STATE STREET AND ITS PITFALLS.
Let us leave the accursed place. We have other places to visit before the sun flares red above the waters of Lake Michigan.
We stroll down Randolph street, through Chicago’s well lighted avenues and its “Rialto” to one of the busiest thoroughfares in the world,—during the day—State street.
The bustling, shoving, pushing, army of men and women, has gone home.
Yet, the street is by no means deserted.
As we walk along we are conscious of the number of unescorted women, walking the main loop thoroughfare. We mentally comment on it.
They seem to saunter aimlessly about, jauntily swinging their purses, and looking up into your face in a questioning, puzzling manner.
Would you know the hideous truth?
These are the outposts of the great army of Vice. These are the women, stripped of the last element of self-respect, who like vultures attack their prey in the glare of the arc lights, in the face of the uniformed guardians of the law.
In the vernacular of the street, these are the privates of the army of “street-walkers.” Unblushingly they flirt with their victims, catch their eyes, draw them into a side street and quibble over the purchase price of their flesh.
There is an army of 2,000 of these women infesting the loop district and its adjoining neighborhoods every night in the year. To the shady hotels within the loop or just outside of it, where no embarrassing questions are asked, these brazen prostitutes take their temporary masters.
No decent woman is safe on a downtown street after dark when alone. The haunting evil is about her wherever she goes. She is good, but the men who walk the streets do not know it and they may offer her insults at any moment.
At times the evil becomes so open that police regulations are issued, driving them from their byways of crime. Invariably within a few days, the same painted faces and expressionless eyes are to be found on the old corners, carrying on their disease-distributing trade.
These women are not free agents of evil any more than other slaves of the Vice Trust. They pay toll for every step their tired feet take during the night and the early hours of the morning. They take their victims to the cafes of which we have spoken and lure them into buying poisonous intoxicants. For every drink they bring to the house,—and they must bring many if they are to enjoy the favor of the vice lords,—they are given a commission. The “drink check” is a part of the nightly income of every woman of the underworld.
But let us pass on. We have only scratched the superficial, outer covering of the crime life of Chicago. There are a thousand more revolting sights to be seen, not for the purpose of morbid curiosity but in order to prove to our readers the magnitude and the power of the Vice Trust in Chicago.
We are taking a trip through the greatest kingdom in the world, the empire of unhampered, bold-faced, threatening sin.