The Vice Bondage of a Great City; or, the Wickedest City in the World

The Vice Trust, its Kingdom and its Power.

The Story of Chicago's Subjugation to Political and Police Corruption-The Corrupt Ballot Box-The Mechanism of the Trust-The Prices of Sin and Vice-The Horror of Ruined and Purchased Lives-The Remedy.

Seventy-five years ago a body of pioneer souls who dared death for the dream of individual liberty, wealth and happiness, founded a city, and after the manner of the times, adopted an Indian name and called it Chicago.

The city grew, prospered, flourished; likewise did the inhabitants. Nature seemed to bless all who settled within her boundaries. Resources undreamed of were discovered.

The lake breezes fanned the tiny flame of future greatness and the sun warmed the ambitious blood of the early inhabitants. She became the golden gate to the unexplored West. She became the cosmopolitan and central point of a world power. Chicago was talked of, considered, bargained with from East to West, and North to South.

With vastness came power; with power, abuse; with abuse, vice; with vice, crime; with crime, graft.

It is of Chicago, TODAY, we write.

Truth sears, eats, destroys that which is but veneer and golden covering.

Chicago has blinded herself to the hideous truth. She has hidden her head, closed her eyes and cried out:

"I will not see!"

Vice, like some slimy, hideous, mephitic, green-eyed monster from the deepest abyss of Hell has crept, sinuous and noiseless, on an unsuspecting people.

It has battened upon red, pure life-blood. It has fattened on white flesh. It has destroyed virginal purity, public morals and political honesty.

The monster has been insatiable. Satan, king of the damned dead since the Beginning, urged on the monster Vice.

His political minions kneeled and offered sacrifice to the incarnate Evil of the World. To save themselves they fed him of the rich and sacred stores of the city. They took their portion.

They are still taking their share.

They still feed the monster. They are its slaves; they, appointed by the people to safeguard them and to make their laws.

The monster Vice is fed by the police and politicians, who, under cover of night and darkness, plunder, steal, cheat and murder to satisfy its greed.

We speak not in metaphor; this is the literal truth. We shall prove it.

If Satan came out of the depths of his Inferno, away from the shrieks of the lost millions, he would wander from city to city until he reached Chicago.

Then, in this twentieth century of culture, refinement and progress, he would stand outside the gates, smile in triumph and speak this,-the living, shameful, naked truth:

This is the CITY ACCURSED! This is the CITY OF THE LIVING DAMNED! This is the CITY OF MY DESIRE! This is the CITY AFTER MY OWN HEART! VICE, CRIME, CORRUPTION RULE:-MY TRIUMVIRATE!

This is THE MOST WICKED CITY IN THE WORLD!

Satan would tell the truth.

Chicago today is the most wicked city in the world.

Babylon had its vices; so, too, Alexandria. Greece and Rome struggled and died in a national moral degeneracy they had created.

Chicago has surpassed them in wickedness.

Nay, Sodom and Gomorrah, destroyed by the wrath of Heaven, were pure when compared to Chicago.

Paris and its lure of vice is tame by the side of Chicago.

There is no parallel in history. There is no adequate comparison.

Chicago leads the world in evil today. She stalks at the head of the Army of Sin:-a beautiful, sensuous mistress and paramour to a personalized god of named and unnamed Crime. The army is composed of bodies and souls that Hell has claimed but not called. Their destinies are still unfinished on earth.

And why is Chicago the Hell-hole of the world?

Because she has taken the failings, sins, defects, crimes, miseries and vices of humanity, hurled them into a seething caldron of infamy, melted them, amalgamated them and commercialized them.

A Vice-Graft system has been created. It has been formed along the lines of modern commerce and finance.

Today the institution is stronger, more powerful, more impregnable than the biggest financial or industrial combine in the United States!

In fact, it has absorbed many and invaded mysteriously and secretly every other enterprise founded on decency and honesty. It is living off every legitimate trade, business and industry in Chicago.

That is the limitless scope of the Vice Trust of Chicago, unincorporated, but possessing a capital running high into the millions of dollars and souls.

