It is estimated by those who should know, that at least five thousand men in Chicago live off of the earnings of prostitution. For instance as to the plan: A young girl, alien or American, is sold into a life of ill-fame for say Two Hundred Dollars, as the actual price of her procuring. Before she suspects any real harm, she is lured into a restaurant or a wine-room, becomes intoxicated, is sufficiently doped to become passive, is taken to the “house” to which she has been consigned and is immediately “broken in” in the most violent and nauseating manner, perhaps becoming the prey of twenty or thirty men. Beaten, threatened with exposure, and, if necessary, purposely infected with gonorrhea, the girl is within twenty-four hours absolutely ruined for all time—“spoiled,” the police say. Oh! what a whole world of agony and pain and bruises and disease and Hell is embodied in that one word “spoiled.” She is immediately pressed into service and from that time on until death relieves her, or she is rescued by some one enough interested to help her, she must receive all comers thirty days every month.
This answers the question I have been asked a hundred times from all over the Country since Chicago’s Soul Market was first published, as to whether a woman in a house of prostitution is allowed any respite from service during the Menstrual Period. She is not allowed a single day. The average number of men who must be served by each woman in a medium or lower class house of ill-fame is thirty-six per day. On entrance to the place, if the house be a “Dollar house,” a metal room-check is purchased from the madam or attendant at the door for one dollar. This check is taken up by the girl in the room and is worth on presentation to the house fifty cents, half of its face value being received by the house for board, laundry, hair dressing, etc., all of which must be paid for at the highest possible rates. Of the remaining fifty cents, twenty-five cents goes to the man who sold the girl into the house, the remaining twenty-five cents going to the girl herself and from this amount must be paid all bills for clothes, dentistry, and all other expenses. In almost every known case, however, with which the writer is at all familiar, the entire fifty per cent goes intact to the owner of the girl, her necessary expenses being paid by him and the balance pocketed for his own use.
Just as the liquor trade is thoroughly and carefully financed and organized even in its weakest points, making successful prosecution against it a thing impossible, just so is the traffic in young women protected in all its details. The writer has in mind the case of Josie E——, fifteen years old, who came from her suburban home in Illinois, hoping to secure employment in the City. Arriving at the Dearborn Street Railway Station about nine o’clock, she started out to find a hotel in which to spend the night. Walking a few steps from the Station, she was accosted at State and Polk streets by a young man who asked her what she was looking for. Replying that she was looking for a hotel, the man Thompson told her he was employed at a hotel on Polk Street opposite the railway station and offered to take the girl there. Unacquainted with the City and relying on his word, she accompanied him to the hotel, where she was outraged and detained for weeks. She was finally rescued by the writer and a Y. W. C. A. worker. Taking her to my rooms, I found her physical condition such that I sent for a detective from the Harrison Street Police Station who investigated her story and finding it true in every particular, arrested Thompson at his place of employment, 41 Polk Street. The case coming up in the Harrison Street Municipal Court, was so manipulated by the defense that in the transferring of it to the Criminal Court a technical error threw it out altogether. I simply give this as an example of how almost utterly impossible it is to secure a conviction in these cases. Is it any wonder when back of this great evil stands at least a hundred million dollars?
Listen, seventy-five per cent of the women and girls entering lives of ill-fame in Chicago are from adjoining States and country districts—they are utter strangers in our City. Every hour, day or night, year in and year out, four great central railway passenger stations discharge their precious human freight within the first ward of Chicago, the richest and wickedest political ward in the world—the ward of Michael Kenna (Hinky Dink) and “Bathhouse” John Coughlin—the ward feeding every district of prostitution and gambling and unnatural horror in the City—the ward with two miles of indecent resorts, whole armies of reeking lost women, hundreds of pandering men procurers and White Slavers—the ward of thousands of Turkish, Italian and Arabian immigrants, and opium-parched pagan Chinese—the ward in which every day thousands of women, many of whom without money or friends, are looking for work, are unloaded in this seething cauldron of vice, their only refuge being, when without funds, the Police Station or the house of ill-repute.
The horror of conditions surrounding a woman without money or friends in Chicago makes the living of a moral life almost impossible for her. I have in mind the case of a deserted little Italian woman, G. P——[2], living in Plymouth Court, south of Polk Street. G. had three little baby girls, the eldest only four years, and was expecting another child soon. She was deserted by her husband and left without a dollar or a friend to face life and care for herself and babies. The case came into the hands of the Mission and she was cared for by them until the time of her confinement, when, with her children, she was taken to Dunning Poorhouse where she was kindly cared for. A baby boy was born to G. Great pressure was brought to bear upon this little Italian mother who spoke no word of English, to induce her to give up her children. Frightened and weeping, she refused to do this, declaring she would make a living for them, and leaving the Poorhouse, she started out taking the baby and another child with her, hoping soon to earn the money to care for the other two.
This she was fortunate enough to accomplish, and, taking the four little ones dear to her heart, went back to the little room on the top floor of the tenement in Plymouth Court. G. got work in a sweatshop and made button-holes at $2.50 a week. She worked hard to keep up, but the baby sickened and died. The other children began to get thin and wan. They grew hungry before her eyes and the mother’s heart frightened and sank within her. A fiend in human form, J. F——, came by and offered the half-starved mother bread for herself and babies, offered her marriage as soon as it could be arranged for. G. took the bread and fed her children and to-day up on the top floor of the tenement in Plymouth Court, again deserted and hungry and helpless, she cries and prays and makes button-holes, and waits and waits with fear and wretchedness the coming of another little child.
From a flashlight photograph showing 2-ton weight steel
door connecting sound-proof dungeon cell with blind passage-way,
between 114 and 116 Custom House Place
The proprietor of the great resort on the corner of 21st and Dearborn streets said not long ago to a co-worker of mine who forced her way into his infamous dive: