Chicago is a seething mass of corruption, vice, graft and iniquity today, as has been generally shown in the first chapter. That must be admitted. Previously we have spoken of her evils in a general way. The Vice Trust rules supreme. It is almost impregnable. The secret of that herculean strength and power is-- The Debauchery of the Ballot Box! The ballot of Chicago has been debauched, sold and enslaved! Not more than ten men, powers in the political world, by insidious methods have poisoned it, killed its political value for municipal betterment, and made it the armament of their corrupt forces. With its aid they have built up the monstrous Vice combine, and with it they retain year after year the sceptre of vicious tyranny. Investigations have proven the debauchery of the ballot. Investigators have shown that the corrupted ballot box has won disastrous, political victories. Investigation has demonstrated that all the forces of moral-decaying vice have been used to destroy the honesty of the ballot, so that vice might flourish and pay its tribute to its sleek-faced, big-bellied masters. It is our intention to show in this chapter how the debauched ballot box is the secret power of the forces that make Chicago the wickedest city in the world. Granted the necessary political despotism to rule and pass sentence of life and death on good and bad, what opportunity have the powers for good to destroy the parasite? 40,000 ILLEGAL BALLOTS IN ONE YEAR. The situation today is appalling. The foundations of government are menaced. From reliable sources, and from information gained by investigating bodies backed by the reform element, 40,000 illegal names stand on the poll-list of the city! This is the heavy, moral and political-destroying artillery of the vice generals. This is the battalion that drops "yes" in the ballot box to make vice supreme. It is composed of the riffraff of humanity, of the wreckage and driftwood of the country. Every member sells his citizenship for a piece of silver, a poisonous drink, a mess of pottage. They are the army of "floaters" and "repeaters," who are massed, housed and fed in the regions of the vice lords, a week or two before elections, and proclaim their unholy allegiance to their masters by the prostitution of the ballot box and the overthrow of clean, honest, moral government. Each man has a past;--vice wrecked the moral conscience of some, brutal crime destroyed respect in others and drink slew the convictions of still other thousands. They infest, in the large majority, those political territories where crime and vice are centered. The means of defeating an honest election and securing politico-vice control are many. CHARACTER OF THE VICE CORPS; ITS WORK. Every hobo, degenerate and criminal at large, knows when Chicago's elections come due. From Maine to Washington, from Florida to Northern Michigan comes the immigration to Chicago.