There are three stockholders, speaking in a collective sense, in Chicago's Vice Trust, namely:-

The inhabitants of the highways and byways and gilded houses of infamy.

The police department of the city.

A coterie of politicians.

These form the board of directors of the ruthless, merciless, parasitic, powerful corporation of Vice, Graft, Crime & Co.

Scarcely an individual, scarcely an industry fails to yield its life-blood to that infamous trust! It feeds like a great octopus on the entire city. Many of us are its unconscious victims!

CHICAGO-THE LIVING, BREATHING HELL.

"Leave behind all hope, all ye who enter here."

Dante dreamed he saw that line above the fiery gates of Hell.

To those who know and understand, that line flames as if written by the fiery finger of Fate, in the heavens above Chicago.

You, all of you, dwelling without its polluted precincts, cannot enter it without being trapped into the meshes of the Vice-Graft combine!

Spider-like, it has woven its web over and about the city. Enter and you are entangled, consciously or unconsciously.

There is no escape. We shall prove this broad, sweeping statement.

From the depot to the cab, from the cab to the hotel, from the hotel to the dining room, barber shop, manicure room or other places, the monster trails you. The Vice Trust's agents are forever lurking in your shadow.

To the store, place of business, halls of amusement, the silent form sneaks behind you, exacting from you a toll for the privilege of walking the streets of Chicago and breathing God's free air.

When you leave for your quiet, peaceful hometown, the minions of the trust follow you almost to the sacred entrance of an undefiled home. Only the sanctity, purity and goodness, stops them there.

Such is the system!

THE SYSTEM AND ITS CAUSES.

Vice is co-existent with reason. Vice is a form of the abuse of reason.

As the city grew like a mushroom, so vice grew. All elements were attracted.

Vice crept in, grew and flourished. Its resources were human souls and bodies,-men and women.

It became a great, eating, nauseating, foul-smelling ulcer on the body municipal.

It needed control.

Control-police regulation-was given it. Flagrant, unblushing vice was hidden away in the corners of the city, to fester and die unseen.

But vice never dies. It lives on the body it has destroyed. Its existence is parasitic.

It grew, grew, grew. Then like a many-armed octopus it stretched out and out about it.

Craven souls, dealing with it, sworn by law to slay it, felt the terror of death upon them. Also, with Satanic insight they saw the-

POSSIBILITIES!

Gold! Gold! Luxury! Power! Wealth!

Ever since the beginning we have cried for them, sinned for them.

Here was the chance.

THE COMPACT WRITTEN IN FLESH AND BLOOD.

"Let the creature Vice live and thrive, but give us part of the red blood and white flesh of its victims"-was the thought.

The politician saw the opportunity. He could not evolve the scheme without the aid of the police, so he confessed his conceived crime. The police consented. Then the leaders of the cohorts of vice were told of the combine and its ultimatum. They, too, consented.

"Give us part of the blood and flesh money and you may live and we will protect you."-said the politicians and the police officials.

Out of the cavernous depths of Chicago's Hell, where thousands yearned to be free to sow death without hindrance, came the fiendish answer:-

"WE WILL!"

The compact was written in letters of blood. Thousands gave up health, happiness and life to launch the Vice Trust.

Today it is in its zenith!

Competition has been a factor in making and completing its triumph.

We have spoken collectively of the Vice Trust organization.

THE DIRECTORATE OF GRAFT, CRIME AND CORRUPTION.

Individually, today, ten powerful politicians lay down the law, exact the toll, distribute it, after taking their major share, pass sentence of life and death on good and bad, direct the huge and intricate machinery, pay off the hundreds of employes,-principally members of the police department,-high and low, and plan to enlarge and strengthen the greatest, strangest and most complex organization in the world.

It is the Directorate of Ten!

They have divided the city between them and their vassals. They are the rulers of the mysterious underworld, living like princes and rulers in the white palaces of the overworld, surfeited with the heavy luxuries of life.

POLITICS, POLICE AND VICE.

Political power is the greatest of all power. It can subjugate with iron hand all other powers.

