In order to further its business and increase its income, these unfortunates must poison their already decaying systems with quantities of beer that would revolt even the average drunkard. They must inoculate themselves with the virus of slow death!
They must drink, drink, always drink!
As a lure and a bait to force these already underpaid wretches to fill themselves with the venom of the beer vats they are given a meaningless profit for every glass of poison they force a customer to buy.
They are obliged to drink with the customer in a spirit of good fellowship. Even after they are sick and drunk they pour the cheap, over-fermented liquor into their stomachs—for the sake of sociability and to appease the Vice Trust through its brewery graft.
The girls thus become the Beer Trust’s agents. The woman that is not a good “beer agent” in a house of ill fame, is either punished by being deprived of some privilege or her body bruised and discolored by a brute employed just for such purposes.
But we have demonstrated that subsidiary graft has reduced the ill-gotten gains of the women until there is scarcely anything left for them.
“SELL DRINKS OR STARVE.”
Do you wonder that they sit hour after hour at a table guzzling beer with their drunken customers?
It is the old story of—“Do this or starve.”
In the “redlight” districts of Chicago certain breweries have the monopolized concession from the vice lords to sell their commodity. No one else dare enter into the precincts to peddle his goods.