Chapter XX

CHICAGO'S WHITE SLAVE MARKET—THE "LEVEE."

It is no pleasure to me to impeach my city, but it is false patriotism to allow the crimes of one's own country to go without rebuke. We are responsible for the evil that we have power to abolish. It is the duty of a patriotic preacher to lash the sins of his people till they are lashed out of existence.

One afternoon last summer Captain Wood of the Twenty-second street police station, who has always taken splendid care of our missionaries, told me that Jesus did not try to destroy the "levee" in Jerusalem, but forgave the repentant woman who washed his feet with her tears. That evening a Jew who was born and brought up in Jerusalem came to help us in our street meeting. I asked him publicly if there is any "levee," that is, a vice district, in Jerusalem. He said that the Arabs would not tolerate one such house of shame but would burn it down before morning.

Mr. Archibald Forder, for seventeen years a pioneer missionary in the interior of Arabia, says that among the Arabs this vice is unknown—"and a great big UNKNOWN it is."

Rev. Dr. Spencer Lewis, for many years a missionary in China, said when he preached with us in midnight Chicago, that even heathen China, which is very impure, does not obtrude vice as does Chicago.

In New York City Mayor Low broke up the "tenderloin" some years ago, and though vice is shamefully abundant and flagrant in that metropolis, the city government no longer gives the white slave traders a practical license to commit their crimes, by setting apart a portion of the city where they may operate with impunity.

In Philadelphia, when three of us conferred with Mr. Gibboney, secretary of the Law and Order Society, concerning a proposed exploration of a questionable district, one of the questions immediately raised was how we might gain our liberty if arrested in a raid on an immoral resort which we might be investigating. This was a vital and serious question, in Philadelphia. There vice is a thousand times too abundant, but it is contemptible, suspicious, secluded and afraid.

In Chicago our politicians have set apart several districts for the traffickers in slaves. The traders in girls are public, bold, defiant. They feel clean, almost virtuous, after the city hall and a deluded preacher or two have given them an immunity bath—provided only the fiction of segregation is preserved.

MAYOR A COWARD.

Mr. Gibboney called the former mayor of Philadelphia a coward, because the mayor expressed his desire to segregate vicious resorts, but not in his own neighborhood—but among the poor and helpless. Let the advocates of segregation in Chicago propose to put these resorts on Michigan avenue and Prairie avenue, where certain advocates of this shameful policy live, or in the vicinity of Mayor Busse's residence. Then we can at least believe in their sincerity and manliness. But as it is, they curse the children of the poor by protecting these resorts in districts where the poor must live.

Former State's Attorney Healy asked former Mayor Dunne why the Italian, Jewish and negro children near Twenty-second street have not the same right to a decent environment as Mayor Dunne's own children in Edgewater. Why have not the little children on Archer avenue the same right to grow up in a decent neighborhood, that the little girl has who puts her arms around Mayor Busse's neck and calls him "Uncle Fred"?

A FRIGHTENED GIRL.

I have seen with my own eyes a young girl under seventeen years of age, a member of Immanuel Baptist Church, running like a frightened gazelle, to her home near Twenty-second street, to avoid insult on the public streets, from the thousands of young men who are encouraged to throng that district for immoral purposes. She ran to her home for this reason for three or four years. I lifted my hat in reverence to such a girl. But, Oh, how I felt the shame of the city and of the churches near her home, that permitted conditions that put a good girl to tests like this. I afterward talked face to face with her mother.

GRAFT INEVITABLE.

Segregation as practised, colonizes and fosters vice, maintains a white slave market under executive protection, and provides an overwhelming temptation and facility for graft. Bribeless government cannot exist for any considerable time where these facilities for corruption are so assiduously maintained. It is not in politicians, or anybody else, to resist temptation when the temptation itself is protected and cherished.

Nothing is said by our officials, or by the high priests of segregation, about corraling immoral men into segregation districts. It is therefore not segregation of vice, but only an attempted or pretended, and never a complete or successful cornering of depraved women. There are wide open resorts on more than twenty streets outside of the big "levee." Segregation as practised is not a restriction of vice so much as it is a practical license to lawbreakers to wreck human lives and blight the homes of the people, by corrupting husbands and sons and taking captive wives and daughters. You would be astounded to learn how many ruined women are wives who have been allured to sin.

A MAELSTROM FOR YOUNG MEN.

Into the red light districts, so long as they remain, men and youths from the whole city and the whole world are irresistibly drawn, if only by curiosity. The "levee," blazing with electric lights and floating in liquor, is regarded by thousands of visitors as one of the chief sights of Chicago.

