To the store, place of business, halls of amusement, the silent form sneaks behind you, exacting from you a toll for the privilege of walking the streets of Chicago and breathing God's free air. When you leave for your quiet, peaceful hometown, the minions of the trust follow you almost to the sacred entrance of an undefiled home. Only the sanctity, purity and goodness, stops them there. Such is the system! THE SYSTEM AND ITS CAUSES. Vice is co-existent with reason. Vice is a form of the abuse of reason. As the city grew like a mushroom, so vice grew. All elements were attracted. Vice crept in, grew and flourished. Its resources were human souls and bodies,--men and women. It became a great, eating, nauseating, foul-smelling ulcer on the body municipal. It needed control. Control--police regulation--was given it. Flagrant, unblushing vice was hidden away in the corners of the city, to fester and die unseen. But vice never dies. It lives on the body it has destroyed. Its existence is parasitic. It grew, grew, grew. Then like a many-armed octopus it stretched out and out about it. Craven souls, dealing with it, sworn by law to slay it, felt the terror of death upon them. Also, with Satanic insight they saw the-- POSSIBILITIES! Gold! Gold! Luxury! Power! Wealth! Ever since the beginning we have cried for them, sinned for them. Here was the chance. THE COMPACT WRITTEN IN FLESH AND BLOOD. "Let the creature Vice live and thrive, but give us part of the red blood and white flesh of its victims"--was the thought. The politician saw the opportunity. He could not evolve the scheme without the aid of the police, so he confessed his conceived crime. The police consented. Then the leaders of the cohorts of vice were told of the combine and its ultimatum. They, too, consented. "Give us part of the blood and flesh money and you may live and we will protect you."--said the politicians and the police officials. Out of the cavernous depths of Chicago's Hell, where thousands yearned to be free to sow death without hindrance, came the fiendish answer:-- "WE WILL!" The compact was written in letters of blood. Thousands gave up health, happiness and life to launch the Vice Trust. Today it is in its zenith! Competition has been a factor in making and completing its triumph. We have spoken collectively of the Vice Trust organization. THE DIRECTORATE OF GRAFT, CRIME AND CORRUPTION. Individually, today, ten powerful politicians lay down the law, exact the toll, distribute it, after taking their major share, pass sentence of life and death on good and bad, direct the huge and intricate machinery, pay off the hundreds of employes,--principally members of the police department,--high and low, and plan to enlarge and strengthen the greatest, strangest and most complex organization in the world. It is the Directorate of Ten!