A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil | Page 9

possible. In reality the
police, as they themselves know, are not expected to serve the public in
this matter but to consult the desires of the politicians; for, next to the
fast and loose police control of gambling, nothing affords better
political material than the regulation of commercialized vice. First in
line is the ward politician who keeps a disorderly saloon which serves
both as a meeting-place for the vicious young men engaged in the
traffic and as a market for their wares. Back of this the politician higher
up receives his share of the toll which this business pays that it may
remain undisturbed. The very existence of a segregated district under
police regulation means, of course, that the existing law must be
nullified or at least rendered totally inoperative. When police regulation
takes the place of law enforcement a species of municipal blackmail
inevitably becomes intrenched. The police are forced to regulate an
illicit trade, but because the men engaged in an unlawful business
expect to pay money for its protection, the corruption of the police
department is firmly established and, as the Chicago vice commission
report points out, is merely called "protection to the business." The
practice of grafting thereafter becomes almost official. On the other
hand, any man who attempts to show mercy to the victims of that

business, or to regulate it from the victim's point of view, is considered
a traitor to the cause. Quite recently a former inspector of police in
Chicago established a requirement that every young girl who came to
live in a disreputable house within a prescribed district must be
reported to him within an hour after her arrival. Each one was closely
questioned as to her reasons for entering into the life. If she was very
young, she was warned of its inevitable consequences and urged to
abandon her project. Every assistance was offered her to return to work
and to live a normal life. Occasionally a girl was desperate and it was
sometimes necessary that she be forcibly detained in the police station
until her friends could be communicated with. More often she was glad
to avail herself of the chance of escape; practically always, unless she
had already become romantically entangled with a disreputable young
man, whom she firmly believed to be her genuine lover and protector.
One day a telephone message came to Hull House from the inspector
asking us to take charge of a young girl who had been brought into the
station by an older woman for registration. The girl's youth and the
innocence of her replies to the usual questions convinced the inspector
that she was ignorant of the life she was about to enter and that she
probably believed she was simply registering her choice of a
boarding-house. Her story which she told at Hull House was as follows:
She was a Milwaukee factory girl, the daughter of a Bohemian
carpenter. Ten days before she had met a Chicago young man at a
Milwaukee dance hall and after a brief courtship had promised to marry
him, arranging to meet him in Chicago the following week. Fearing
that her Bohemian mother would not approve of this plan, which she
called "the American way of getting married," the girl had risen one
morning even earlier than factory work necessitated and had taken the
first train to Chicago. The young man met her at the station, took her to
a saloon where he introduced her to a friend, an older woman, who, he
said, would take good care of her. After the young man disappeared,
ostensibly for the marriage license, the woman professed to be much
shocked that the little bride had brought no luggage, and persuaded her
that she must work a few weeks in order to earn money for her
trousseau, and that she, an older woman who knew the city, would find
a boarding-house and a place in a factory for her. She further induced

her to write postal cards to six of her girl friends in Milwaukee, telling
them of the kind lady in Chicago, of the good chances for work, and
urging them to come down to the address which she sent. The woman
told the unsuspecting girl that, first of all, a newcomer must register her
place of residence with the police, as that was the law in Chicago. It
was, of course, when the woman took her to the police station that the
situation was disclosed. It needed but little investigation to make clear
that the girl had narrowly escaped a well-organized plot and that the
young man to whom she was engaged was an agent for a disreputable
house. Mr. Clifford Roe took up the case with vigor, and although all
efforts failed to find the young man, the