THE UNDERWORLD CONTRIBUTORS.
Two thousand gamblers pay their blood money.
Five thousand women, offered as slaves on the auction block of prostitution, give their lives to make up the hellish tolls.
More than five hundred keepers of houses of ill fame contribute their blood-dripping dollars.
Owners of five hundred “flats” or assignation houses pay their “life-price.”
We have said that every form of evil exists. We shall show in this book the amounts of money paid by the minions and promoters of each vice for police and political protection.
Our figures are accurate. They are founded on the statements of men who once paid blood-money to live. They are the prices demanded by the Vice Trust today.
The graft scale is so astonishing as to be almost unbelievable.
Cold figures are set down by the over lords; cold dollars are paid by the lawless. Failure to pay means ruin. Grace is rarely given. The new man or woman seeking to open a vice-business must pay a high entrance fee to the political powers. Their protection price is always higher than that exacted from the “old timers.” The more hideous the crime-business the higher the protective compensation for it. The greater the profits accruing, the more the weight of the gold and silver poured into the coffers of the corrupt politicians and their allies.
In the white palaces of hidden sin, where degeneracy boasts of its infamous acts, and where men of wealth and women of fashion congregate to turn loose their insane lusts without fear of detection or restraint, the price of existence runs into the thousands of dollars.
In several vice emporiums, fitted as sumptuously as the homes of millionaires on Lake Shore Drive, the protection for traffic in white, delicate and beautiful bodies of young girls is $1,000 a month!
From the elegantly furnished roulette parlor to the den of quarreling, cursing negroes in the “black belt,”—from the highest place of gaming to the lowest—the price to go on filching thousands of men and women is paid, and paid willingly.