THE VAMPIRE TRUST AND ITS GRAFT.
Wherever wealth congregates, and men seek to while away the leisure hours, willing to spend thousands of dollars in a night’s enjoyment, there you will find the agents of vice ready to minister to the wants of those men.
Out of such conditions has been born the Vampire Trust of Chicago.
It is composed of more than 100 women of loose character, women steeped in sin and vice, women of apparent refinement and dashing appearance, women of beauty and luring manner.
These women infest the lobbies, cafes and restaurants of the most exclusive hotels in the city. Their victims are the wealthy Chicago visitors who are compelled to forget their troubles and business worries over a glass of wine with charming, siren members of the trust. These women drug, rob, steal and blackmail their victims.
Many of these women have extensive police records. Their faces are known to the old and young detectives who are appointed to protect the city’s guests.
Then why are they allowed to carry on their thieving trade and fatten on their ill-gotten gains?
Again there is but one answer.
They pay their protection for existence and are allowed by the Vice Trust to thrive unmolested. When a victim does muster up enough courage to complain to the police that he has been victimized by a Vampire, he obtains no satisfaction. In fact he is given a significant warning against prosecution.
Most of the victims are married men, with almost unimpeachable reputations and social positions and families. They are told by the police officer to whom they complain that if they attempt to punish the woman who robbed them, the story would become public and the notoriety would do more harm than the loss of the money.
These women concert with the members of the blackmailers’ trust. These men point out prospective victims. If the men cannot be robbed, their reputations are jeopardized and then the women threaten to disgrace them by telling the story of a night of shame.
It is hard to estimate the protective price paid by these women. Judging from the number of their victims and the large amounts of money stolen, the relative protective price must be enormous.
The police admit the existence of this trust as was shown by a high police official in a recent attempted prosecution of one of its notorious members, who had served a sentence in the state penitentiary and who at one time was the respected wife of a Milwaukee jeweler and a prominent member of Wisconsin society. They do not admit that these women pay them a price to carry on their open robbing of victims.
One man in Chicago, who had been held up by these infamous wretches and bled until he rebelled against the slavery, recently gave up the battle, committed suicide and in a letter penned to his wife before his death, told of the outrages he had been subjected to because of his misstep.
And so these women are the agents of the Vice Trust, the associates of the lowest male creatures in Chicago, the parasites of rich men and the causes of suicide, murder and wrecked homes.
And why?
Because the Vice Trust must have its toll. Because the treasury has still space for more silver and gold. Because the hunger and thirst of the Directorate of Ten is never appeased.
Because the lust of the political powers behind the monster Vice is insatiable.
Not because men must submit to these things because unruly passions drive them to shame, misery, remorse and death, as has been fallaciously charged.
These are the subsidiary vices from which millions of dollars are garnered yearly to feed the Directorate of Ten, to put new diamonds on shirt fronts, brighter stones in heavy gold rings, new automobiles to wait for them outside their palaces whose every stone is hewn by the torn, cut and bleeding hands of thousands of women slaves and raised to its place by exhausted weakened and dying creatures.
Graft, graft, graft!
That word sings, echoes and reverberates through the underworld of Chicago. It is the slogan of the Vice Trust. It is the mystic sign of the vice fraternity.
And while the Vice Trust screams like a voice from the last depths of hell:
Graft, more graft!—
The victims lost in the depths of the Inferno echo back:—
Death, and more victims!
Who can really estimate the actual amount of graft reaped from sin which eats into the hearts of a lost and perished womanhood?
Our estimates have been conservative. They have been based on an average system of computation. The actual figures if we were able to carry our searchlight of truth into the coffers of the Directorate of Ten must be far above those we have given.
We have sought to tell the truth. In our hearts we know that such graft passes from the vicious to their masters each day. From the victims themselves we have learned the figures which we have given above.
Is there any wonder that after a thorough consideration of the subject from every viewpoint, we have closed our eyes and from the depth of our soul cried out in sincere conviction:—
CHICAGO IS THE WICKEDEST CITY IN THE WORLD!
CHAPTER VIII.
Gambling and its Graft.
The Gambler’s Fate—The Handbook, Other Games of Chance and Their Protection—Police Profit—All Gambling Crooked—A Warning.
In the very heart of every man, woman and child is an instinct to risk the tangible and present for the intangible and the possible future things.
Since the beginning man has played some game of chance in his struggle for existence. He has counted his own possibilities as against those of his enemy, he has abided for what seemed the most opportune time and then he has risked and taken the leap. Often the goddess of Chance has been with him. More often that strange goddess has risen against him.
The boy risks his marbles against those of his playmate. The girl casts her jacks against those of her small companion.
It is the desire of risk showing itself in the immature mind.
As civilization went on and reason developed, the game of chance became a sport which had for its object a lucrative gain in some manner or other.
It became gambling:—the risking of something valuable on the basis that the risk may prove profitable to the risker.
The pages of history are dotted with evidences of gambling in every age. Gambling has passed through a million forms. In our present day life it is looked upon by the general public as a sport.
It is the purpose here not to dissertate on gambling as a moral and commercial evil alone, but to show that it is nothing today but another asset of the Vice Trust, stolen out of the not too plethoric pocket of the sucker public.
It is our purpose to show that a gambling ring, backed by millions of dollars, headed by powerful men and strengthened by the support of the members of the Vice Trust, thrives in Chicago, adding one more stain to her already besmirched municipal escutcheon.
It fattens on those men and women who have already been fleeced by the way of the social evil and on those who have not fallen victims to that sin, and whose besetting sin is gambling.