disorderly saloons and drink at the bar and in rooms connected with the saloons while on duty. They have been in saloons after 1: 00 A. M. 24. Proprietors of disorderly saloons have a regular system of securing women to solicit men to buy drinks in the rear rooms, and these women are often tempted to take up a life of professional prostitution, if they are not doing so already. 25. Professional prostitutes are to all intents and purposes used as adjuncts to the business of selling liquor in the rear rooms, in connection with their immoral trade. 26. Certain saloons are in reality houses of prostitution for the women actually live in rooms upstairs, and solicit in the rear rooms for upstairs trade. They pay a certain amount each week for board and room, to the proprietor of the saloon. 27. Young working girls, who are now semi-professional prostitutes, are admitted to rear rooms of certain disorderly saloons. 28. In certain saloons the prostitutes actually expose parts of their naked body and use vulgar and obscene language. 29. In some saloons the prostitutes actually use the same toilet with the men. 30. Prostitutes stand in doorway leading to rear rooms in certain disorderly saloons and solicit men at the bar. 31. Certain keepers of disorderly saloons offer protection to prostitutes who solicit in their rear rooms. This consists of paying fines and bailing out the offenders who are apprehended by the police. 32. Efforts are being made, especially on the North Side, to again create wine rooms or booths enclosed by curtains in the rear rooms. 33. Some disorderly saloons are within a short distance of public school buildings, and it seems utterly impossible to secure the revocation of the licenses or persuade the proprietors to move. 34. Exact data are not at hand, but it is estimated by a city official, who is in position to know, that about 25 licenses have been permanently revoked on the ground that disreputable persons were allowed to congregate in saloons. CHAPTER III. THE SOCIAL EVIL AND THE POLICE. Whenever an attempt is made to study the Social Evil problem, the police become at once the object of interest and investigation. Before a just criticism can be made, however, it is necessary to investigate the causes that have brought about conditions which the police are supposed to control. When this is not done, well meaning persons, after a superficial investigation of existing conditions, are inclined to make the sweeping statement that the entire department is corrupt, that all the officers on the beat are grafters, and that protection money is paid to Inspectors of Divisions and Captains of Precincts. In order, therefore, to be fair in reporting upon the Police and the Social Evil, it becomes necessary, first, to point out the peculiar conditions, with the underlying causes that exist in a city, and, second, to show what influences these conditions have had upon men who are sworn to enforce the law. In the first place, then, the laws now on the statute books for the protection of society against the Social Evil were enacted by legislators, the majority of whom came from the country districts, and who expected them to regulate affairs in large cities as well as in country towns. Unfortunately, experience has shown that this is quite impossible. The laws prohibiting houses of ill-fame can be and are enforced in a small community. But the situation is more difficult in a city the size of Chicago. Here an individual may, if he chooses, live any life he pleases, so far as his personal habits are concerned, and no one be the wiser. Often the country man, who stands as a pillar of strength in his rural community, does not live up to his home standard when he comes to the city, and helps to encourage disregard for law, and thus increases the difficulties of the problem. If such a man, fresh from a town where this law is strictly enforced, does not hesitate to violate it when he comes to the city, what can be expected of citizens of the city, if they look upon the conditions with indifference, and thereby grow callous to the violation of the law? Thus it has come to pass that the law against houses of prostitution has become inoperative in cities, and in its place has grown up a custom of tolerance and indifference, which has resulted in peculiar conditions, strange to the eyes of law-abiding men. Is it fair, then, to fasten the entire blame for such conditions upon the police as a whole, who in the last analysis are merely the servants of the people, and as servants do their will? But go a step further, and see how these conditions grow even more complex, and difficult to handle. This tolerance and indifference toward the law by the citizens have gone so far in Chicago, that for years the people have seen develop under their very eyes a system of restricted districts under police regulation, the result of which has been to nullify the law, and render it inoperative. In one district a police regulation takes the place of the law. In another, the law becomes operative to a slight degree, while in still a third it is apparently enforced. So it happens that the people of Chicago, by their tacit consent, have put aside the operation of the law, and made it a thing to be manipulated this way or that, according to expediency. Again, it is submitted that it is not fair to lay the blame entirely upon the police, the servants of the people, who as servants, do their employers' will. As a result of this attitude toward the law on the part of the community, the police department has been in a sense demoralized and has come to exercise a discretion which was never intended it should have. One of the Municipal Court judges who appeared before the Commission in a conference said that in his opinion "it is this discretion which makes graft in the police department possible. The law-abiding citizen will not pay graft to anyone, for the protection of his business. He relies upon the law's protection. It is only the man who is engaged in an unlawful business who will pay graft, for the protection of that unlawful business. We have in every large city in this country the anomalous situation of the police officers, the guardians of the law, attempting to regulate an unlawful business, a condition which is certain to produce more or less corruption." |