It took us some time to figure out why there were so many pretty young girls whoring in Baltimore. If they left home to sell it, why didn’t they go on to New York? Research showed they came from the nearby hills and farms; even those with roots deeper in the South or in the reaches of West Virginia came to Baltimore because that was as far as their small savings or imagination could get them. Some planned to make the major league when they saved up a roll, but they were the exceptions.
One girl put it up to us frankly. All she had to offer was all she had. New York, the word has spread, is closed to hustling hucksters. New York’s market trades through switchboards for smartly turned-out call gals, models, chorines, pent-house patooties. A rosy-cheeked milkmaid in gingham dress, with no capital, would be pinched and jugged if she winked to a Sand Street sailor.
The hungry harlots on Baltimore’s streets and in its stinking saloons come there because the whisper back home is that it’s the place to go to. Often procurers have brought them and started them, or they are beckoned by bims who are there. “Bread of infamy” has more raisins than home-baked loaves.
After soliciting at the bars a while, some get ambition. They see strippers don’t even know how to walk across a stage, a requisite in even repellent Chicago. They need only take off clothes, and all gals know how to do that.
Few, if any strippers, except at a couple of places that import semi-names, were ever in show business before. Pretty soon they’re local celebrities, with a special following. These nude numbers are heart-breaking to Broadway-wise guys who’ve known the best. Few have looks, none have wit, and at $35 a week most of these stag-show strumpets are overpaid.
Like New York, New Orleans and San Francisco have flavor, Baltimore exceeds both as a ship port, yet it has little appeal for travelers.
Seafaring folk whose vessels bring them into Baltimore’s fine harbor are an unromantic lot. No important passenger ships call. Those that do carry steerage. Its freighters are cattle-ships and oil-tankers.
In the thousands of uniform flat-front red brick homes with the balustradeless white stoops, unique to Baltimore, live good, solid people, white and Negro.
The department of political skulduggery, though, in the Free State metropolis, is a streamlined model, oiled up and with all the gadgets.
Baltimore is exceeded in population only by New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Detroit. It has passed Boston, St. Louis and Cleveland, and is growing. It is a combination of an anachronism and a boom town. Labor is flocking in to work its mushrooming airplane factories, huge wholesale trading houses, needle-trade shops and ship works. These are mostly people without roots.