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
There are ramshackle hell-holes that are falling to pieces where diseased,
broken-down, forgotten women dispense deadly toxins to their customers for
fifty cents!
There are "one dollar," "two dollar," "three dollar," "five dollar" and
"ten dollar" houses. Those are the prices for some mother's precious
darling! Man buys and woman sells.
There are holes of infamy where white and colored persons mix and sin
together.
There are places where the sins that wiped Sodom and Gomorrah out of
existence are practiced nightly.
There are places where prostitutes outrival in the forms of obscene acting
anything to be found in the Monmartre and other deadly places within the
confines of Paris.
There are places of material filth, and uncleanliness and there are places
where thousands of dollars have been spent to make sepulchres appear as
places of delight and pleasure.
Think of it!
Two thousand women on the slave block of lust sold to the thousands of
bidders nightly, in this small district!
Lust, vice, crime and graft are the deities of Chicago's "redlight"
districts.
The "redlight" district gets its name because of the lurid, crimson signs
that hang above its entrances. The name "redlight" should signify a
burning, blazing warning to every man and woman who is tempted to set his
foot or hers on the crime-reeking thresholds!
Let us enter one of the houses and study the interior and the type of the
prostitutes corralled within.
The swinging doors admit us. As we appear, a dozen girls or women rush at
us like a flock of vultures, ravenous, hungering.
They use terms of meaningless endearment, fight among themselves for the
possible prey, coax us to purchase a bottle of beer or whiskey or a mixed
drink. They attempt to embrace us, to kiss us to arouse latent passions,
whose outburst means half the purchase price to them and half to the owner
of the place.
A "professor," half-crazed by drugs and drink, thumps the latest airs on a
piano, or a mechanical instrument furnishes the noise. You are asked to
give a dime to the "professor" and you do.
You are talking to a frail, blue-eyed, blonde girl. Across the room a
brunette, a red-haired girl and a girl with raven black hair and sparkling
eyes watch you, wondering as to the ultimate success of the woman who
captured you.
THE QUESTIONS UNANSWERED.
Where do these thousands of women come from?
What are their varied pasts?
Who are their mothers and fathers?
What strange circumstances brought them here?
Who is accountable to God for this wholesale slaughter in women's souls?
Those are questions that come to the mind when one enters any den of
infamy in any of the four "redlight" districts of Chicago.
Every one of these questions has a thousand answers. The solutions to
these social problems are as numerous as the women who create the
problems.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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