THE STAGES OF SIN.
As we pass down the well lighted streets of the loop district we are halted in our progress by a man standing in front of a garish-appearing theater just south of Van Buren on State street.
The cry that reaches our ears is:
“Come on, I know every man here is dying to take a peep at Chicago’s only and original Salome lady! She’s inside in all her glory and all her—well, you know, Gents, the best ever. Come on, it’s a whole pile of fun for a dime. You will thrill all over when the cutest girl in the world hugs a man in a grizzly-bear wiggle!”
Strains of music float from the place and a swarm of men of all types and conditions wedge their way to the inside.
That is another of the sore spots of the big city. It is just one of hundreds of indecent forms of entertainment that have enough air of respectability about them to exist on the borders of Chicago’s loop district. Here they flourish and reap their harvest.
In such places, many a promising young man has committed, in mind at least, his first moral murder. It is in this kind of places that vice sows its first seeds—they are the first stepping stones down the abyss ending at the dishonored grave. Every night young men pour out of these places with their minds poisoned and with the fiery hand of temptation on them, and from there they drift southward to the great whirlpool of iniquity, falling victims to the deadly perils about them and tasting the deadly but subtle poison for which they return until they die at the source.
Every form of indecency may be found on the small and poorly lighted stages of these theaters. Suggestive songs are sung, obscene witticism spoken, until pent up, disastrous passions burst forth with demoniacal fury and slay their own masters.
But let us go on down the roadway of crime and sin.