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
GRAFTS THAT FEED ON FLESH AND BLOOD.
The protection graft is the beginning of the great graft system. It is
created to be used as a foundation for a thousand and one other sources of
graft from sin and vice.
It has been shown that the woman either personally or through the woman or
man to whom she is sold or has sold herself offers the first tribute to
the Vice Trust and pays for a lease on her demoralizing and destructive
life.
Now that she has paid her protective graft, she is to be fleeced by the
great trust with its political leaders, out of the remaining part of her
earnings.
The women in the resorts are the greatest victims of the "consequential
graft."
Take for instance, the woman inmate of a house who is in need of clothes
and other necessities and watch the way the Vice Trust robs her over and
over again.
The average earnings of a woman was placed at forty dollars. Of that
twenty dollars was turned over to the resort keeper. That leaves an
average of twenty dollars weekly to a woman. That is $1,000 a year.
Of this amount these women are compelled to spend $500 yearly. That leaves
them but $500. Even that succumbs to a mere nominal figure when graft has
finally stopped feasting on it.
THE KIMONA TRUST.
There is a subsidiary trust of the Vice Trust which robs the 2,000 inmates
of resorts in the city.
That combine is called the Kimona Trust. It is composed of certain
clothing makers who sell exclusively to the inmates of the houses of
prostitution. It received its name from the fact that the prostitutes buy
and wear light house apparel, consisting of kimonas, wrappers, flimsy
gowns and gaudy lingerie.
The operation of this trust, the extent of its graft and the way that
graft is divided, with its portion going to the vice lords is interesting
and not well known.
Take for instance, the girl who is in need of a kimona. Here is a truthful
story from a girl in an Armour avenue resort as to the way she was
victimized by the kimona grafters. Thousands of others could tell the same
story.
"I had not been in the resort very long," said the girl to the
investigator, "when I needed some clothes. I told the 'madam' and she said
the agent of a clothing house would call within a few days. I wanted to go
out and purchase the things where I desired, but she told me she had to
see that her girls got them from a certain man.
"The man came and I made my selections from a number of articles of
apparel which he displayed. I had worked in a department store before I
entered upon this life and I knew the value of clothes.
"I was compelled to pay $15 for a kimona which I could have purchased for
$3 at any department store. I paid $120 for a hat with plumes on that was
worth only $30. I was forced to give up $67 for a dress whose value I knew
could not have been more than $25.
"The man then showed me some jewelry which he had with him and the keeper
told me I should get some to make myself look more attractive.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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