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
As a lure and a bait to force these already underpaid wretches to fill
themselves with the venom of the beer vats they are given a meaningless
profit for every glass of poison they force a customer to buy.
They are obliged to drink with the customer in a spirit of good
fellowship. Even after they are sick and drunk they pour the cheap,
over-fermented liquor into their stomachs--for the sake of sociability and
to appease the Vice Trust through its brewery graft.
The girls thus become the Beer Trust's agents. The woman that is not a
good "beer agent" in a house of ill fame, is either punished by being
deprived of some privilege or her body bruised and discolored by a brute
employed just for such purposes.
But we have demonstrated that subsidiary graft has reduced the ill-gotten
gains of the women until there is scarcely anything left for them.
"SELL DRINKS OR STARVE."
Do you wonder that they sit hour after hour at a table guzzling beer with
their drunken customers?
It is the old story of--"Do this or starve."
In the "redlight" districts of Chicago certain breweries have the
monopolized concession from the vice lords to sell their commodity. No one
else dare enter into the precincts to peddle his goods.
The Vice Trust demands a terrible stipend. Therefore the beer must be sold
at an outrageous price. The over lords must get their share, the girls in
the houses must be paid their horrible commission and the keepers must
make their profits.
The sale of this beer in the disorderly houses is a direct violation of
the law governing the sale of liquors. All this beer and other intoxicants
are sold without a city license.
There are one thousand places in the city selling liquor without a
license. Nearly all these are houses of prostitution. This figure is
arrived at by a comparison of federal tax records on the sale of liquors
and the records in the city license department of the city clerk. The
houses of ill fame dare not ignore the laws of the United States. So, they
purchase a federal liquor license at the nominal sum of twenty-five
dollars a year.
BEER GRAFT--$2,915,760.
The yearly graft in beer in the holes of vice in the city is unbelievable.
We shall quote an authoritative source.
According to the report made by the recent Vice Commission to the Mayor of
Chicago the annual graft from the sale of intoxicants in the restricted
districts of the city, is--
$2,915,760!
That means that many dollars in graft over the price paid the brewery for
its product.
That income must be divided among three factors: the prostitutes, the
keepers of the houses and the members of the Vice Trust.
In the calculations of the Vice Commission, the prostitutes receive forty
per cent, which amounts to $1,166,304.
From sources reliable and from interviews with keepers of disorderly
houses, we have learned that the Vice Trust exacts fifty dollars a month
from each disorderly house for the privilege of selling beers, whiskeys
and other death-dealing drinks.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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