ANTE ROOMS OF HELL.
Let us follow the crowd of men and women into that large building on Twenty-second street.
A novel sight greets us as we enter. Our hats and coats are checked and we walk out from behind a mirror used as a screen into a large hall on the floor of which several hundred couples are dancing to the strains of an orchestra in a balcony above.
Some of the faces which we saw earlier in the evening within the loop district have also “come south,” as the expression is. They are here to revel until dawn. There is no letup until the bright sun drives vice blinking and blinded back into its holes.
Every type of woman, from the woman who is simply “slumming” to the most depraved and degenerate creature can be seen in this notorious levee dance hall. As the music dies down, the couples with unsteady steps, caused by the whirling about the floor and the drinks which have been freely imbibed, seek rest at the dirty, wet chairs and tables which encompass the room. Drinks are served in profusion, regardless of the state of inebriety of the patrons and regardless of the one o’clock closing law, which the police declare is in effect.
Women, rendered senseless by drink, are dragged from the place nightly and carted away—God knows where!
Let us get away from the reeking atmosphere, from the smell of stale beer and sickly, perspiring women.
Before we enter the biggest cesspool of all, let us stop at Buxbaum’s Cafe at Twenty-second and State streets,—the most notorious outside-levee dive in the city of Chicago.
Its habitues, with few exceptions, are the overflow, the outcasts of the levee, or the women who seek a few moments of so-called relaxation from their labors of sin.
All night this place reeks with infamy; all night orgies impossible to portray are carried on; all night the saturnalia of vice wrings the blood from women’s hearts and crushes life in its ever grinding mill.
South of the street where we have stopped, the cafes continue. Again they take on an air of respectability and trap the young and innocent girls and with hands dripping with blood the vampires of vice push them on and on, until they reach the point where we have stopped.
We are on the shores of a Lake of Infamy. The tributaries flow from the north, the south and the west, coursing through every section of the city, sweeping their victims in a surging current, without hope of rescue to the waters, whose eddies close forever over the drowned. The cafes and disorderly saloons and dance halls are the traps at the beginning of the avenues of vice. They are the feeders to the infamous hotels. The chain has no missing link. The Vice Trust has made it in perfect manner.
We are standing on the shores of a lake—that lake is one of the “redlight” districts of Chicago.
EAT, DRINK AND BE MERRY ... AND TOMORROW?
By Courtesy of The Chicago Daily Journal.
CHAPTER IV.
The “Redlight” District.
The “Redlight” District—Houses of Infamy—The Life of a Prostitute—The Blood Price—Hidden Tragedies—The Polluted Grave.
Chicago possesses four “redlight” districts: one on the South side, one on the West side, one on the North side and the Strand of South Chicago.
For the sake of description we have taken the one situated on the South side,—running from Eighteenth street on the north to Twenty-second street on the south, and from Wabash avenue on the east to Armour avenue on the west.
It came into existence in 1905 when Mayor Carter H. Harrison, the present city executive, cleaned out old Custom House place, Plymouth court and South Clark street, the nest of vice, bounding the south end of the commercial district.
It established a new territory and flourishes as prosperously today as it did in its old haunts.
Within the zone described 250 houses of ill fame house the unfortunate women, lure men of all conditions in life, grow rich on sin and on the practice of every form of bestial degeneracy.
SUGGESTED BY A PROMINENT NEWS STORY OF THE MOMENT
By Courtesy of The Chicago Daily Journal.
There are 2,000 enslaved, scarlet women in these infectious prisons!
They are of every nation in the world!
They are young girls in their teens; women in mature years and hags who have outlived their usefulness to the god of lust!
There is an army of 500 to 800 human vultures—“cadets” who live within this district, prodding these women on in the paths of evil!
There are ramshackle hell-holes that are falling to pieces where diseased, broken-down, forgotten women dispense deadly toxins to their customers for fifty cents!
There are “one dollar,” “two dollar,” “three dollar,” “five dollar” and “ten dollar” houses. Those are the prices for some mother’s precious darling! Man buys and woman sells.
There are holes of infamy where white and colored persons mix and sin together.
There are places where the sins that wiped Sodom and Gomorrah out of existence are practiced nightly.
There are places where prostitutes outrival in the forms of obscene acting anything to be found in the Monmartre and other deadly places within the confines of Paris.
There are places of material filth, and uncleanliness and there are places where thousands of dollars have been spent to make sepulchres appear as places of delight and pleasure.
Think of it!
Two thousand women on the slave block of lust sold to the thousands of bidders nightly, in this small district!
Lust, vice, crime and graft are the deities of Chicago’s “redlight” districts.
The “redlight” district gets its name because of the lurid, crimson signs that hang above its entrances. The name “redlight” should signify a burning, blazing warning to every man and woman who is tempted to set his foot or hers on the crime-reeking thresholds!
Let us enter one of the houses and study the interior and the type of the prostitutes corralled within.
The swinging doors admit us. As we appear, a dozen girls or women rush at us like a flock of vultures, ravenous, hungering.
They use terms of meaningless endearment, fight among themselves for the possible prey, coax us to purchase a bottle of beer or whiskey or a mixed drink. They attempt to embrace us, to kiss us to arouse latent passions, whose outburst means half the purchase price to them and half to the owner of the place.
A “professor,” half-crazed by drugs and drink, thumps the latest airs on a piano, or a mechanical instrument furnishes the noise. You are asked to give a dime to the “professor” and you do.
You are talking to a frail, blue-eyed, blonde girl. Across the room a brunette, a red-haired girl and a girl with raven black hair and sparkling eyes watch you, wondering as to the ultimate success of the woman who captured you.