When the Shriners, a Masonic order, held a convention here, their red fezzes and Arabian symbols were seen by hundreds in the "levee" towards midnight. Not all, perhaps not very many of them, were there for a vile purpose. They were simply inspecting one of Chicago's pet institutions—not the cattle market at the stockyards, but the white slave market in the "levee."

Cattle men from Texas and Montana come with their carloads of cattle to Chicago, and having disposed of their stock and received their money, many of these men hurry to the "levee," of whose attractions they have heard a thousands miles away. Thus the immorality and diseases of the "levee" are spread over the land.

So far from being an efficient restriction of vice, a red light district is the greatest advertisement the horrible trade can have—and is just what it desires. Every divekeeper and madam in Chicago and every other city, delights in segregation as practised by our rulers, who have sworn to the Almighty and contracted with the people to enforce the laws—and draw their salaries upon this contract and this oath.

"Give us a district to ourselves," say all the dives with one mind, and our obliging executives forthwith bow down to them and do as they say, giving these detestable criminals permission to trample the laws in the sewers. "To hell with the laws" some of the divekeepers have said to our missionaries. Why not give murderers, thugs, thieves, gamblers, forgers, a district where they may break the laws, after an immunity bath at City Hall, as well as to the filthy offenders who promote even the crimes of Sodom and Gomorrah, and invite upon Chicago the doom of those cities of the plain?

A divekeeper recently paid his first fine in twenty years. For twenty years this man had carried on his murderous trade without ever being made to feel even once that he is a criminal. What astounding privilege, in a city where many men have been arrested and fined for spitting on the sidewalk.

The French and Japanese importers of women have been amazingly exempt from punishment at the hands of our local authorities. The federal government has done its duty, as all the world knows. The work of Mr. Sims and his assistants at Chicago is affecting the whole nation and Canada for good. But why are the wild beasts who trade in girls immune from punishment at the hands of our city and state authorities?

We ought to say, and do say very heartily, that our authorities in Chicago are beginning to listen to the cry of the white slaves, native and foreign. Something has been done to punish procurers and such like reptilia who do not count in politics. But the divekeepers, the buyers and holders of women, have not been seriously disturbed, except by the national government.

SEGREGATION MAKES A SLAVE MARKET.

It is impossible to abolish brothel slavery and to license, either formally or practically, the slave market, the red light district. While the divekeeper enjoys the indulgence of the mayor and the police and of their masters, the citizens, he will keep his dive—and his dive must be restocked with new victims, to make money for him, all the time. These victims will be obtained, as heretofore, by procurers who travel city and country to trap them, and they will be imported from Europe and Asia as heretofore. To maintain a segregation district is to maintain a slave market, as things are.

Unless we make energetic and successful war upon the red light districts and all that pertains to them, we shall have Oriental brothel slavery thrust upon us from China and Japan, and Parisian white slavery, with all its unnatural and abominable practices, established among us by the French traders. Jew traders, too, will people our "levees" with Polish Jewesses and any others who will make money for them.

Shall we defend our American civilization, or lower our flag to the most despicable foreigners—French, Irish, Italians, Jews and Mongolians? We do not speak against them for their nationality, but for their crimes. American traders of equal infamy, to the shame of the American name, have stocked Asiatic cities with American girls.

On the Pacific Coast eternal vigilance alone can save us from a flood of Asiaticism, with its weak womanhood, its men of scant chivalry, its polluting vices and its brothel slavery. Bubonic plague in San Francisco and Seattle was alarming. Mongolian brothel slavery, the Black Death in morals, is more alarming.

On both coasts and throughout all our cities, only an awakening of the whole Christian conscience and intelligence can save us from the importation of Parisian and Polish pollution, which is already corrupting the manhood and youth of every large city in this nation.

MONEY IN VICE

There is money in vice, so long as the public conscience sleeps and officials are chloroformed with bribes, or otherwise persuaded to make it easy for lawbreakers. Frenchmen, Japanese, and Jews know what a good rich market America is, and they are exploiting it with enterprise. They will continue to do so more and more, if pulpit and press are ignorant or cowardly, and sworn officers of the law make void the law. Both native and foreign exploiters of vice immediately improve the facilities afforded by every wicked or deluded executive who proclaims a segregation district. These shrewd, diabolical men quickly stock the red light districts with their victims. The traders are organized, capitalized, ready to pay for their privileges to trample on our statute books, our flag, our Bibles, our homes.

WORSE THAN PARIS!

All Europe except Turkey is organized against the traffic in womanhood. Many criminals of this sort have been driven out of Paris—only to find a cordial welcome in the open arms of our deluded if not debauched officials, who provide for them segregation districts in this and other American cities. Thus our American cities become dumps for the outcast filth of Paris.