The Directorate of Ten found willing agents in the police department of Chicago. It has them today, and if needs be, can find more. Human souls are easily purchased.

Today the system is intricate. So intricate that the combine has received the appellation,-the Vice System.

To exist, vice, in any one of its thousand forms, must pay tribute. The tribute is shared with the police for protection.

Many police inspectors, captains, lieutenants, sergeants and patrolmen receive portions.

Segregation, flaunted to the world as the best remedy yet found for the social evil, is but a lie on the part of the Vice Trust.

Only a portion of the unit Vice is kept within the limits of four "redlight" districts. The rest stalks the streets, free, robbing its victims in the glare of the noon-day sun.

The lost women-souls of the levees are but a pitiful and small part of the army of Vice. They simply dwell in the rendezvous of the thousands who live by infamy.

FOR EACH CRIME A PRICE!

From all vice-sources tribute is exacted monthly by the police themselves or by the low, inhuman collectors of the Vice Trust.

Every vice has its price of toleration for existence!

Every possible violation of the law, the powers that be will wink at at so much per wink!

All this infamy,-this protection of crime and reeking corruption, exists today in Chicago.

THE ATTACK UPON THE TRUST.

The Civil Service Commission of Chicago attacked the bulwarks of the Trust of Crime.

The police department was the point of assault. Several officials were discharged for incompetency and inefficiency. Had they destroyed that Satanic allegiance the backbone of the Combine might have been broken.

Chicago stood paralyzed at the revelations. The truth was murderous in its hideous nakedness. No one had ever dreamed of the scope of its business-the vice business.

The unholy alliance struggled to outlive the attack. Back on to the weak, narrow shoulders of unsystematized infamy the politicians and the police threw the blame.

The network of vice, the spiderweb of crime, the intricate working of the System, the collusion of vice-parasites and political and police magnates have become known. The story has more interest than a novel born of the imagination of genius; more lure than the best detective story ever penned; more fascination than any page in ancient or modern literature; because it is palpitating, aching present day truth. Because it is a living fact. Because it is an "elbow to elbow" condition. Because it is the story of a great city, lost to goodness, and won to wickedness.

It is the story of Chicago!

The hideous ulcer is no longer concealed. It festers no longer in the dark. Its poison seeths in the searing light of inquiry.

THE VICE-GRAFT CIRCLE:-WITHOUT BEGINNING, WITHOUT END.

Political power to become absolutism without danger of extinction needs strong, imperishable foundations.

To hold vice-control meant to rule a vice territory with iron hand.

It was accomplished.

THE BALLOT:-THE SECRET OF VICE POWER.

This is the way it was done and still is being done. Take those political precincts within whose boundaries the "redlight" districts exact their toll from the thousands of unfortunate souls, who live in the iniquitous Hell-holes or haunt them in search of pleasure.

Political powers were busy systematizing. Elections threatened to defeat them and kill their plans.

The ballot box was the salvation.

The prostitution of the ballot came into existence and lives and flourishes today, the primal blot on Chicago's once honorable escutcheon!

To gain an election, to hold political and vice-power the ballot box was and is stuffed by a subtle and almost unpunishable method.

A district, by way of example, is populated by a floating and transient element, brought into Chicago by the agents of the corrupt or drawn here by promises of lucrative gain.

These men are used to stuff the ballot boxes and secure a victory of crime, sin and iniquity.

On the South Side there are scores of hotels, whose standard and character are written in unmistaken language on their very exteriors. These also exist on the West and North sides of the city.

The assignation houses and the cheap lodging houses are the media for slaying the honest ballot.

Men, brought to the city to corrupt elections, register in these places under the names of prostitutes and absent inmates and under this guise, cast polluted votes.

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.

"Stamp out Vice and Evil. Eliminate the red-lighted, tinsel Houses of Shame; give our city to God."

This is the cry of the churches, led by their praiseworthy pastors.

Oh, ye with eyes that see not, and ears that are deaf to the voices of hell, strike now and strike hard.

But strike not at the thousands of fallen women, nor at the brothel keepers, nor at the dive owners, nor at the panderers, not yet, at least.

