Chicago, Satan's Sanctum

by L. O. Curon

The one department of the city government, unsurpassed by any of its kind in the world, is the Fire Department. The officers and men are of the best material, of the highest courage, and serve under the strictest discipline. They are fire fighters, not politicians. Their chief is a man of independence of character, honest, taciturn, a strict disciplinarian—a general in command of a corps of which he is justly proud. He tolerates no political interference with his men. In this respect, particularly, he is, always was, and always will be sustained by the entire community. Any attempted management of the department which would tend to lessen its efficiency meets with the chief’s stern resistance. Aside from his own moral and physical courage, his admirable sense of duty, and the fact that the public honor him and support him, he has the powerful assistance of the board of underwriters in any case of damaging intermeddling with his command. Knowing his worth and the merits of his department that intermeddling would bring, instantly, a threat of the rise in insurance rates from this board, a threat which would touch the pockets of many property owners, and consequently one which would solidify them in support of the chief. He shares with his men the dangers of their calling. The gallant men, who during the past year lost their lives in saving the property and lives of others, testified by their sacrifice to the hazardous nature of that calling. A recital of the heroic deeds of those men would not be surpassed by the stories of gallantry in the field of battle with which the pages of American history are replete. While Dennis J. Swenie’s strength holds out he will command his famous batallions to his own honor, and to that of the city of which he is so faithful and loyal a citizen.

Even the possibility of his being supplanted in his command, which appeared recently in the failure to reappoint him at the first opportunity afforded the Mayor, aroused the people to a united protest, which, indications prove, was timely and effective. The omission to send his name to the council with the first of the Mayor’s appointees, may have been, as it was claimed “accidental,” but it is nevertheless the belief that that omission was in the nature of a test of public opinion. If so, the power of public opinion retained him in command, despite political purpose to the contrary.

With the exception of this department all the others of the city are merely run on political lines, as adjuncts of the political party in power, notwithstanding the civil service law. The abuses of that law may become fewer in number, not through any merit of the present board, but because it has about exhausted itself in filling all the offices with men of one political faith by means already explained.

The departments of the County government under a feeble civil service law, different from that applicable to the city, are conducted in the same manner as those of the city for the benefit of machine politicians and their regiments of ward and township workers. They are as corruptly managed as those of the city government.

The institutions at Dunning for the insane and the poor, are generally managed by ward politicians, whose appointments are in the nature of a reward for party services, or rather, services to some particular boss. Recent reports of grand juries note some improvement in their conduct. On the whole, however, they are regarded in the nature of spoils by the ring of party loafers, whose views of government consist, mainly, in doing the greatest good to the greatest number of the ring.

The traffic in dead bodies, or “cadavers” goes on, as it did when exposure came about a year ago through detected shipments to the State of Missouri for the use of a medical college in one of the towns of that state. These pauper dead “escape,” in the language of the employes, from the “killer” ward in which they are stored, a place selected to lay out a corpse suited for the dissecting table. It has been a matter of more than rumor and given currency by the press, that subjects for the dissecting table are selected before the breath has left their bodies. This statement finds more or less verification in the disclosures of the Missouri case before alluded to.

Contractors for county supplies pay a percentage of their prices to a county ring, and, consequently, a poorer quality of food, fuel and medicines, is furnished to these institutions than the contracts call for, which cost the contractor an additional sum by way of boodle to obtain them.

The sheriff’s office has had a standing shame for many years in the cost of dieting prisoners. The county board allows the sheriff for dieting, twenty-five cents a day for each prisoner confined in the county jail. The cost of a day’s dieting is estimated not to exceed ten cents, according to the greed of the sheriff. From this one source alone the sheriff’s office is regarded as one of the most lucrative offices in the county. The excess above the actual cost is clear profit to the sheriff.

Some of the bailiffs of the courts have been discovered within the past year as jury bribers, willing to take any side offering the most lucrative terms. The principal in this disreputable business fled, and now an unseemly quarrel is raging between the city’s detective department, and the sheriff’s and state attorney’s office as to which was to blame for that escape.

The judges of the Courts of Cook County are men of integrity. Some are able jurists, but of late years the standard for judicial qualifications has been, through party machine nominations, considerably lowered. These judges are charged by the law with some duties the nature of which is purely political. Thus, the selection of justices of the peace for the city, the poor man’s court, is confided to them. No scandals, so far, have attended the exercise of this duty, but their selections have not, as a general rule, earned the confidence of the people. “J. P.” means nowadays one who will give judgment for the plaintiff. The evil practices, the frauds and swindles, which have their origin in the system now prevailing for the conduct of justice courts, has given rise to strenuous efforts to reform them by state legislation. This will ultimately be accomplished. While the members from the rural districts, in each recurring state legislature, are difficult to manage, in the one session of their term in the lower house in matters affecting a large city, nevertheless, when fully informed, they have granted such remedial legislation to Chicago for which its civic bodies have made timely application.