Chicago women are working hard to protect innocent women from lives of infamy and to help the repentant to a nobler womanhood. If there were men working among their own sex with equal devotions there would be a lessening of the social evil. If physicians would teach men the safety of chastity and the horrors of licentiousness, if preachers would train their guns against impurity, if popular clubs would expel licentious men, if the mayor would order the arrest of every person, man or woman, found in these houses, apparently so well known to the police, and have such arrests continued night after night, these methods would cause a marked lessening of the social evil. The police of Chicago have done much in recent years to make it a better city. To them is due the credit more than to anyone else for better conditions in our moral life. If they are encouraged and allowed to work out these problems in their own practical way they will do more for our city's good than all the theoretical reformers combined. Many conditions ought not to exist, but they must and will remain for the present. Your reformer, so-called, writes and pleads for the ideal. The police force deals with what is and knows best what can be done. SUPPRESS MANUFACTURE AND SALE OF DANGEROUS WEAPONS--THEY ARE A CONSTANT MENACE TO LIFE AND GOOD ORDER. MADE SOLELY FOR UNLAWFUL USE--ENGENDER CRIME, INCREASE ACCIDENTS AND MAKE SUICIDE EASY--CARRYING CONCEALED WEAPONS A VICIOUS AND INEXCUSABLE HABIT.] [Illustration: LAW TO REGULATE SALE OF FIREARMS] The "lid" should be put upon deadly weapons--pistols, revolvers, dirk knives, brass knuckles--not merely to hide them, but to prevent their manufacture and sale. While serving as police officer I could not fail to observe that substantially all of the crimes committed with the pistol or revolver resulted from the practice of carrying the weapon upon the person. There would be a controversy in a bar-room, on the street or elsewhere, followed by a fight and ending with a shooting by someone present who had the weapon conveniently concealed upon his person. But for the presence of the weapon on the scene there would have been no shooting. I recall but one case where the defendant left the scene of the controversy to procure a weapon. Murder committed by lying in wait or with premeditation for any length of time is extremely rare. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the crime is committed on the spur of the moment.