STRIKE, FIRST, AT THE POLITICAL SYSTEM THAT CONTROLS ALL AND REIGNS OVER ALL.

Destroy the foundation and the superstructure will topple over of itself.

Break the power that begins and ends at the ballot box. Break the power that sucks at the veins of the myriad army of the lost, and lives on the white ways of decency.

That is the evil! Kill it!

In showing the Unbroken Circle of Iniquity we have shown where the control of crime is begotten.

And now the parts, interlocked so finely that the connecting points are lost, are to be revealed.

Once political power is assured, all else is inevitable by the nature of things.

THE POLICE COLLECTORS.

The political power finds its agents. They are of necessity, the police. Willing spirits are found.

The guardians of the law and public safety are hired out by the political kings to collect their tolls from their sycophants and vassals.

Chicago policemen, high and low,-we venture to say eighty per cent of them,-are today by virtue of the collection and tribute system the confederates of every species of criminal, of every exploiter of every known kind of vice.

They aid, abet and allow these law violators to thrive.

Vice and crime must pay its tribute to the police. The police must turn over the bulk of the proceeds to their political masters. No criminal can continue in his nefarious business without paying the price. It is called Police Protection.

That is the blind. In reality it is Political Protection. The police are but the body guard, the secret service of the corrupt-

Directorate of Ten.

Under Police Protection, for so many dollars per day, according to the nature of the crime-business being carried on, every form of vice flaunts itself in the face of Chicago's 2,000,000 inhabitants and its thousands of country visitors.

It is no secret. Chicago knows. But she has failed to observe the reason, and to open her eyes is the mission of this book.

THE PRICE OF CRIME:-$15,000,000 A YEAR!

From the army of vice the yearly tribute to the Directorate of Ten-the controlling power-is almost unbelievable.

The figures stagger one.

With reserve, not exaggeration, we make this statement:-

Chicago's vice legion yields for existence and for protection the sum of-

$15,000,000 annually.

Think of it! Crime pays that fortune to exist and rob the public of more money.

We are not dealing with the thieving contractors who rob the citizens through fixed contracts. We treat only of the crime that the police are sworn to slay.

$15,000,000 put into the coffers of men supposed to be representing the people that the donors may go on destroying the souls and bodies of women, the souls and bodies of men!

That astounding offering to appease the human Juggernauts and to sow in the youths and maidens of our nation the seeds of incurable diseases!

That sum in the blood-stained hands of demagogues to blast a city's decency and prosperity and to eat into the very vitals of our Republic!

In small envelopes, dirty and diseased, bacteria-bearing paper money and grimy silver are handed in the dark or the light to policemen or outside collectors to be turned over to the Directorate of Ten.

Let the figure $15,000,000 in tribute burn into the recesses of your brain if you would realize the gigantic and almost indescribable character of crime in Chicago.

It is estimated that the $15,000,000 annual vice tribute is less than half a year's aggregate earnings.

Do you realize that $15,000,000 is five per cent of $300,000,000?

A VICE CAPITAL OF FLESH AND BLOOD.

Think of it!

Almost half a billion dollars!

But the capital in this business is not so many dollars. It is human flesh, human souls, human blood! Can they be measured in dollars?

There is no capital in this hideous trust that stands in banks. The real capital must be turned over and over. The exhausted bodies of men and women fill the incurable disease wards of the hospital, the crippled and broken down inhabit the shacks of the tenements, and thousands are buried in paupers' graves.

This is the price of the slaves!

There is nothing but the world of infamy. Nothing but the aching, diseased bodies of women. Nothing but the outraged purity of childhood. Nothing but the toiling, unrestrained passions of fiends. Nothing but the lust that is insatiable, the desire that fattens on the poisons it eats.

After years of investigation, acquiring information from politicians, police officials and their subordinates, gamblers, habitues of the levees, and nearly five hundred more vassals of the vice trust, we have placed the protection figure at $15,000,000.

