Vice versa

The Vice Trust, its Kingdom and its Power.

The Story of Chicago's Subjugation to Political and Police Corruption-The Corrupt Ballot Box-The Mechanism of the Trust-The Prices of Sin and Vice-The Horror of Ruined and Purchased Lives-The Remedy.

Seventy-five years ago a body of pioneer souls who dared death for the dream of individual liberty, wealth and happiness, founded a city, and after the manner of the times, adopted an Indian name and called it Chicago.

The city grew, prospered, flourished; likewise did the inhabitants. Nature seemed to bless all who settled within her boundaries. Resources undreamed of were discovered.

The lake breezes fanned the tiny flame of future greatness and the sun warmed the ambitious blood of the early inhabitants. She became the golden gate to the unexplored West. She became the cosmopolitan and central point of a world power. Chicago was talked of, considered, bargained with from East to West, and North to South.

With vastness came power; with power, abuse; with abuse, vice; with vice, crime; with crime, graft.

It is of Chicago, TODAY, we write.

Truth sears, eats, destroys that which is but veneer and golden covering.

Chicago has blinded herself to the hideous truth. She has hidden her head, closed her eyes and cried out:

"I will not see!"

Vice, like some slimy, hideous, mephitic, green-eyed monster from the deepest abyss of Hell has crept, sinuous and noiseless, on an unsuspecting people.

It has battened upon red, pure life-blood. It has fattened on white flesh. It has destroyed virginal purity, public morals and political honesty.

The monster has been insatiable. Satan, king of the damned dead since the Beginning, urged on the monster Vice.

His political minions kneeled and offered sacrifice to the incarnate Evil of the World. To save themselves they fed him of the rich and sacred stores of the city. They took their portion.

They are still taking their share.

They still feed the monster. They are its slaves; they, appointed by the people to safeguard them and to make their laws.

The monster Vice is fed by the police and politicians, who, under cover of night and darkness, plunder, steal, cheat and murder to satisfy its greed.

We speak not in metaphor; this is the literal truth. We shall prove it.

If Satan came out of the depths of his Inferno, away from the shrieks of the lost millions, he would wander from city to city until he reached Chicago.

Then, in this twentieth century of culture, refinement and progress, he would stand outside the gates, smile in triumph and speak this,-the living, shameful, naked truth:

This is the CITY ACCURSED! This is the CITY OF THE LIVING DAMNED! This is the CITY OF MY DESIRE! This is the CITY AFTER MY OWN HEART! VICE, CRIME, CORRUPTION RULE:-MY TRIUMVIRATE!

This is THE MOST WICKED CITY IN THE WORLD!

Satan would tell the truth.

Chicago today is the most wicked city in the world.

Babylon had its vices; so, too, Alexandria. Greece and Rome struggled and died in a national moral degeneracy they had created.

Chicago has surpassed them in wickedness.

Nay, Sodom and Gomorrah, destroyed by the wrath of Heaven, were pure when compared to Chicago.

Paris and its lure of vice is tame by the side of Chicago.

There is no parallel in history. There is no adequate comparison.

Chicago leads the world in evil today. She stalks at the head of the Army of Sin:-a beautiful, sensuous mistress and paramour to a personalized god of named and unnamed Crime. The army is composed of bodies and souls that Hell has claimed but not called. Their destinies are still unfinished on earth.

And why is Chicago the Hell-hole of the world?

Because she has taken the failings, sins, defects, crimes, miseries and vices of humanity, hurled them into a seething caldron of infamy, melted them, amalgamated them and commercialized them.

A Vice-Graft system has been created. It has been formed along the lines of modern commerce and finance.

Today the institution is stronger, more powerful, more impregnable than the biggest financial or industrial combine in the United States!

In fact, it has absorbed many and invaded mysteriously and secretly every other enterprise founded on decency and honesty. It is living off every legitimate trade, business and industry in Chicago.

That is the limitless scope of the Vice Trust of Chicago, unincorporated, but possessing a capital running high into the millions of dollars and souls.

There are three stockholders, speaking in a collective sense, in Chicago's Vice Trust, namely:-

The inhabitants of the highways and byways and gilded houses of infamy.

The police department of the city.

A coterie of politicians.

These form the board of directors of the ruthless, merciless, parasitic, powerful corporation of Vice, Graft, Crime & Co.

Scarcely an individual, scarcely an industry fails to yield its life-blood to that infamous trust! It feeds like a great octopus on the entire city. Many of us are its unconscious victims!

CHICAGO-THE LIVING, BREATHING HELL.

"Leave behind all hope, all ye who enter here."

Dante dreamed he saw that line above the fiery gates of Hell.

To those who know and understand, that line flames as if written by the fiery finger of Fate, in the heavens above Chicago.

