THE BALLOT-CONTROL OF VICE.
One man on election day can easily cast ten votes under ten names of ten dissolute women, who live in the hotels under cognomens, giving initials for their first names.
One hundred men can cast 1,000 illicit votes. That is sufficient to carry an aldermanic election.
One thousand men can cast 10,000 ballots!
That, in a pinch, could sweep honesty from the highest office in the city, and crown a Vice Trust vassal,—mayor!
This is how the Vice Trust wields the balance of power in Chicago, a power that can crush any business, any man, can remove to the “woods” any policeman or police official who refuses to obey its decrees, and so on without limit.
Destroy this and Chicago might once more rear her head in pride. It is the clutch that sets in motion all the machinery of evil.
Wreck that clutch and the delicate, subtle mechanism of concerted crime would disintegrate.
Chicago is blind to the terrible evil of the plethoric ballot box, but the eyes of thousands are being slowly opened.
The “prostitute-repeating” system is but one of the means employed to gain and sustain political control. Hundreds of other methods are in vogue today and working their evil effects.