Attorney W. W. Wheelock, counsel for the Civil Service Commission and the man who attempted to break up the Vice-Police-Political graft combine, in speaking of this subject, said:

"I have as yet only scratched the veneer and the surface of this terrifying evil, but the results have made me reel in horror and amazement. At this time I estimate that the yearly graft is $15,000,000.

"The true figure, when all things are considered, must run far above that. It is evident that at least eighty per cent of the police, at some time or other, are grafters. The system of tribute and graft burrows into every legitimate pursuit and finds some undreamed of channel of graft."

And Ellis Geiger, an alderman, made an astounding statement in full council session, when the subject of appropriation to aid in the police graft investigation was before that body. He said:-

"From the reports of investigators and men who have knowledge of conditions in our city, vice pays tribute of $15,000,000 annually to the police for its liberty of existence."

Both these men are citizens of high repute, men of intelligence and understanding. Both have placed the vice-graft at a tremendous figure, but they have not carefully studied all the sources of collection. These when considered, make $15,000,000 a very conservative estimate.

What must be the murderous heart and the demon's soul of a monster that is willing to pay such a price to wallow in the trough of moral filth and physical bestiality!

THE EVILS OF A WORLD IN A MELTING POT.

"Name a vice, a crime, a sin, that was known from the Beginning to the present day, and I'll show it to you in Chicago today."

Several years ago when the agents of the system were bolder in their depravity, a "guide" stood outside the Polk street depot, waited for the "gentlemen of the long green" and excited curiosity by the above pronouncement.

He could truthfully shout it from the housetops today.

To it he would add, if he were to tell the entire truth:-

"I will show you not only every crime, but I will tell you the price of its existence paid to members of Chicago's police department, and other collectors of the Vice Trust."

Search and you can find:-

Salient shows, obscene amusement houses, houses of prostitution, segregated and otherwise, fashionable "flats" in choice neighborhoods, dens of reeking infamy for the congregation of humanity's lowest dregs, rendezvous for degenerate white women and negro men, clubs and resorts where degeneracy in its most revolting forms are practiced, professional beggars, rich pickpockets, pretty shoplifters, leering street-walkers, cocaine, morphine and opium dens, fake palmists and fortune tellers, and gambling in its hundreds of luring, deceptive forms.

That is Chicago's generic crime list. If we omit, name the sin and it can be found. That is the army that pays the graft to the police and other creatures of the Vice Trust.

Then, there are walking the streets of Chicago, known to the police, a score of bomb throwers, men under pay of the gamblers, who have the police as partners, who threw over half a hundred bombs that destroyed nearly $1,000,000 worth of property.

THE UNDERWORLD CONTRIBUTORS.

Two thousand gamblers pay their blood money.

Five thousand women, offered as slaves on the auction block of prostitution, give their lives to make up the hellish tolls.

More than five hundred keepers of houses of ill fame contribute their blood-dripping dollars.

Owners of five hundred "flats" or assignation houses pay their "life-price."

We have said that every form of evil exists. We shall show in this book the amounts of money paid by the minions and promoters of each vice for police and political protection.

Our figures are accurate. They are founded on the statements of men who once paid blood-money to live. They are the prices demanded by the Vice Trust today.

The graft scale is so astonishing as to be almost unbelievable.

Cold figures are set down by the over lords; cold dollars are paid by the lawless. Failure to pay means ruin. Grace is rarely given. The new man or woman seeking to open a vice-business must pay a high entrance fee to the political powers. Their protection price is always higher than that exacted from the "old timers." The more hideous the crime-business the higher the protective compensation for it. The greater the profits accruing, the more the weight of the gold and silver poured into the coffers of the corrupt politicians and their allies.

In the white palaces of hidden sin, where degeneracy boasts of its infamous acts, and where men of wealth and women of fashion congregate to turn loose their insane lusts without fear of detection or restraint, the price of existence runs into the thousands of dollars.

In several vice emporiums, fitted as sumptuously as the homes of millionaires on Lake Shore Drive, the protection for traffic in white, delicate and beautiful bodies of young girls is $1,000 a month!

