Chicago, Satan's Sanctum

by L. O. Curon

The population born of American born parents exceeds that of any other nativity, being in round numbers 486,000, while the Germans, born of German born parents, and Germans born in Germany, number in round figures 468,000. Of the Irish 131,000 are American born of Irish parents; born in Ireland, 104,000, making a total of 235,000. These are the largest classes, by nativity, of its people, and with the proverbial ability of the latter nationality to govern and “get there” it supplies the police force with the largest quota of men, year after year.

During the years 1897 and 1898 this force, and every man seeking to become a member of it, was taught by city officials, and by none more energetically than by the chief law officer of the city administration, that the civil service law was an especial enemy of theirs, inasmuch as it abridged their privileges and immunities as citizens of the United States, and was, therefore, a menace to their rights, wholly unwarranted by the Constitution of the United States.

It was accordingly attacked upon that ground by the officers sworn to enforce it, and, since the establishment of its validity by the highest courts in the land, its provisions are constantly sought, by them, to be avoided and defeated.

The efforts of the commissioners to enforce it were commented on in an official message by the city’s Executive, as if such efforts were in fact being made, and were part and parcel of an administrative policy; while, in practice, no possible legal device or illegal invention was allowed to fail of application by municipal officials to destroy its commands, even by its commissioners, who announced themselves as its greatest devotees. No more demoralizing example could have been set before the police force than the acts of the higher authorities. Such acts have produced the inevitable result, that, as such higher authorities saw fit to openly throttle a law they were sworn to enforce, the rank and file of the police force itself inferred that they, too, could seek to evade, and refuse to execute, all laws and ordinances which in their judgment affected the suppression of crime.

Consequently, that force has become demoralized and corrupt, openly levying a tariff for revenue and official protection upon all classes of wrong-doers, below those who commit felonious crimes of the highest grade, and when the rates are not promptly paid by the protected classes, they are coerced by arrest into the payment of fines and fees for division between the justices and the officers. It is a well known fact that a schedule of prices prevails for police protection, which prices must be paid for that protection. Gambling houses pay from $50.00 per month upwards; panel and badger games, $35.00 to $50.00; music halls with saloon and private room attachments, $100.00; houses of ill fame, from $50.00 upwards, according to the number of inmates at so much per capita; cigar store and barber shop gambling games, $10.00; “blind pigs,” the unlicensed vendors of liquors, $10.00 to $30.00, and with permission to gamble, $30.00 to $50.00; crap games, $10.00 to $25.00; opium and Chinese joints, $10.00 to $25.00; drug store “blind pigs,” $10.00 to $30.00, and prize fights and cocking mains, a percentage of the gate receipts—usually one-fifth.

Whenever a gambling house refuses to pay it is immediately pulled. These rates of police blackmail and of protective tariff have been sworn to before public investigations, and inquiry trials, as imposed and collected. The press has repeatedly commented upon these frightfully cruel persecutions, reeking with the infamy of the participation by public servants in a division of the fetid proceeds of the procuress, of the landlady, of her unfortunate slave, the harlot; of the skin gambler, the clock swindlers and tape gamesters, and of the operators of massage parlors, both male and female.

In one case, tried before the Criminal Court of Cook County, a lieutenant of the police force was convicted of the crime of exacting money from the owner of a “blind pig” paid to him by the owner for protection in his unlawful occupation. Going back a few years, during the World’s Fair period, as high as $2,000, it is said in public print, was paid for similar protection in a single instance.

The officer in charge of a given precinct makes the collections, retains his percentage, passes the remainder on to his next superior, who withholds his rake-off, and so on until the net profit reaches the highest police official. A leading city newspaper, in a caustic editorial, declared that “in Chicago protection means the privilege to commit crime upon the payment of a sum of money to the police. It has ceased to mean that the citizen will be guarded against the acts of criminals.” So thoroughly recreant to duty have some of the ranking officers of this force become, that one of the oldest captains when asked why he did not close, in his district, certain notorious saloons where depraved women robbed strangers in wine rooms, replied that “some people would steal in the churches, and you might as well close churches as close the saloons for that reason.”

Patrolmen in uniform are found in dives playing cards; and in others sleeping during the hours of their supposed presence on their beats. They know the women of the town, the street walkers in the territory they patrol, the keepers of every vile joint, where the most depraved practices are indulged in, the houses of ill fame, high-priced and low-priced, the “Nigger,” Japanese, Chinese and mixed bagnios, the policy shops, fences and schools for thieves.

All these vice mills and their operators contribute to the policemen’s demand, and thus obtain permission to carry on, in daylight, and at night-time, their nefarious, lecherous and disgusting crimes and orgies.