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
Each year, men are sent to our state prisons because they dipped their
trembling hands into the gold in their employers' till to make up the
money the gambling fraternity had taken from them.
Each year, hundreds of women see their homes crumble beneath them, stand
with tear-stained eyes and watch their social positions taken from them,
lose the love and protection of their husbands and are turned adrift to
stray into the hell houses we have described, because the gambling germ
was imbedded and flourished in their blood and drove them on to unnameable
ruin.
There is no way of estimating the evils consequent on the vice of gambling
as it exists in Chicago today.
A GAMBLER'S END.
As a specific instance of the destructive power of the gambling combine a
Chicagoan recently committed suicide after dissipating a fortune in
flirting with the goddess of Chance.
In his pockets, stained with blood from the bullet wound through which his
life had ebbed away, was the following note:
"Several persons have the right dope on the dive, gamblers and the police.
They let a victim go there until they get all and then they blackball him.
Why not destroy these vicious people and close the dives and save people
from committing suicide?
"This is the raving of a dying and ruined man but I know what I am doing
just the same."
Do the police dare tamper with these men flaunting their violations of the
law in their faces?
Even if they desired they could not do them harm. The gambling kings are
in direct alliance with members of the Directorate of Ten of the Vice
Trust. They turn over to it fifty per cent of their enormous income for
the privilege of making the other fifty per cent.
Even in the face of a rigid and apparently sincere recent crusade against
the unholy combine between police and gamblers, gambling continued to
carry on its trade within a stone's throw of the City Hall and underneath
the shadows of certain big police stations.
The gambling kings are even more avaricious and selfish in their wealthy
combine than are the members of the combine living off the social sin.
A POWER SUPREME.
No one dares attempt to come into the chosen circle unless by direct
consent of the big lords, and after he has sworn abject allegiance to the
gambling chiefs. He must show the proper spirit by yielding up a large per
cent of profit. If this is not forthcoming, the police suddenly and
mysteriously awaken to the fact that the unfortunate man is running a
gambling establishment. He is raided, arrested and put out of business,
while a chosen servant of the fraternity shovels in the golden harvest
from the suckers across the street, drops a few choice coins into the
hands of the police who raided the opposition place and plies his trade in
perfect quiet, comfort and security.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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