To-day from beneath Chicago’s awful moral sewerage system, which has sucked their hearts and souls under, thirty thousand trembling hands are held up to High Heaven and to you for help, hands reeking with the blood on which some whore monger has fattened, the hands though of your sisters and of mine. And I believe that here in Chicago, the greatest market for White Slaves on the Continent, should be formed a league that would become world-wide, of earnest, law-abiding men and women whose efforts, united with those of the proper police, municipal and Federal authorities, would make it practically impossible for a girl to be sold into or compelled to lead an immoral life, and through whose influence such open, publicly-protected flesh markets as our red-light and levee districts would be banished forever from Chicago streets. And I believe with all my heart that this can only be accomplished by education, by agitation, by legislation, by the ballot and by the power of God, directing a great national army of well informed, moral and Christian men and women against this vast, thoroughly organized, well administered and heavily financed public horror of our Republic.
I believe in helping, God knows, with heart and hand and money every fallen, or as one has put it, every “knocked down” woman in our Land whom there is the slightest chance to help in any way; but I believe, first of all, in using every known measure to keep our girls from falling.
You and I live beneath the only flag in all the world that has never known defeat, and the very basic principle upon which that flag is built is human liberty and human protection, and so by personal work and co-operation with every other reform and labor organization for the uplifting of womanhood, by song and by prayer and the Power of the Cross, let us set ourselves to help these helpless ones in our midst until the angels shall take up the story of shame and bitterness and wrong and bear to all the world and to Heaven itself the swift acknowledgment that you are your brother’s keeper.
The above picture is from a Flashlight Photograph taken by the author and is a side view of 114 Custom House Place. The demolishing of 116 Custom House Place and several adjacent buildings gave the chance of a life time in securing this and many other photographs. The demolishing of these houses, which up to three years ago were used exclusively for purposes of prostitution, brought to view a perfect network of bars, screens and steel doors (see heavy steel door at right of cut) scarcely dreamed of before as existing outside of our State Penitentiaries.