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.