The Vice Bondage of a Great City; or, the Wickedest City in the WorldHarland, Robert O.
History
The Vice Bondage of a Great City; or, the Wickedest City in the World
Harland, Robert O.
Chicago (Ill.) -- Moral conditions; Prostitution -- Illinois -- Chicago
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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