In Chicago the law requires that licenses to do business as pawnbrokers shall be issued to none but persons of known good character. The Mayor of the city alone has the power of issuing such licenses, and mayors of all parties have been in the habit of putting a very liberal construction upon the law. None but those so licensed can do business in Chicago. Mayors of all cliques and parties, have exercised their power with apparently little sense of the responsibility which rests upon them. They have not ordinarily at least, required clear proof of the integrity of the applicants, but have usually licensed every applicant possessed of particular or other influence. There is scarcely an instance where they have revoked a license thus granted, even when they have been furnished with proofs of the dishonesty of the holders. Very few, if any pawnbrokers, pay any attention to the law. They know that the great majority of their customers are ignorant of the provisions of the statutes and that those who are familiar with it will not avail themselves of its protection, as they fear to lose the favor of the pawnbrokers. Consequently they fix their own rate of interest, which may be said to average five per cent per month, or any fractional part of a month, or sixty per cent per year. Some of the more unscrupulous members of the fraternity, where dealings are exclusively with the poor, charge a much higher rate, extorting as much as ten per cent a month from those whose needs are very great. The writer recalls a case where a widow of a few days came into a pawnshop on Clark street. She was clad in a light calico wrapper with a small shawl thrown about her head. She was destitute, and had been ordered from her little three-room flat near by, unless the almost fabulous sum, to her, of seven dollars and fifty cents, should be paid over to the landlord at once. Trembling she entered the dingy “store” and offered her engagement ring in pawn. Being asked the amount she wanted for the pledge, she was told that she would receive just one-quarter of that amount. “Oh, sir,” she pleaded, “I must have that amount, my baby is sick and the doctor said that to remove her now would mean to kill her. The ring is the last and most precious gift I have of my dear, dead husband. I will redeem it, if God gives me life and strength to do so.” The hardened man refused to give more, and taking the ring from his hand, with tears streaming down her pale cheeks, she started toward the door. My sympathies were naturally with the poor, grief-stricken woman, and advancing toward her asked if I might assist her in any way. She told me a story of want and deprivation. How she had sold everything of value she had in order to furnish medicine for her husband who had been sick for a long time. How, one by one, her most cherished and useful articles of furniture, bric-a-brac and jewelry had been sold or pawned, keeping to the last, the ring, the one token that meant so much to her.