In our "levee" at Twenty-second street, fourteen resorts had "Paris" or "Parisian" as part of their signs until Chief Shippy ordered the signs removed six months ago. Numerous other resorts have French managers and French inmates. Patriotic Americans would do well to reflect upon Sedan and the French lilies that withered there, after trainloads of women had rolled out of Paris to the French camp, while the Germans sang "A Mighty Fortress is Our God" and "The Watch on the Rhine."

We remember La Fayette and French service for American liberty, but from organized, capitalized, cunning, brazen, Parisian licentiousness in addition to that of native Americans, Good Lord deliver us!

About a score of resorts in the same "levee," all of them extremely flagrant, are managed by Jews. Two or three places are managed by Italian men, though there are few Italian prostitutes in Chicago. One resort is controlled and occupied by Japanese—for American men; and several places contain American girls for Chinese men. I know of no resorts controlled by English, Scotch, German or Scandinavian men.

In one respect our American red light districts are worse than Paris. In Paris, if Dr. Sanger is right in his standard work, "A History of Prostitution," men are not permitted to manage the resorts. The unspeakable divekeeper—why do the American people tolerate such a viper as this?

COURTS ARE UNSTAINED.

The laws and the courts are uniformly against vice and against the men who exploit vice, for a lazy living or despicable gain.

The Supreme Court of California is representative of all courts when it said, in the case of Pon against Wittman in July, 1905:

"Under the Penal Code of this state, keeping or knowingly letting any tenement for the purposes of prostitution, keeping a house of ill-fame resorted to for the purposes of prostitution or lewdness, or residing therein, are criminal offenses, and every person who lives in or about such houses, and any common prostitute, is a vagrant. (Penal Code, sections 315, 316, 647.)

"Ordinance No. 1587 of the board of supervisors of the city and county of San Francisco also makes it a public offense to maintain such houses, or become an inmate thereof or visitor thereto, or in any manner contribute to their support.

"These laws have for their object the prohibition and suppression of prostitution, and that duty devolves, within the city and county of San Francisco, upon its police department.

"These houses are common or public nuisances. Their maintenance directly tends to corrupt and debase public morals, to promote vice, and to encourage dissolute and idle habits, and the suppression of nuisances of this character and having this tendency, is one of the important duties of government.

"The suppression of such houses, as evidenced by the stringent laws concerning them, is a public policy of the state."—California Reports, volume 147, page 292.

California and New York have splendid modern laws against white slavery and the traffic in women in its various forms. Nine states have enacted new laws against these evils this year. We rejoice in these laws, but they will never fully accomplish their purpose while the executive officers of our cities illegally make void the law by proclaiming or recognizing red light districts, where traders are illegally exempted from the laws and their penalties.

Since the laws are good and the courts everywhere faithful, for the most part, to the laws, why are the executive officers of our cities so far from fulfilling the purpose of the laws as interpreted by the courts? Many of our officials clearly, from their conduct, consider it "one of the important duties of government" not to suppress but to protect, favor and encourage these hideous haunts of vice and crime. Why?

TONS OF GRAFT.

Doubtless tons of graft have been taken from the red light districts, and doubtless more tons will be taken by perjurers and traitors in public office. No one knows this better than honest officials—for there are many such, men who keep their oath of office and conscientiously guard the great public interests of which they are trustees and not traitors.

But the evil lies deeper than corrupt officials, and cannot be eradicated by the most faithful officials only—even if all were such. Under our form of government officials are the people's agents and must do what their masters, the sovereign people, require them to do.

The responsibility is therefore the people's. Why do the sovereign people of our American cities love to have it so? Why do they approve the red light districts, the white slave market, the traffic in women and girls? Or disapprove too mildly to abolish them?

THE LIE IN THE PEOPLE'S MINDS.

Lecky, the historian of European morals, lent his great name to a great delusion, when he attempted in a passage too well known, to garland the prostitute as the protectress of pure women. Edwin Arnold, the paganizing English poet, put Lecky's folly into verse, writing a sonnet in praise of the harlot as the purest of all women—a sort of devil's compliment to our wives and mothers.

This immoral and repulsive idea has a considerable place among educated men and among the plain people. I was grieved to hear a physician quote Lecky's false and immoral statement before the Physicians' Club of Chicago. The managing editor of one of our decent and moral morning papers quoted Lecky in a short talk I had with him.

When the educated and moral are so deceived, what can we expect of the ignorant and immoral? The devil's dogma, that prostitution is a protection to virtue, is thrust upon us continually by the vilest men and women, and by those who create, promote and exploit vice. This creed is assiduously preached by divekeepers and madams throughout the world. Thereby they have their wealth, for thereby honest people are deceived into tolerating these enemies of the human race—destroyers of youths and maidens, of innocent wives and guilty husbands, of cities, civilizations and nations.

