The appropriations for the year 1897, for the maintenance of the police force, amounted to $3,356,910. Other sources of income amounted to $17,635.03.
The salary warrants drawn against this fund amounted to $3,290,296.26; for other expenses, $167,369.63, making a total of warrants drawn of $3,457,665.89, leaving a deficit of $83,392.84.
The total income of the city for the year 1897 from saloon licenses was about $3,000,000. The saloons are, therefore, the policemen’s great financial friends in more ways than one, and largely defray the expenses of the department.
CHAPTER III.
All Night Saloons—Character of—Thieves, Thugs and Prostitutes in—Visitors—Country Buyers, Transients, Delegates, Youth and Old Age—Women in—Character of—Basement Saloons—Scenes in—Private Rooms—Scenes in All Night Saloons—Dancing—Music—Morning Hours—Robberies, Etc., Planned—Girls Entrapped—Young Men Ruined—Quarrels—Raids—Drinking—Surroundings of—Houses of Ill Fame—Assignation Houses—Slumming Parties—Fads—Salvation and Volunteer Army—Inmates of—How Managed—Practices in—Superstitions—Luck Powders—Sources of Supply—Patrons of—Wholesale House Entertainers—Police Protection—Diseases—Attempts at Reform—People Indifferent.
The breeding ground of disorder and crime is to be found in the all night saloons.
Despite the stringent ordinances prohibiting the “open door” after midnight, in the most dissolute districts throughout the city, along the streets and avenues of the north, west and south divisions, under ground and on its surface, these dens invite the depraved of both sexes to enter, remain, dissipate and carouse through the night. Murders, robberies and assaults are the necessary outcome of the unlimited drinking, the ribald language, the senseless jealousies, and the heated passions of the motley crowds which are at all times the fascinated patrons of these joints. A more rigid rule has recently been applied to the larger of the down town, or business district, basement saloons. Music is prohibited, and the closing midnight hour respected. These are but the depots for the all night saloons. When they close, the gathered crowds of dissolute women dissolve and betake themselves to the after midnight haunts, there to continue their calling—the solicitation of male visitors for drinks, meals and the ultimate purpose of their solicitation—prostitution. The male frequenters of these resorts belong to all classes of society. The “steady” visitors are thieves, thugs, pickpockets, gamblers, variety actors, “rounders,” that large and constantly growing class in great cities which is ceaselessly observing the shady side of life, “seeing the elephant,” and not infrequently becoming intimately acquainted with the beast, and pimps, who fatten upon the sinful earnings of abandoned women, whose fondness for their masters increases in proportion to the violence the masters visit upon their slaves. The transient custom is comprised of not only the old rounder, but also of those of younger experience, bursting, or not far advanced, into manhood; those who with a wide knowledge of the ways and wickedness of the world, more than their years warrant, are out for a “good time;” the observer of those ways; the “chiels” who are among them taking notes; clerks, cabmen and their “hauls;” the country buyer under the guidance of the entertainer of the wholesale house with whom the buyer is dealing; the delegates to conventions, out to view the town; the passer through the burg who has heard of the lights and shadows of Chicago; the swallow-tailed youth, and the middle-aged gentleman fresh from escorting to her home the virtuous female companion of the evening’s entertainment, the melodrama, the opera, or the social function. The women range from the one who has just “started out” to the most despicable and depraved member of the sex. The former is the observed of all observers, the object of conspicuous attention, and a veritable prize to be won by the most dashing attack and the most liberal offer. She is under the tuition of her female guide, who instructs her “what she has to do that she may not be raw in her entertainment.”
The basement saloons in the down town district with their brilliant electric lighting equipment, their reflecting mirrors and hardwood finishings, combine, in most instances, the facilities of the rum shop and the restaurant.