supper presently, with a bottle of Mum’s extra dry, and a bunch of Henry Clay’s; and perhaps some of the delicacies of the season, if they are to be had.”

The tramps laughed at this sally, and followed the officer to the lodging room.

Half an hour later four policemen enter the room bearing a stretcher, on which is laid a badly wounded man, while two or more lead in the assailant, who is securely hand-cuffed, and bears the marks of the officers’ clubs. He had assaulted and stabbed the wounded man in a brawl in a saloon on Fourth avenue; had resisted the officers who attempted to arrest him, and had proved so dangerous that they had been compelled to club and hand-cuff him. The wounded man is sent to a hospital in an ambulance and the statements he made are recorded in the “Blotter” by the sergeant. The name and address of the prisoner is also written down, and he is sent to a cell, with the irons still on him.

Shortly after 2 o’clock another detachment of officers bring in a batch of about twenty prisoners, male and female. They are dressed in all manners of costumes. Here are dukes, Don Cæsars, Hamlets, Little Buttercups, Indians, Princesses and Warriors and the like. They have been to a “fancy ball,” and left it so drunk that they fell to fighting among themselves in the street and were taken in custody by the officials. They are a motley lot indeed and lent a strange aspect to the station. They appear to feel the ludicrousness of their position, and beg to be let off; but the sergeant has no discretion, for the testimony of the officials is positive and the charge is a serious one. So they go back to the cells, and in the morning will appear in full costume before the Court to answer to the charge against them.

So the hours of darkness pass away, and the remainder of the night is only a repetition of many scenes we have described.

A Monday Morning Scene in the Harrison Police Station.

The Lost Sisterhood