Springfield (Ill.) -- Fiction; Springfield (Ill.) -- In literature; Utopias in literature
“The Yellow Dance Halls are deceits. They dance lies. Their unwritten
laws are poisonous Singaporian devices that in the end make beasts of
boys and girls and take cocaine for granted. And in the sporting,
boastful excitement of cocaine, ill things are born, vendettas that only
yesterday brought mortal bloodshed upon our streets and tricks that
shamed us before the ages.
“The election is coming Tuesday, the Yellow Dance Hall Parade, tomorrow.
Let us remember that this referendum election has been brought about by
the signatures of the entire Board of Education, of over half the City
Council and of a completely representative host of citizens of all
families and clans and faiths. If we who have signed that paper win our
petition, it is the last and third call and the voters will grant that
The Yellow Dance Halls be banished from our city forever. Tomorrow the
Yellow Parade is coming. There will be every effort on the part of the
yellow claque to laugh down the seriousness of the issue. Let no friend
of this Cathedral take part in that parade. Let all good citizens, at
every spare moment from this hour to the election, go forth to urge
their immediate kith and kin and fellow clansmen to turn out at the
polls and vote for the banishment of these places and let my friends who
have taken the especial Oath of the Strict Observance consider this
election their charge and let them leave nothing undone that will secure
a full showing at the polls of the voters of whatever persuasion. The
only way to lose this election is by staying at home.”
The voice of the aged and weary St. Friend rises almost to a shriek. He
pauses many times for breath but goes on, clinging to the pulpit as he
may, exhausted by vigil and anger:—
“The Yellow Halls, where all public gambling is carried on and all
election money passes! The Yellow Halls, where, despite the legislation
of a clearly established majority, through a hundred years, the gold and
alcohol from far beneath the gilded roofs, is brought forth from mouldy
hiding places and doled out to corrupt the electorate and thwart the
clearly recorded will of the people. How long shall we endure these
secret multimillionaires and secret wine kings and secret cocaine kings,
despising every phase of thoroughbred and honor-bound American
Democracy? Despite all the doings of the month of May, not one hiding
place of their gold has been unearthed, not one case of their wine has
been dug up and confiscated by the Federal Government.
“Yet their children know these secret treasuries and meet in these halls
to corrupt all the other children of the city. From way below gilded
roofs the poison venders ascend by tortuous and shameful passages and go
forth to dance and destroy and defeat the plain will of the people as
recorded in initiative, referendum, and recall, and elections at the
polls and guild elections:—and even, at the height of their folly, to
whisper Singaporian treason.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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