Chicago, Satan's Sanctum

by L. O. Curon

If this committee is wise it will not confine its efforts to ascertaining how the city government is managed. It will command public approval if it will extend its inquiries into the affairs of the county government as well. This the community will demand; with less it will not be satisfied. The great mass of both parties is concerned with what will be of the most advantage to good government, not with what will be to the greatest advantage of either party. Hence, if this inquiry has in view a partisan purpose its sessions will merely reproduce tales of the street familiar to the ears of the people, and with which the legislature has been familiar for a decade. To associate these crimes and debaucheries with one administration will in one respect be unfair, because they have progressed under other administrations as well, but it can emphasize the one great and astonishing truth, that never in the history of the city has a police force been permitted to become the bed-fellow of these monstrous evils, to protect them and contribute to their overwhelming power, in such a shameless, openhanded and defiant manner as it has in the past two years, as it is still permitted to do, and as it will probably be permitted to do, for the next two years.

That committee will find nothing in these pages unknown to the observing citizen. The great mass of the people read and forget. These evils are hinted at herein, and gathered together. They may impress those who are unaccustomed to taking notes of passing events. That the growth of crime in Chicago, and the prevalence of bestiality is not generally believed by the majority of its people is a self-evident proposition. It would be an insult to their intelligence and virtue to assert they knew the facts. It is not a criticism of their intelligence to say they do not know the facts. It is rather to their credit that in the pursuit of their business, the care of their homes, and the cultivation of their morals, they judge the great community in which they live by their own standard, and firmly believe that as they know themselves to be good citizens, they believe their fellow men are likewise good citizens. While they rest in this conviction vice is eternally at work, immorality undermining and crime attacking the power of government, capturing one and then the other of its strongholds, until today the criminal classes constitute the balance of power in every city election, and can handle it as they may choose, by the mere concentration of the voting strength of the keepers of eight thousand saloons and their hangers on.

The appointment of a comptroller and corporation counsel acceptable to the public, both being men of sterling integrity, and known ability, is merely a partial promise of reform. The new comptroller is a worthy successor to the deceased Waller, while the new corporation counsel takes his office, with a reputation for probity and legal acumen which are guaranties that neither will be used in an attack upon the people’s laws. But the police department and the public works department are still under the same direction. They give no promise of departing from the protection of criminals on the one hand, nor the illegal letting of contracts on the other. Both of these are inviting fields for the Baxter committee to explore, and when they shall have thoroughly done so, if they shall turn their attention to county affairs, they will probably find pastures just as prolific of the rankest of weeds.

The Baxter committee began its hearings on the 18th day of May, 1899. Its opening witness confirmed the truth of many of the facts set forth in these pages. He paid protection money for keeping a gambling house, until the demands for a contribution to a campaign fund became too exacting, when he was “told he had better quit.” “As an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” said the witness: “I quit.”

He testified that gambling was going on everywhere a few days before the committee began its work, named a number of the resorts, and related some of his losses in a few of the games in which, although a professional gambler, he was “skinned.”

Officers were found in them, and protection to the games openly boasted of. The club organization, it develops, is the gambling idea of evading the laws, the theory being that none can gamble unless they are members. The practice seems, however, to be that every man is a member who will not squeal. Houses of disrepute were visited, and the indecencies alluded to in foregoing pages witnessed by the sergeant-at-arms of the committee. His testimony in this respect was too realistic for publication.

A member of a recent grand jury submitted a list of all night saloons he had visited, and found doing business, between the hours of one and five o’clock in the morning. The list contained the names of forty-six saloons, located on eleven different streets. His information was not as startling as was the fact that his joint feat of pedestrianism and absorption of drink is, perhaps, unequalled in sporting or drinking records. He drank in each of the places visited—total drinks, forty-six in four hours. Length of route covered four miles; width, about one-half mile; square miles traversed—two! Can any sprinter, carrying the same weights, surpass this achievement?

The witnesses so far called before the committee are mostly from the detective force, and from among lodging house keepers. Their replies are evasive, and when not so, their memories are clouded. All they had ever known of the subjects upon which they are interrogated had fled from their recollection. “I don’t remember,” avoided many a pitfall.

The methods of the committee do not impress an observer as having been the result of much consultation or careful preparation for their work. There is an apparent indifference on the part of some of its members to reaching results, or to remaining steadily in the pursuit of the purposes for which it was organized. Political influences are undoubtedly at work to shorten the lines of its inquiry, and the length of the days it shall devote to their development. This investigation is not wanted by local politicians of either party. It rests with the committee alone to determine whether its work shall be well done or not. To maintain the dignity of the State is their first duty, let their investigation reveal what it may and strike whom it will.

A people who voluntarily submit to taxation for the construction of such a stupendous improvement as the drainage canal costing $28,000,000, who apply their surplus water fund to the building of a complete system of intercepting sewers, who compel the abolition of the murderous grade crossings, through the elevation of railway tracks, all for the improvement of the sanitary condition and safety of their homes and lives, are entitled to the best protection the state can give them against the domination of criminals and debauchees, even if the management of its police force should thereby be placed in the hands of state agencies, or under some other supervision which will compel it to dissolve its relations with vice, and prevent it from utilization for political ends.