Chicago, Satan's Sanctum

by L. O. Curon

The office of the recorder of deeds is one of the most important in the county affairs. Generally speaking it is well conducted, although its records are not as presentable to the eye as are the books of a first-class mercantile firm. Female labor is employed mostly in recording, i. e., spreading an instrument at large upon the records, while male labor keeps up the tract books, indices, etc. The employes of both sexes are favorites of political bosses. The abstract branch of the business of this office is a sublime failure. For years it has cost the county a large sum of money to make good the deficiency—expenses largely exceeding earnings. Its abstracts cannot compete with those of private corporations, which employ experts in that business, and pay them in proportion to their ability, merit alone being their recommendation. The abstract makers employed by the county are shiftless and incompetent. The Torrens system, or the registration of titles, will, in time, but not for many years to come, supersede the abstract system, but not until the public shall have gained more confidence in its merits than it has yet acquired in recorder’s abstracts of title.

It was not the purpose of these pages to pursue inquiry into the corruption existing in both the municipal and county governments. The primary intent was to refer to the vices and crimes which prevail by reason principally of police partnership in their joint proceeds. Both governments are corrupt, and appear to be so because the people consent they shall be corrupt. The lessons the public learn from day to day, through the columns of the press, are forgotten. When election day approaches a revival of the facts through the press is then charged to political trickery, and its charges of maladministration are disregarded as being invented for party purposes. The press condemns while the evils are prominent, then it condones, and becomes the subservient and truculent supporter of the men who permitted vice and debauchery to attain its stalwart growth. The people believe there is a trust press, banded together to obtain favors through school leases, bank deposits of public funds and personal appointments in return for services to be rendered their municipal benefactors. The only non-member of the trust is the organ of the street car corporations and such exposes of villainy as it may present are set down as means to an end—the effort to obtain public privileges without compensation to the city. Newspapers, therefore, in municipal affairs no longer lead public opinion. They cannot again become its leaders until they free themselves from the suspicion of conserving their own interests by the sacrifice of those of the public. The greatest of them delivered but feeble blows during the recent mayoralty campaign, while the lighter weights, who were fighting for a candidate for renewed honors, had been for two years most unmercifully pounding him for his persistent assistance rendered to the vicious classes, in their indulgence in crime and debauchery.

The various civic societies formed for the improvement of municipal government, pay attention solely to matters removed from the insidious and ceaseless advances of crime, close their eyes to evidences of disease apparent on the body politic, and merely dream of higher ideals. They leave to one society the task of the suppression of vice. They give to it neither sympathy nor pecuniary assistance. It begs its way in meetings of its sympathizers, warns the community of the prevalence of crime and indecency, but the community rushes on in the business struggles of the day from year to year, trusting—as it always has trusted—in its public servants for the full performance of their sworn duties—a trust so constantly violated that municipal government has become merely the synonym of the rule of the criminal classes.

A special session of the Illinois Legislature was called by the Governor in 1897. Among the subjects included in the call was one suggesting the passage of an act “to establish boards providing for non-partisan police in all cities of the State containing over 100,000 inhabitants.” Pursuant to the recommendations of the executive’s message, a resolution was passed by the Senate for the appointment of a committee of seven members of that body, which recited the recommendation of the Governor; that a bill had been introduced providing for the establishment of non-partisan police boards in all cities containing the necessary population; that charges and scandals had arisen in regard to the management of the police force in Chicago, and that the committee be clothed “with full power to act” and to investigate “fully the subject” and report its findings as early as possible to the Senate at the special session.

The committee consisted of one people’s party, one democratic senator and five republican senators. From the moment of its selection it was branded as a partisan committee, appointed not so much to obtain information which would enable an unbiased judgment to be formed upon the merits of the proposed bill as to accumulate political capital for the use of the republican party. The committee proceeded with its investigation, and on February 10th, 1898, submitted its report, which was adopted February 15th, 1898, by a vote of thirty-three republicans and one democrat, eight democrats voting in the negative. The only democrat voting in the affirmative was a member of the reporting committee.

On the last day of the special session, no legislation having been enacted on the subject of the proposed bill, a resolution was introduced providing for a continuance of the committee, which recited that it had “unearthed a most deplorable state of affairs in the management and control of the police force of Chicago,” and that “the most flagrant violations of the civil service law have been brazenly practiced by those in authority in control of that police force.” Nothing resulted from the latter resolution continuing the committee.

The report covered the investigations of the committee into the operations of the civil service law, and the manner of its enforcement, finding that it was a plaything in the hands of the party then in power, and an object of constant and premeditated attack. It also found the grossest abuses in the management of the police pension fund and in the workings of the police force as an organization. That crime was protected and lewdness tolerated by it, and that in fact it was a powerful ally of the criminal classes, and practically made an unofficial livelihood off unfortunate women of the town, thieves and their fences, gambling resorts and their keepers, and the patrons and keepers of the all night saloons. It found the Chief of Police was cognizant of the facts, and yet took no steps to correct them. That Chief from whose testimony quotations appear in these pages, was re-appointed to command the police force for the next two years.

The findings of this committee made but little, if any, impression upon the public mind. There were no revelations as to the condition of criminal affairs, and the relations of the police therewith, which were new to the people, with the possible exception, perhaps, that it was not known how utterly inefficient and irresponsible the Chief of Police was. From that moment every newspaper has, if not demanded, at least suggested his removal from office. In this respect it but voices the sentiments of the entire community. It is a paradox why, in the face of this public feeling, a majority of the people supported for re-election the staunch friend of the dishonored head of the police force, unless upon the hypothesis that he would not continue to be a part of the new administration. If so, the hypothesis soon failed. The Mayor thought he would “hold him for a while.”

The lesson to be learned from the failure of this committee’s report to attract public attention to the prevalence of criminality and obscenity in Chicago as fostered by the police force is this, that an investigation concerning the methods of government of a city administration controlled by the Democratic party, without a kindred investigation of the methods of a county administration controlled by the Republican party is too partisan to suit the sense of fair play and of justice entertained by every American citizen. It matters not that the order for the investigation had reference only to the passage of legislation for the regulation of the police force in cities of a certain population, and that, therefore, the scope of the inquiry was limited by the terms of the order. Perhaps it was as broad as it could have been made, under the governor’s call, which, by the provisions of the constitution fixed the subjects upon which only legislation could be enacted in special session. Either the call should have been broader, or this particular subject matter should have been omitted from it, and left for the regular session’s consideration. Then all matters pertaining to the manner of conducting both city and county affairs could have been investigated free from the delimitations of an executive call. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the report of the Berry Committee, as it was called, is a stinging indictment against the police force of Chicago, which sooner or later must be tried at the bar of public opinion. It will, in a measure, have blazed the way for a new committee of inquiry, whose sittings have just commenced, in so far as the police department is concerned.

The Baxter Committee was formed under a resolution of the Senate. It consists of five republican and two democratic senators. The resolution refers “to the management and control of the police affairs” of Chicago, and “the conduct of the municipal government thereof, in reference to the expenditure of public money and the enforcement of the law in its several departments.” This language would limit the scope of the committee’s inquiry to city affairs only. The resolution, however, closes with words granting authority to the committee for a “full, complete and perfect investigation of any and all the said subject matters herein named, and such other subjects as they may deem wise and prudent to investigate in the interests of good government.”