CHICAGO’S VICE COMMISSION
[Editorial Reprinted From New York Evening Post, April 10]
[During the first week of April a remarkable report was issued by the Chicago Vice Commission. The editorial of the New York Evening Post of April 10th on the Chicago report merits reproduction in full.]
The report of the Chicago Vice Commission, made public last week, is a notable document for many reasons. To begin with, this is said to have been the first commission appointed by the mayor of a great city to deal with this question. In the next place, it conducted its inquiry in a scientific and dispassionate manner, and as a result has some definite and practical recommendations to make. But most important of all is that it rejects definitely and vigorously the theory that since prostitution has always been and is always likely to be, therefore there is nothing to be done but to regulate and tolerate and segregate. Into none of these pitfalls has it fallen. Without letting its idealism run away with it, the committee—a strong one, composed of business men, teachers, editors, doctors, and ministers—lays down the sound truth that the proper policy for a city is “constant and persistent repression,” with “absolute annihilation as the ultimate ideal.” There is no counsel of cowardice and despair here; no advocacy of those evil, out-worn policies of toleration which have long since demonstrated in Europe their inability to protect the public health or morals. What is counselled is a determined and vigorous grappling with the evil by the municipality, while the community as a whole devotes itself to those far-reaching policies of education and economic readjustment, which must eventually control some of the human currents that underlie this fearful social peril.
How great that evil is in Chicago alone appears from the committee’s sober estimate
that the annual loss in lives is 5,000 and the annual profit of those engaged in the trade is $15,000,000, which latter figure has since been raised four-fold. It has often been pointed out in these columns and elsewhere that, if there were any other single drain upon a city that cost it 5,000, or let us say even 2,500, lives a year, the community would be up in arms about it. A fire loss of that figure would stir this city to its foundations; the heavy toll in children’s lives paid every summer because of impure or improper food has roused the humanitarian spirit, and we are all familiar with the public determination to blot out the tuberculosis scourge as rapidly as possible. But these matters here come under the Board of Health, which spends great sums every year in such crusades. No department really has charge of this scourge of immorality save the Police Department, which in the past has regulated it as though merely with a view to obtaining for its corrupt members as large a share in the profits as possible.
That this indifference of the municipality to one of the most glaring and discouraging evils of our modern life is intolerable, the Chicago committee has fully realized, for it has recommended the immediate appointment of a morals commission of five members to be chosen by the mayor and approved by the city council, to serve for two years without pay, the commissioner of health to be an ex-officio member, its duty being to “gather evidence and to take the necessary legal steps for the suppression of vice in Chicago wherever such suppression is believed to be advisable.” Its jurisdiction is to cover Chicago and the territory three miles beyond its corporate limits. In addition to this morals commission, there is urged a morals court to consider the cases submitted to it by the morals commission. But far-reaching as these are, they are not the only practical remedies suggested. The city is urged to erect a trade school and hospital for wayward women on a farm owned by the municipality. A special house of detention is urged as absolutely necessary, as is a second state school for wayward girls, the existing one being overcrowded. Of vast importance in any city would be
the suggested creation “of a sympathetic agency with paid agents, who have followed a special instruction and would be charged with regular supervision of the children of unmarried mothers,” and also an amply financed committee on child protection, unrestricted in its scope. Indeed, the welfare of the children has been a deep concern to the committee, which would keep them off the streets at night, forbid the sending of any messenger under twenty-one to a disreputable resort, while it suggests an increase in the number of small parks and recreation centers. It urges dance halls, properly supervised, with the sale of liquor prohibited; it implores the churches to use their facilities for sane entertainments and urges wise instruction in sex hygiene in the public schools.
As for the worst offenders, the procurers, the committee urges that there should be relentless prosecution of them and the professional keepers of disreputable resorts. For the betterment of the police force in relation to the evil there are suggested a number of remedies for the existing conditions, such as the severe punishment of grafters, the constant rotation of patrolmen in the various districts, and the investigation of complaints by picked men from distant districts. Most interesting of all is the suggestion that women police officers be appointed to deal with the question of morals, and particularly to protect strangers on arrival. Why this important duty has thus far been left to volunteer effort in almost all of our cities passes understanding. First offenders ought, the committee thinks, to be invariably placed under the charge of women probation officers. We note also this suggestion:
To Federal authorities: A Federal bureau of immigration should be established in great distributive centers, such as Chicago, to provide for the safe conduct of immigrants from ports of entry to their destination. Efficient legislation should be enacted and present laws enforced in such a manner, as to the traffic in women within the boundaries of each state, and as thoroughly, as the Federal authorities have dealt with the international traffic.
Not unnaturally, it finds that the public
health authorities could do much to better conditions if they would put an end to the wholesale dispensing of cocaine and morphine by certain druggists.
Finally, these investigators are convinced that much of the race friction in large cities is due to the vice problem, and it dwells vigorously upon the crying injustice of the Chicago authorities in invariably driving the prostitutes into the quarters occupied by colored people—in one instance into the section occupied by the homes, Sunday schools, and churches of the best class of colored people. One feature in the report appeals to Chicago’s pride. After all the terrible stories of her “levee” districts, the committee is certain that Chicago is “more moral proportionately to its population than most of the cities in her class.” Are we so sure that New York is—as Mayor Gaynor would have us believe? Has not the time come for adapting to this city some of the many admirable, practical, and constructive suggestions this report contains?