You, all of you, dwelling without its polluted precincts, cannot enter it without being trapped into the meshes of the Vice-Graft combine!

Spider-like, it has woven its web over and about the city. Enter and you are entangled, consciously or unconsciously.

There is no escape. We shall prove this broad, sweeping statement.

From the depot to the cab, from the cab to the hotel, from the hotel to the dining room, barber shop, manicure room or other places, the monster trails you. The Vice Trust's agents are forever lurking in your shadow.

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!

They have divided the city between them and their vassals. They are the rulers of the mysterious underworld, living like princes and rulers in the white palaces of the overworld, surfeited with the heavy luxuries of life.

POLITICS, POLICE AND VICE.

Political power is the greatest of all power. It can subjugate with iron hand all other powers.

The Directorate of Ten found willing agents in the police department of Chicago. It has them today, and if needs be, can find more. Human souls are easily purchased.

Today the system is intricate. So intricate that the combine has received the appellation,-the Vice System.

To exist, vice, in any one of its thousand forms, must pay tribute. The tribute is shared with the police for protection.

Many police inspectors, captains, lieutenants, sergeants and patrolmen receive portions.

Segregation, flaunted to the world as the best remedy yet found for the social evil, is but a lie on the part of the Vice Trust.

Only a portion of the unit Vice is kept within the limits of four "redlight" districts. The rest stalks the streets, free, robbing its victims in the glare of the noon-day sun.

The lost women-souls of the levees are but a pitiful and small part of the army of Vice. They simply dwell in the rendezvous of the thousands who live by infamy.

FOR EACH CRIME A PRICE!

From all vice-sources tribute is exacted monthly by the police themselves or by the low, inhuman collectors of the Vice Trust.

Every vice has its price of toleration for existence!

Every possible violation of the law, the powers that be will wink at at so much per wink!

All this infamy,-this protection of crime and reeking corruption, exists today in Chicago.

THE ATTACK UPON THE TRUST.

The Civil Service Commission of Chicago attacked the bulwarks of the Trust of Crime.

The police department was the point of assault. Several officials were discharged for incompetency and inefficiency. Had they destroyed that Satanic allegiance the backbone of the Combine might have been broken.

Chicago stood paralyzed at the revelations. The truth was murderous in its hideous nakedness. No one had ever dreamed of the scope of its business-the vice business.

The unholy alliance struggled to outlive the attack. Back on to the weak, narrow shoulders of unsystematized infamy the politicians and the police threw the blame.

The network of vice, the spiderweb of crime, the intricate working of the System, the collusion of vice-parasites and political and police magnates have become known. The story has more interest than a novel born of the imagination of genius; more lure than the best detective story ever penned; more fascination than any page in ancient or modern literature; because it is palpitating, aching present day truth. Because it is a living fact. Because it is an "elbow to elbow" condition. Because it is the story of a great city, lost to goodness, and won to wickedness.

It is the story of Chicago!

The hideous ulcer is no longer concealed. It festers no longer in the dark. Its poison seeths in the searing light of inquiry.

THE VICE-GRAFT CIRCLE:-WITHOUT BEGINNING, WITHOUT END.

Political power to become absolutism without danger of extinction needs strong, imperishable foundations.

To hold vice-control meant to rule a vice territory with iron hand.

It was accomplished.

THE BALLOT:-THE SECRET OF VICE POWER.

This is the way it was done and still is being done. Take those political precincts within whose boundaries the "redlight" districts exact their toll from the thousands of unfortunate souls, who live in the iniquitous Hell-holes or haunt them in search of pleasure.

Political powers were busy systematizing. Elections threatened to defeat them and kill their plans.

The ballot box was the salvation.

The prostitution of the ballot came into existence and lives and flourishes today, the primal blot on Chicago's once honorable escutcheon!

To gain an election, to hold political and vice-power the ballot box was and is stuffed by a subtle and almost unpunishable method.

A district, by way of example, is populated by a floating and transient element, brought into Chicago by the agents of the corrupt or drawn here by promises of lucrative gain.

These men are used to stuff the ballot boxes and secure a victory of crime, sin and iniquity.

On the South Side there are scores of hotels, whose standard and character are written in unmistaken language on their very exteriors. These also exist on the West and North sides of the city.

The assignation houses and the cheap lodging houses are the media for slaying the honest ballot.

Men, brought to the city to corrupt elections, register in these places under the names of prostitutes and absent inmates and under this guise, cast polluted votes.

THE BALLOT-CONTROL OF VICE.

One man on election day can easily cast ten votes under ten names of ten dissolute women, who live in the hotels under cognomens, giving initials for their first names.

One hundred men can cast 1,000 illicit votes. That is sufficient to carry an aldermanic election.

One thousand men can cast 10,000 ballots!

That, in a pinch, could sweep honesty from the highest office in the city, and crown a Vice Trust vassal,-mayor!