From the elegantly furnished roulette parlor to the den of quarreling, cursing negroes in the "black belt,"-from the highest place of gaming to the lowest-the price to go on filching thousands of men and women is paid, and paid willingly.

THE WHITE SLAVE TRAFFIC ANDS ITS LIFE-PRICE.

The White Slave Traffic-the most infamous, foulest, lowest and destructive feature of Chicago's wickedness,-pays a terrible price to the lords of the underworld.

Police protection is granted it at terrible risk to the police and politicians themselves. For this reason the price is high.

We all know what the White Slave Traffic signifies.

In a word it is:-

The buying, by insidious means, of thousands of pure, trusting and innocent girls, the casting of them into the horrifying flesh markets and the auctioning of them to infamous, polluted and brutal slave masters and mistresses for a blood price.

It is the desecration of virginal sanctity. The bartering of women-souls for dollars.

It is the tearing away of beautiful girls from their parents and the fireside, and the thrusting of them into living hells.

IT IS SLOW, SURE MURDER!

AND THIS REEKING, DASTARDLY INFAMY HAS ITS PRICE? GOD! WHAT A SACRILEGE!

Of this evil and its relation to the Vice Trust we shall speak at length in a separate chapter.

PROTECTION PRICES OF ALL VICES.

And now here are some startling figures. We will tabulate them, so they will leave their proper impression.

THE LIST.

Tribute

per month

Houses of Prostitution-

Those known as "dollar" houses $20.00

"Two and three dollar" houses (for each inmate) $25.00

"Five dollar" houses (for each inmate) $35.00

"Ten dollar" houses (for each inmate) $40.00

Fashionable "flats" $25.00 to $500.00

Assignation hotels $25.00 to $500.00

High class houses where rich old men bring young

girls of virtue $500.00 to $1,000.00

Dives of vice where whites and blacks mix $200.00

Saloons with women "hustlers" $100.00

Cafes with "hustlers" (of prosperous trade) $100 to $300.00

Infamous dance halls $50.00

Infamous dance halls, extra for immoral dances $50.00

All-night saloons $50.00

Obscene acting in houses of ill fame $200.00 to $500.00

Handbooks and poolrooms 50 per cent

Faro games 50 per cent

Stuss ("Jewish poker") 50 per cent

Poker and other games 50 per cent

Crap games 50 per cent

Gambling houses with all games 50 per cent

Chinese gambling of all sorts 50 per cent

Opium dens $50.00

Cocaine and morphine selling $100.00

Manicure and massage parlors where the women

employes are really prostitutes $100.00

Pickpockets and confidence men not definite

Street walkers, or "hustlers" $20.00 to $50.00

Professional bondsmen 50 per cent

Burglars and dynamiters not obtainable

"Vampire" Trust, (members of which are women

preying on patrons of fashionable hotels) 50 per cent

Professional beggars not definite

Fake street hawkers per day, $5.00

Kimona Trust (to be explained later) 66 per cent

Laundry Trust 50 per cent

"Cadets," or "pimps" not definite

Chop Suey restaurants in certain districts $25.00

Such is the record of vice and crime and it is not complete. Such is the record as it appears on the debtors' pages of the Vice Trust.

Hundreds of petty forms of infamy have a price. Other crime-trades pay, but the prices cannot be learned or estimated, so intricate are the workings of the vicious combine.

What do the agents of the White Slave Traffic pay to barter body and blood?

The trust has the secret blood price. Investigation by the state, city and particularly the federal government, has shown its existence. The monthly figure must be upwards of $10,000.

SIDE ISSUES IN THE VICE GRAFT.

Nothing is consumed by the slaves of crime, nothing is used or even wasted that does not hand over its pittance to the avaricious over lords.

We shall give specific instances of the far-reaching, grasping power of the trust to collect.

In the South side "redlight" district but one brand of whiskey can be sold today.

The Directorate of Ten has so ordered.

Why?