SIN IS NOT A BLESSING.

The prostitute will be a blessing to good women when Satan is actually transformed into a holy angel—but not till then. While the hideous caricature of womanhood is responsible by her diseases for one-fourth or more of the surgical operations upon innocent wives—operations made necessary by disease which their husbands bought of the prostitute, perhaps years before marriage—we cannot regard her and her criminal male partners as anything less than the red-handed slayers of good women. While the eye doctors attribute one-fourth of blindness, particularly of helpless babies, to the same source, we cannot quote except to condemn, this sophistry that makes the worse appear the better cause and garlands the woman whose pursuit is death itself, suicide and murder in one.

While this perverted or enslaved creature that Lecky and Arnold would glorify drives herself and her criminal patrons to suffer locomotor ataxia, necrosis of bone and brain, or incurable insanity at public expense in our asylums, we will give her no garland, except apple blossoms—of the apples of Sodom.

GOOD WOMEN ARE NOT PROTECTED BY BAD.

Nor do hundreds of brothels illegally legalized in a city protect virtuous women, maidens and little girls from bestial assault. On the contrary, good women are a thousand times safer where no such hells exist to manufacture degenerates. The men who consort with vile women lose their respect for all women, and by their base fellowship inflame infernal fires which are the utmost menace to all good women.

We have had in Chicago numerous recent illustrations of the way in which police-protected houses of infamy save good women and girls.

A few weeks before the murder of Mrs. Gentry, Constantine applied at the rooming agency of the Young Men's Christian Association for a room. The secretary marked on his application "sporty" and did not send him to any good woman's home to room, but to a lodging house of men only. By some means he came to room at the Gentry home and repaid hospitality by murdering his hostess. The "sporty" man associating with harlots, loses his respect for good women, and may murder them if they resist his wicked will.

In September one block from our outrageous "levee," where one thousand and fifty ruined women are constantly at the service of ten thousands of vile men—one block from these protectresses of good women and young girls, more than a thousand protectresses!—a thirteen-year-old girl was lured to a room and brutally assaulted. The police officer, Lieut. White, who arrested the criminal, and was himself roughly handled in the discharge of his duty, confirmed this report when I inquired of him face to face. Captain McCann told me he arrested a divekeeper for assaulting his own stepdaughter.

Do the dives protect women and girls from crimes like these? Do they not rather manufacture the degenerates who commit these crimes?

WORST ENEMIES OF THE HUMAN RACE.

Harlots and their patrons are the worst enemies in every way that good women can have. If there were any virtue in vice, if black were white or even speckled, doubtless the supreme book of morals, the guide of the race, would have some word in praise of moral rottenness—some few lines in prose or verse in laudation of lewd women. But the whole Bible keeps the distinction sharp and clear between black and white, between virtue and sin.

Until the public intelligence and conscience are trained to abhor vice as a destroyer of families and nations—more insidious and more ruinous than even the liquor traffic—a soft, foolish, wicked indulgence will be granted to the red light districts, and the white slave markets which they constitute and are. We must call most urgently upon all guides and rulers of the people to make incessant war upon the loathsome criminals who prey upon young women and young men. They are the worst enemies of the human race. They drink the heart's blood of mothers and eat the flesh of their daughters. They people hospitals, alms-houses, lunatic asylums and dissecting rooms. They blast innocent wives and blind helpless babies. They enslave by force, threats or craft thousands of weak women and innocent young girls.

Their horrible flesh market and slave pen is the red light district, where they are illegally exempted from the criminal prosecutions that their crimes deserve. This favor to criminals is itself criminal. The men who have lifted up their hands to God, upon taking the oath of office, have an appalling responsibility when they exempt the most odious criminals from the laws which they are sworn and paid to enforce. The sovereign people, who indulge these officials in their palpable neglect of duty and malfeasance in office, have a fearful accountability.

Property owners and their agents, who rent buildings for immoral use, are perhaps guiltiest of all, having no motive but greed. In Los Angeles, the aroused citizens put the Italian millionaire, who owned the "crib" district and was exploiting girls therein, on the chain gang and abolished the "crib" district. On the other hand, in Chicago we have seen property of Yale University become the vilest of dives, to the grief of President Hadley and the shame of his agents in this city.

The old Roman Senator, who believed that Rome and Carthage could not both be great, kept crying "Delenda est Carthago" until Carthage was blotted out. So let us keep crying, "The Levee must go!" until the police-protected white slave market is destroyed. Above all, in our struggle against this most infamous slavery, let us never forget the very early flag of the Revolution, the Pine Tree Flag, now preserved in Independence Hall, with its deathless motto, WE APPEAL TO GOD.

E. A. B.