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
A chief of police in a strange manner has admitted the power of the vice
combine which he was sworn to annihilate. As a sergeant of police he was
powerless to stem the tide of sin and vice. When he received the highest
executive office in the department, the Vice Trust compelled him to move
from the home in which he had lived on the South side for twenty-five
years. The music from the dives floated into the precincts of his home and
disturbed his rest; the unfortunate women carried on their immoral
profession within a stone's throw of where his innocent daughter slept;
drunken men reeled past his door going to and from the vice haunts. He was
surrounded by scarlet women and vicious men. For the salvation of his
family he was obliged to seek other quarters.
AND TO THE WOMAN?--DEATH!
Oh you that are the children of our flesh and blood, you over whom anxious
mothers have watched through the long, weary hours of the night when the
shadow of sickness was upon you, you whose lips are still undefiled by the
kiss of unclean lips, you who still kneel at night and in the solitude of
your chambers, call upon the Master to hold your hearts in the mighty
hollow of His hand, bend your heads in meditation on the truth that is
hideous, but must be known.
You mothers and fathers, sacrificing every hour of your lives for your
daughters, praying for their purity, guarding their chastity, leading them
in the paths of righteousness, turn not from the truth that you must
know, but listen and take warning.
IN THE LIGHT OF MODERNITY IGNORANCE IS NO LONGER INNOCENCE. IGNORANCE IS
CRIME: IGNORANCE IS SIN: THE SIN OF OMISSION AND NEGLECT.
In no age, has a people faced a social problem as vital and crucial as the
one facing the American people today. Our rapid progress in the paths of
commerce has robbed us of a clear moral conscience; it has made the
almighty dollar the ideal, to the detriment of the soul and heart: it has
built taller houses of industry while the church steeples have grown
shorter.
It has crept unconsciously upon us until it has eaten into our vitals--the
commercial and industrial frenzy.
It has recognized in the perversion of woman a source of income and it has
commercialized the vicious instincts, and the depraved desires of
thousands of them.
The baby girl in the cradle is being watched and waited for by the Vice
Trust:--ready to capture her and throw her tortured body into the mart of
sin for filthy dollars.
The school girl is trailed and tempted. She falls often unconsciously and
awakens when it is too late. The girl who is earning her own living is
preyed upon and bartered away; and even the wife and mother is frequently
caught in the ever-tightening mesh of the masters Satan has appointed on
earth.
Statistics show that two thirds of the women who are found in the
infamous resorts of the city drift there in a thousand and one ways.
The White Slaves are in the minority.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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