The Vice Trust demands a terrible stipend. Therefore the beer must be sold at an outrageous price. The over lords must get their share, the girls in the houses must be paid their horrible commission and the keepers must make their profits.
The sale of this beer in the disorderly houses is a direct violation of the law governing the sale of liquors. All this beer and other intoxicants are sold without a city license.
There are one thousand places in the city selling liquor without a license. Nearly all these are houses of prostitution. This figure is arrived at by a comparison of federal tax records on the sale of liquors and the records in the city license department of the city clerk. The houses of ill fame dare not ignore the laws of the United States. So, they purchase a federal liquor license at the nominal sum of twenty-five dollars a year.
BEER GRAFT—$2,915,760.
The yearly graft in beer in the holes of vice in the city is unbelievable. We shall quote an authoritative source.
According to the report made by the recent Vice Commission to the Mayor of Chicago the annual graft from the sale of intoxicants in the restricted districts of the city, is—
$2,915,760!
That means that many dollars in graft over the price paid the brewery for its product.
That income must be divided among three factors: the prostitutes, the keepers of the houses and the members of the Vice Trust.
In the calculations of the Vice Commission, the prostitutes receive forty per cent, which amounts to $1,166,304.