Captain Barcal, of the Desplaines street police station, in plain clothes and unknown to the evangelists, visited our midnight gospel meeting in Peoria street at the corner of Randolph, Saturday night, September 15. Several repentant young men were on their knees in the dust, surrounded by missionaries working with them and praying for them. The captain said to Alexander Cleland, one of the secretaries of the Central Young Men's Christian Association: "I will not tolerate any interference with this good work."
One Sunday afternoon as we were working on Sangamon street a beautiful, sinful Jewess insulted me and justified herself by saying with a strong Jewish accent, "You spoil our business." The next Sunday or so a young Jew parasite succeeded in breaking up our meeting. Captain Barcal was indignant and took better care of us than ever. One Sunday a Jew said to me, "The girls say you have spoiled their business." Soon afterward a police order and the new municipal courts utterly transformed that region. Business interest were weary of such outrageous conditions and demanded a decisive change. Some months afterward a policeman remarked upon the transformation and explained, "The Lord's time came to work and He has been working." There is still very much to be done there, but the former flagrancy of vice has been abolished.
Mr. Henry De Vries, Mr. and Mrs. F. J. Macdonald and Mr. R. M. Hawkins worked with me during our conflict on the West Side. Mr. Macdonald was killed the next year by a train.
AT TWENTY-SECOND STREET.
For the last three years since our mission was organized, chiefly through the efforts of the Rev. Dr. John Balcom Shaw, we have labored mostly in the great vice district and white slave market at Twenty-second street. Of course we had no very glad welcome, after the preceding conflicts. I have been assaulted three times in that district and several who have worked with us have been roughly handled. Vile drugs have been thrown into our meetings and on our clothes—assafoetida and hydrogen sulphide. Viler words have been hurled into our ears. One French trader threatened to break me to pieces and send me to a hospital if it cost him a mint of money, but he afterward became friendly and finally quit his loathsome business.
Objection was made to our scientific teaching and circulars. Even the police captains, who have always taken splendid care of us, were influenced by our adversaries to object to our telling the young men about the diseases that are on sale in the resorts. Our circulars and the circulars of the Chicago Society of Social Hygiene were referred by the chief of police to the corporation counsel who promptly approved them. He said we were like the Knights of the Garter and our circulars not immoral but highly moral. We have circulated nearly a million pages of these circulars. Young men hear us gladly and accept the circulars with thanks. I have counted two hundred men listening at once to Evangelist J. R. Beveridge, who is very plain speaking, while he was working with us.
OTHER WORKERS IN THE NIGHT.
The Salvation Army and the Volunteers of America do not hold meetings in the vice districts of Chicago, but women officers of those societies do visit the resorts selling papers. At times both Salvationists and Volunteers have taken part in our midnight meetings. Many people passing our meetings suppose that we are from the Salvation Army, as it is believed to do such work. The Army has rescue and maternity homes and does much good work for the fallen, but the preaching in the vice districts is done by our own and similar recent organizations.
Rev. V. A. M. Mortensen, a Lutheran minister, has organized The Rescue League, which looks for support chiefly to the Lutheran churches. Mr. Mortensen preaches in the night, chiefly on the West Side. He is much interested in the work against the white slave trade. Through his agency Jennie Moulton was sent to Joliet under a sentence of twenty years for procuring young girls for some degraded Greeks. Mr. Mortensen has also been very diligent against dealers in obscene pictures and postcards.