The protests of Christian organizations and of societies for the suppression of vice seem to be in vain. The city ordinances prohibiting, for instance, the employment of females in massage parlors patronized by men, and others, intended to keep the conduct of all manufactories of vice within limits, if not to accomplish their suppression, are not attempted to be enforced.
Some mitigation of the evils of police aggression has been brought about, as has been observed, by placing police magistrates under a salary sufficiently large to induce them to partly abolish the practice of wholesale midnight arrests, with their consequent fees and bailors’ exactions. These fees are now accounted for more rigidly and paid over to the city, whether they are the result of daylight or midnight arrests. These evils are not, however, wholly eradicated, nor will they be, until an aroused public sentiment shall give as much attention, public service, and personal endeavor, to the attainment of that most desirable end, as is given to the building of an armory, the establishment of lake front parks, Greater Chicago, the passage of revenue bills, and the defeat of the attempt to obtain public franchises without compensation to the granting municipality.
Whatever will tend to create wealth for the individual, to increase the volume of trade, or add to the attractiveness of the city in the improvement or adornment of its public parks, the energetic and pushing citizen aids with his personal services, and abundant wealth. Its moral attractions receive, in so far as the repression of villainy and of disgusting vice is concerned, but little, if any, personal or pecuniary assistance from the people. At a recent meeting of the Law Enforcement League, a clergyman, who had freely given his time and services in behalf of the objects of that association, begged for the paltry sum of $250 with which to carry on the work. It was received by contribution from his audience after repeated appeals. Had it been a meeting for stock subscriptions to some corporation promising large returns, or for the purpose of building a monument to some former day hero, or author, the appeal would not have had to fall upon the ears of the people repeatedly. The request would have been granted upon its first presentation. “This work,” said the preacher, “cannot be carried on by sympathy, or applause, or resolutions, or expressions of good will. There is nothing but hard cash that counts in the practical work of enforcing the law.”
CHAPTER IV.
Re-election of Mayor—False Issue Upon Which Re-elected—Vices in Chicago—“Blind Pigs”—Protected by Police—Where Situated—How Conducted—Classes—Drug Stores, Bakeries, Barns—Revenue to Police—Located Near Universities—Lieutenant of Police Convicted for Protecting—Cock Fighting—Bucket Shops—Women Dealers—Pool Rooms—Police Play—Pulling of, Farcical—Views of Chief of Police—Players—Landlords—Book Making—Alliance Between, and Police and Landlords—New York and Chicago—Chicago Police Force Worst—Hold Up Men—Methods—Victims—Police Sleep—Mayor’s Felicitations, April 11, 1899—Accounts of Hold Ups, Same Day—Classes of Hold-Up Men—Strong Armed Women—Street Car Conductors Robbed—Ice Chest and Ovens for Prisons—Hair Clippers—Protection to Criminals—“Safe Blowers’ Union”—Fakes—Panel Houses—Badger Games—Nude Photographs—Obscene Literature—Confidence Men—Diploma Mills—Gambling—Women’s Down Town Clubs—Sexual Perverts—Opium Joints.
That public opinion can be aroused on any question deemed of importance to the municipal welfare finds abundant confirmation in the history of Chicago, and that that opinion can make itself felt at the polls has but recently been most remarkably demonstrated. Admittedly deficient, both by friend and foe, in public assemblages called in behalf of its retention in power; permitting the violation of the law, in all its departments; openly consenting to the unrestrainted lechery of the debauched classes, the wide open running of gambling houses, pool rooms and disorderly houses; aiding by its refusal, or neglect, to stop the levying by the police of protection rates upon poker rooms, crap games, pool rooms and dens of that class, the pitfalls and snares set for the young men of the town; assessing for political purposes the keepers of disreputable resorts of all kinds, and the employes of the city under civil service rules in defiance of a law sternly prohibiting that demoralizing practice; an administration appealed to, and received, the support of nearly a majority of the whole people, upon one fictitiously dominant issue, under which all others were adroitly sheltered and wholly hidden from view.
That issue which concerned the people as an incorporated body, rather more than as individuals, was practically non-existing. The power to invade the rights of the people had been destroyed by State legislation. In the absence of new legislation, the extension of railroad franchises is now an impossibility, except under the terms of the existing charter. No legislation can be obtained in enlargement of such municipal power, until the next general assembly shall have convened in January, 1901, unless a special session should be called for that particular purpose, the probability of which is too remote to be considered. Meanwhile the new administration which will be carried on for the next two years by practically the same men as for the past two years, can find no refuge behind an issue of supposedly overwhelming importance to hide its neglect of others, which affect, if not directly, yet indirectly, the financial interests of the city. Those matters, to which the administration of the city must now give its attention, concern the purity of municipal legislation; the proper enforcement of the laws in all departments of the city government; no interference in matters of education; no attempt at the control of the civil service commission in the strict enforcement of the law creating it; the proper letting of contracts, and the preservation of pay-rolls from manipulation and fraudulent swelling. The purity of municipal legislation is assured by the election of a number of aldermen whose records as citizens warrant the prediction that they, joining with an already trusty minority, for the ensuing year at least, will conserve public rather than private interests, guided by the promptings of each individual conscience. There will be no opportunity to filch from them for party ends, or for personal advancement, due public acknowledgment of their integrity and ability. But the enforcement of the laws governing municipal administration in its several departments; the proper disbursement of its appropriation funds for street improvements, scavenger service, street and alley cleaning, public buildings and parks, etc.; the management of the school-board by its own officials, free from political suasion; of the civil service commission along the lines contemplated by the law free from party dictation, and the elevation of the police force to the plane of its non-political duties, for the prevention of the spread of vice and indecency, the repression of crime, the protection of life and property, are all matters, the non-attention to which can no longer be excused upon the theory of the necessity of first destroying an attempted private seizure of the public streets, a theory which has gone to its destruction by the repeal of an obnoxious law, under which seizure might have been accomplished.
So far as the suppression of vice is concerned, the initial duty of municipal administration is the education of the police in their duties as imposed upon them by law. For years, under every administration, with infrequent, feeble attempts at reform, that force has been rapidly becoming a fleet of harveyized steel battleships, sailing under the flaunting flag of vice, fully armed, and loyally serving the kings of the gamblers, the queens of the demi-monde, and their conjoined forces of thieves, confidence men, cappers, prostitutes, philanderers, etc., etc. It is not in the least fearful of public opinion. If wealth can snap its fingers and cry aloud “The public be d—d,” so can the force laugh in its sleeve, and, aping wealth, echo “To hell” with the public.