GAMBLING IN CONCLUSION—ITS CROOKED CHARACTER.
So greedy and avaricious are the big chiefs of the gambling fraternity and the members of the Vice Trust that after all is said and done, there is little left for the game keeper.
As a result even the little sporting instinct he may have is sacrificed and he becomes crooked in every dealing he has with the paying public.
“Ninety-eight per cent of the gambling games in Chicago today are crooked,” declared a well-known gambler. “There is no money in the profession unless the public can be hoodwinked.”
Science, electricity, hypnotism, sleight of hand, or other means are used to deceive the player.
Unless you can note the swift touch of the gambler’s foot on the electric button, which drops the little ball into the red hole when you bet on the black, you face ruin every time you face the roulette wheel.
Can you see the invisible hand that is doping the racetrack sheet? If you cannot, stay away from the handbook or be prepared to look into the dark and murky waters of the river as a final hiding place of shame.
Do you think the friendly game of poker is on “the square”? If you do you are mistaken. The house has two men, professional sharks, fishing for your money. They are out to get it and they will succeed. They will whip-saw you back and forth until they exhaust you and tire your alertness. Then they will crucify you on the cross of your own cupidity and zeal to make a millionaire’s fortune in a night on the income of a counter clerk.
The game has not been beaten. That is why the gambling combine is strong. That is why it has the support of the Vice Trust. Like the man who hopes to withstand the temptations of the crime-centers, and as the woman who ventures is poisoned unto death with the venom of sin, so the man who goes forth to tempt Fate and win a kiss from the cold lips of Chance, is enmeshed before he is aware of it and borne onward in the terrible maelstrom which hurls him into the bottomless pit of infamy and shame.
The gambling curse is a terrible one. Its stigma burns on the cheek of its victims forever. Scarcely any hope can be held out to the man who is trapped by its subtle lure.
To those young men and young women of the city and the country, we write this warning. We have shown that you “cannot beat the game,” no matter how intelligently you try.
The Vice Trust has never known defeat. It will not know defeat in this enormous source of revenue pouring into its coffers annually from the favored, police-protected, bomb-throwing, life-destroying Gambling Combine.
IF HOLDUPS INCREASE.
By Courtesy of The Chicago Daily News.
STEPPING OUT TO POST A LETTER
May take the form of an armed sortie.
CHAPTER IX.
Tearing Off the Police Mask.
A Story of the Hypocrisy of the Police Department—Its Neglect of Duty—Its Protection of Crime—The Fate of the Honest Policeman—Collusion of Police and Thieves.
The minds which conspire to create a system such as the Vice Trust is shown to control, must of necessity find agents to carry on the various phases of the work.
It has been demonstrated that no species of vice or sin exists in Chicago except at the will of the vice lords and in return for the payment of large sums of money.
In a large majority, the police department, holding in its hands the power to enforce or ignore the laws of the city, state or country, is the thumb screw used by the Vice Trust to exact its toll of sin-existence.
This body of men, each one of whom swore on his word of honor before God and man to enforce the man-made laws, as a whole, is decaying with the poison of graft and vice in its veins.
From a servant of the people, the policeman has become the servant of the people’s enemies.
Trapped and enmeshed by the political powers above them hundreds of policemen prostitute their power for the purpose of aiding and abetting sin and vice and in defrauding the people of their proper tax-paid protection.
There are 4,000 members of the department of police in Chicago today. There are a chief of police, twenty captains, numerous lieutenants and sergeants and at least 3,800 patrolmen. Through this body of men, many of whom promised their God and their own conscience to do their duty, are men sold body and soul to the vice lords who, it has been shown, control Chicago and derive fortunes from the exploitation of vice.
These are the men to whom every law abiding citizen trusts his or her life year in and year out. These are the men appointed to protect property against criminal depredation, to make the streets clean of crime, and to watch over our children.
And yet, investigation has shown that the executive heads of this big law enforcing system, in many instances, are crooked, corrupt and purchased.
Many of the men holding high positions in the police department are there because the Vice Trust has found them of service and because they are ready ever to do the bidding of their masters.
The politics of the department is largely a matter of the politics of the Vice Trust, as has been shown by recent investigations.
Gambling runs full blast, houses of prostitution openly carry on their immoral practices, street walkers wink at the policemen on their beats, pickpockets laugh at the plain clothes men, robbers loot homes and places of business, crimes of every conceivable description are committed, a gambling war is allowed to terrorize Chicago, because the police department is sold body and soul, revolver and star, to the masters of the underworld.
The hundred and one duties of the policeman are neglected daily because he is busy helping some vicious criminal friend of the Vice Trust.
The history of the Chicago police department today is a history of a duty neglected and a sacred responsibility shirked.
Even if certain members of the police force desired to do their duty, the meshes have so tightened about them, they are so compromised with the big lieutenants of vice and sin, that to save themselves and their families, they must go on violating their sacred oath of office and living a life of cowardice and hypocrisy.
If the police department was not a subsidized body, the Vice Trust would have a hard time carrying out its plans. It could not whip into line the varied and complicated characters of sin with which it deals to lucrative advantage.