The police duties, consequent on the assumption to such a position are numerous. In Chicago these are forgotten daily.
Wherever vice and sin flourish as they do here, the same condition of police corruption is to be found. It was found in San Francisco, Louisville, Seattle and other big cities.
THE LOST CHILD THAT IS NEVER FOUND.
To kidnap an innocent child, to rob a fond mother of the greatest treasure God can give her, to tear away from a mother’s sweet and pure embrace her own flesh and blood—that is a crime as heinous as murder.
Kidnappings are reported to the police each day.
What is the result? About forty-five per cent of the kidnapped children are never found.
What of the remaining? God alone can tell of the tragedies which they have probably endured. Many of them have been slain by the demons who stole them, many, particularly those of maturer years, have been sold into abominable White Slavery, and others have been made slaves in other ways to make a living for their masters.
It is the custom of the police to put the name of a missing child, who is usually a kidnapped child, lured away from its home, on the pages of the “missing book.”
The story is sent over police wires to the various stations and precincts as a kind of conformity to the letter necessity. These cases are not given individual attention by the police. They are forgotten and all that is left of the case is the faded, written report.
Occasionally a tragedy that has brought sorrow and misery to some home, driven a mother mad with grief and robbed a father of his reason, comes to light through the powerful influences of the newspapers.