Because a politician has the controlling interest in the manufacture and sale of a certain brand of whiskey. Therefore, that is the kind of whiskey sold. It is as logical as all things in the harmonious and well-oiled system. No keeper of a house of ill fame, no bloated, blear-eyed saloonkeeper of the district would offer any other brand. Wisely, if not honestly, another capitalist of the vice-corporation has bought up a cigarette concern. He makes and sells a poisonous, brain and moral-destroying cigarette. Ask for cigarettes in any den of infamy in the levees of the city, and this brand will be forced on you. Perhaps if you strongly protest, you can obtain some other brand, but your protest must be loud and insistent.

Once more is evidenced the overwhelming, overreaching power of operative and unified lawlessness.

Another member of the Trust has sunk his crime-tainted dollars into a taxi-cab concern. The corporation must yield a profitable harvest.

Result: The man, who after satisfying his lust and passions, drunk with the wine he has paid dearly for, and exhausted from a repulsive debauch, is put into a taxi-cab and driven away from a "redlight" resort. That taxi-cab belongs, through invested capital, to a member of the Crime Directorate. Again the shadow of the monster.

If a business man engages in the manufacture of gambling paraphernalia he looks for a market,-usually the saloon or dive. When he seeks contracts he is told:

"Better see the boss."

He sees him. He pays him, and then he installs his machines at will, even over the protest of resort keepers.

Again the hidden graft channel.

Hundreds of pounds of opium are smuggled into Chicago yearly. The opium dens pay their protection price, but long before that the policeman has held out his hand behind his back, accepted the graft from the "importer" and sent him on to sow a slow death to thousands through the petals of the poppy bud.

THE QUACK DOCTORS OF CHICAGO.

The city is overrun with quack doctors. Sensational and horrifying signs adorn their windows, they advertise their "cures" in the columns of the daily newspapers. They are the destroyers of health instead of the givers of strong physiques and clear minds. Their prey is, in the most part, out-of-town men and women and the illiterate of the city, who suffer, or fear they are the victims of unmentionable diseases.

Do they fatten on the proceeds of this crime, free of trust-tribute?

Far from it. They pay a stipend from the fee wrung from the unfortunates who enter their laboratories of crime.

The professional bondsmen, usually "lieutenants" or friends of the men "higher up" are useful assets in times of emergency. When the outlook is dull, when the collection days are far away, they do good service, aided by members of the police department.

Suppose an unfortunate cesspool has failed to meet its obligations to the vice lords. As a result the police are ordered by the "powers" to raid it. They do so. At least a score of men are caught in the net. The professional bondsman signs their bonds at a price ranging from $5 to $25 each. The bondsman retains a small percentage, as also the police. The rest goes to the vice rulers.

THE KIMONA TRUST AND THE VAMPIRE TRUST.

The light, cheap and thin apparel worn by the lost women of the dens of pollution contribute their small share to buy diamonds for the vice-magnates.

There is a vice-asset called the "Kimona Trust." Every stitch of clothing worn by the women denizens of the underworld is made and sold by its agents.

For that trade it pays a regular and definite tribute.

We could go on enumerating indefinitely and never reach an end.

Graft, graft,-every kind from every dreamed-of source!

The Vampire Trust is one of the novelties of Chicago's crime-world. It is of recent creation. It is a subsidiary corporation of the "big combine."

One hundred women, it is estimated, form its rank and file. They are women of luring, attractive appearance, insidious "good-fellows," smartly educated and vice's students of human nature.

Like vultures they prey on Chicago's wealthy visitors. They infest the lobbies, restaurants and cafés of Chicago's most exclusive hotels. They search out their victims, wile them away from business cares by sensuous charms, take them "slumming," drug them and rob them.

Then they divide their ill-gotten gains with their protectors.

Then, too, there is the "hotel thieves combine." It is estimated that more than $1,000 worth of valuables is stolen from the hotels in a month.

Bell boys are numbered among the hotel thieves. The police watch them and follow them to the "fences"-the places where the stolen property is sold for less than one half its value. Once more the trust does its work. The "fence" manager must pay tribute or go to jail. He pays, of course.

That is the story of GRAFT, its origin, source and magnitude.

WHEN AND WHERE WILL IT END?

In the most defiled pages of the world's history, can you find a parallel?