This is how the Vice Trust wields the balance of power in Chicago, a power that can crush any business, any man, can remove to the "woods" any policeman or police official who refuses to obey its decrees, and so on without limit.

Destroy this and Chicago might once more rear her head in pride. It is the clutch that sets in motion all the machinery of evil.

Wreck that clutch and the delicate, subtle mechanism of concerted crime would disintegrate.

Chicago is blind to the terrible evil of the plethoric ballot box, but the eyes of thousands are being slowly opened.

The "prostitute-repeating" system is but one of the means employed to gain and sustain political control. Hundreds of other methods are in vogue today and working their evil effects.

"Stamp out Vice and Evil. Eliminate the red-lighted, tinsel Houses of Shame; give our city to God."

This is the cry of the churches, led by their praiseworthy pastors.

Oh, ye with eyes that see not, and ears that are deaf to the voices of hell, strike now and strike hard.

But strike not at the thousands of fallen women, nor at the brothel keepers, nor at the dive owners, nor at the panderers, not yet, at least.

STRIKE, FIRST, AT THE POLITICAL SYSTEM THAT CONTROLS ALL AND REIGNS OVER ALL.

Destroy the foundation and the superstructure will topple over of itself.

Break the power that begins and ends at the ballot box. Break the power that sucks at the veins of the myriad army of the lost, and lives on the white ways of decency.

That is the evil! Kill it!

In showing the Unbroken Circle of Iniquity we have shown where the control of crime is begotten.

And now the parts, interlocked so finely that the connecting points are lost, are to be revealed.

Once political power is assured, all else is inevitable by the nature of things.

THE POLICE COLLECTORS.

The political power finds its agents. They are of necessity, the police. Willing spirits are found.

The guardians of the law and public safety are hired out by the political kings to collect their tolls from their sycophants and vassals.

Chicago policemen, high and low,-we venture to say eighty per cent of them,-are today by virtue of the collection and tribute system the confederates of every species of criminal, of every exploiter of every known kind of vice.

They aid, abet and allow these law violators to thrive.

Vice and crime must pay its tribute to the police. The police must turn over the bulk of the proceeds to their political masters. No criminal can continue in his nefarious business without paying the price. It is called Police Protection.

That is the blind. In reality it is Political Protection. The police are but the body guard, the secret service of the corrupt-

Directorate of Ten.

Under Police Protection, for so many dollars per day, according to the nature of the crime-business being carried on, every form of vice flaunts itself in the face of Chicago's 2,000,000 inhabitants and its thousands of country visitors.

It is no secret. Chicago knows. But she has failed to observe the reason, and to open her eyes is the mission of this book.

THE PRICE OF CRIME:-$15,000,000 A YEAR!

From the army of vice the yearly tribute to the Directorate of Ten-the controlling power-is almost unbelievable.

The figures stagger one.

With reserve, not exaggeration, we make this statement:-

Chicago's vice legion yields for existence and for protection the sum of-

$15,000,000 annually.

Think of it! Crime pays that fortune to exist and rob the public of more money.

We are not dealing with the thieving contractors who rob the citizens through fixed contracts. We treat only of the crime that the police are sworn to slay.

$15,000,000 put into the coffers of men supposed to be representing the people that the donors may go on destroying the souls and bodies of women, the souls and bodies of men!

That astounding offering to appease the human Juggernauts and to sow in the youths and maidens of our nation the seeds of incurable diseases!

That sum in the blood-stained hands of demagogues to blast a city's decency and prosperity and to eat into the very vitals of our Republic!

In small envelopes, dirty and diseased, bacteria-bearing paper money and grimy silver are handed in the dark or the light to policemen or outside collectors to be turned over to the Directorate of Ten.

Let the figure $15,000,000 in tribute burn into the recesses of your brain if you would realize the gigantic and almost indescribable character of crime in Chicago.

It is estimated that the $15,000,000 annual vice tribute is less than half a year's aggregate earnings.

Do you realize that $15,000,000 is five per cent of $300,000,000?

A VICE CAPITAL OF FLESH AND BLOOD.

Think of it!

Almost half a billion dollars!

But the capital in this business is not so many dollars. It is human flesh, human souls, human blood! Can they be measured in dollars?

There is no capital in this hideous trust that stands in banks. The real capital must be turned over and over. The exhausted bodies of men and women fill the incurable disease wards of the hospital, the crippled and broken down inhabit the shacks of the tenements, and thousands are buried in paupers' graves.

This is the price of the slaves!

There is nothing but the world of infamy. Nothing but the aching, diseased bodies of women. Nothing but the outraged purity of childhood. Nothing but the toiling, unrestrained passions of fiends. Nothing but the lust that is insatiable, the desire that fattens on the poisons it eats.