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
If you study the majority of the faces you will see that they are cut as
if of stone. They are faces of women who have lived through tragedies,
have thrust those tragedies aside and have reduced life to a mere living
from day to day, prepared every hour to barter flesh and blood for cash.
But, as in the less pretentious cafe, we find here also the type of girls
and women who are just beginning to stray into the broad path of
destruction.
Money buys a false air of respectability. It has purchased that
pharasaical atmosphere for the big hotels.
It is in these fashionable hotel cafes and restaurants that sin is
suggested and the road to ruin prepared. Of course, we must not lose sight
of the fact that the vast majority of the women who enter such places,
have long since drunk the first glass of poison and eaten the first piece
of forbidden fruit.
Into these places, nightly, thousands of men and women bent on shameful
missions come and depart, inebriated by wines and liquors and forgetful of
respect to each other. There are, however, hundreds who enter and depart
without being contaminated by the vice that haunts the handsomely
furnished apartments.
Out in the lobby of the hotel, we notice a nattily-dressed man of mature
years with the gray showing in his hair, holding a conversation with one
of the hotel attaches. We are curious. We notice he is being given
directions.
We follow him to a room in one of the hotels adjoining the one we have
just visited. He is taken to a certain room and is admitted by a rather
flashingly dressed woman of about forty-five years, of florid complexion
and sharp, raucous voice.
She smiles at the man. He speaks to her in a low voice. We might overhear
this conversation or one similar to it in import:
"I am Mr. Edwards from Cincinnati. I am a business man and the evening is
boring. Mr. ... the hotel clerk, tells me you can find me a companion?"
queries the caller.
The woman smiles knowingly, stops and thinks and then says in a half
jesting manner:
"Why, certainly, Mr. Edwards. I can make the evening agreeable. I can find
you the best little partner in the world.
"But"--and she smiles some more--"what do you want, something rather young
and new to the game, or a 'woman of some experience?' I can certainly
produce a choice assortment." Then she laughs that meaningless laugh
again.
Mr. Edwards hesitates a moment, laughs off a possible embarrassment and
then answers in assumed flippancy:
"Oh, as long as they are numerous, serve me up a young blonde chicken of
about seventeen summers, one that will go the limit and not try to put
mucilage on her fingers to stick to the long green. I'll pay her right for
her trouble."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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