It is not brutal, primitive, disorganized, heterogenous vice and crime, such as inoculated nations that crumbled to decay; it is systematized, organized, commercialized corruption.

It begins with the power created at a debauched ballot box!

It ends-? God alone can tell where it ends!

THE MEAGER PURCHASE-PRICE OF POLICEMEN'S SOULS.

The police department in a large majority is corrupted. But the evil hides behind that body. It would be like paring a corn to destroy that body. The root is still imbedded in the flesh.

POLITICS-prostituted and debauched-is the root of the evil.

The honest policeman is but a plaything. If he wanders into a vice king's district he is tried out. If found wanting in rottenness his transfer is effected. A more plastic man is found to fill his place.

The police department has sold its soul of honor for a mess of decaying pottage.

Because:-

It is estimated that of the $15,000,000 in graft annually, the corrupt members of the department receive but ten per cent.

They do the slave's work, the pander's work, etc., for a bagful of blood-dripping dollars!

THE BATTLE OF GOODNESS WITH THE POWERS OF HELL.

A saint might sit in the seat of power,-the Mayor's chair-and be powerless to stem the evil.

He is the creation of an election. Vice is the creation of satanic wisdom and diabolical cunning.

The Mayor of the city is battling against the sea of iniquity about him. He has appointed municipal physicians to cut out the moral cancer that is rapidly destroying the city. God speed this noble work.

But we tremble when we think that in the end it may be futile.

Justice has scarcely any way of reaching these criminals. They create their own power, build the citadel of crime and vice about them and dwell securely within.

To save herself Chicago needs a new civic conscience or the stimulation of a latent one.

Chicago needs leaders,-men willing to become martyrs for the sake of their city, their children and their children's children.

A general awakening to the gigantic, monstrous evil is the only palpable salvation.

Destroy corrupt political power and the victory is won. Then the police force will fulfill the object of its creation. Then concerted crime and vice will fall to pieces. Then the glaring plague spots of assembled infamy will be dissipated. Then we will have a city after God's own heart and man's best desires.

We are telling the truth to create public and saving opinion, to destroy lethargy and inoculate the germ of activity.

CHICAGO!-TAKE WARNING, YOU WHO ENTER!

Chicago today is an unsafe city. Although first in the world in progressiveness, it is first in rottenness.

Crime, sin and vice claim ninety per cent of those who enter it.

Thousands of young women of the country come, live and die victims of its iniquity, day after day, year after year.

An army of young men, fired by dreams of great futures, enter and are defiled, and slain by the poisons that are disseminated.

Shall it go on interminably:-this reign of the triumvirate-Vice-Graft-Corruption?

We pray not. We are hoping that it may not.

Back of the ruin of world-nations, if stripped to an ultimate cause, is the one word-Vice.

Its grip is on Chicago; a stronger grip than any other city of the world has ever felt. Our life-blood is thinning; the flesh of our bones is wasting. The crucial hour is here.

Save Chicago from a record on history's page of "Forgotten and Ruined Cities, Victims of Sin and Crime."

Let the ministerial forces fight for the betterment. Let them seize the leaderships.

WHY THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN.

In this little volume each page is a sign post of warning, for the Chicago man and woman, and particularly, for those who visit or intend visiting this city.

This book is not a mere setting forth of facts without explanation of the reason for their existence.

It is a clear, truthful analysis of crime, vice and graft from every standpoint.

It is the first story, as far as we are aware, of the monstrous Vice-Graft system.

We have given a general outline of crime and its relation to the conscienceless, fattening Trust.

In the later chapters we shall treat of the hideous and most important evils of the city, in detail.

The "Debauchery of the Ballot," the "redlight" districts and their machinery and thousands of ruined women, the White Slave Traffic, the gambling games and their alliance with the police, the "Vampire Trust," petty crimes that flourish, buried plague spots of the city, and other startling features in the kingdom of crime will be separately and truthfully treated.

We are telling a terrible story. It is the story of-

-CHICAGO-

THE WICKEDEST CITY IN THE WORLD!

Mr. McCutcheon in The Tribune.

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