Six hundred lodging houses and cheap hotels in the First, Eighteenth and Twenty-first wards--the vice territories of the city--throw open their doors to the hired assassins of the ballot. The vice kings have issued the order. The army is given lodging. The barrel-houses, whiskey halls and underground hells furnish the nutrition for the human vultures. That is part of their agreement of existence. They, too, are concerned. A defeat of their rulers would mean financial ruin and the loss of a channel to protection for their crime doings. Soaked with destructive liquor, fed with de-energizing food the "floaters" and "repeaters" wallow in the mire, waiting to do their filthy service and then depart. The sub-leaders of these men are the appointed guardians of the ballot, clerks and judges of election, principally. They, too, are corrupt. Recent elections have even resulted in fixing election crimes on them and sending some to jail. The question, "Shall this city (Chicago) become anti-saloon territory?" was to have been placed on the ballot, April 5, 1910. Sixty-eight saloonkeepers and bartenders qualified as judges and clerks for this election. No "floater" or "repeater" would have been prevented from voting by these clerks and judges. PADDED ELECTION REGISTERS. In the primary election, held September 15, 1910, one third of the vote cast in the First ward was made by "repeaters" or personators, in the names of individuals who did not live at the addresses from which they were recorded as voting. This terrible condition was unearthed by investigators working for Arthur Burrage Farwell, president of the Chicago Law and Order League. This fact was ascertained by a comparison of the poll books used at the primary with the records of a house-to-house canvass of the ward. In March of that year the same reform organization caused the erasure of 702 illegal names from the registry books of the notorious First ward. In a single precinct in that ward, with a registration of 668, 269 names were those of "floaters" and "repeaters." These were stricken off. Investigation before that September primary in the First Ward showed 10,996 names on the registry list. It also showed that 5,552 of the names were of persons who did not live at the addresses given, but who cast their purchased ballots at the primary election! Similar conditions exist in the other lodging house wards, previously mentioned, and also known as the "river" wards, because they are separated by the Chicago river, the last resting place of many revolters from the system. The "debauchery of the ballot" is too mild a term for this crime. THE PROSTITUTE: A MASK FOR THE "FLOATER." Three hundred and twenty hotels, whose occupants are mainly prostitutes and their unfortunate victims, are used to render honest elections impossible. The "floater" is called into the corner of the barrel-house and given the "dope" by the boss' lieutenant.