Part 8

All sorts of people engage in this wretched game, black and whites, rich and poor. The grossest superstitions are indulged in respecting “lucky numbers.” Such numbers are revealed by dreamers, which are interpreted by “dream books.” To dream of a man is “one,” of a woman “five,” of both “fifteen,” and so on. Thousands of copies of these “dream books” are sold every year, and among its purchasers are said to be many shrewd operators on the Board of Trade. So great is the rage for policy playing that men and women become insane over it. The lunatic asylums contain many patients who have been brought there by this species of gambling.

Criminal Operations

One of the greatest evils of the city is the existence of a class of men and women—some practicing physicians—who make their living by practicing abortion upon women who have been betrayed and upon married women. These abortionists are known as a rule to the police, who make no effort to break up the infamous business. They continue to flourish, and advertise in such city journals as will admit their advertisements, and reap large profits from the sale of drugs and the performance of operations upon pregnant women. Their calling is illegal, and the statute books inflicts grave penalties against them. To bring on premature confinement, which shall result in the death of a child, is made by law a grave offense. In spite of this, however, infanticide flourishes in Chicago, and every year the city journals contain numerous accounts of the death of women at the hands of professional abortionists. They are arrested and punished whenever a clear case can be made out against them; but others spring up to take their place, and the infamous business continues to thrive. Some of the more cautious practitioners will not undertake the premature delivery of a woman, but content themselves with receiving her, and carrying her safely through her confinement. They require that she shall be “backed” by some responsible man. The child, when born, is sent to some foundling asylum, or given to persons willing to adopt it. Often the practitioner places it in the hands of some person to care for it, and, when the parents are of good position in society, and possessed of wealth, holds it as a means of extorting money from them. Large sums are wrung from parents in this way, in order to avoid an exposure, and men and women have been driven to despair and suicide by the wretches in whose power they have placed themselves.

One of the most notorious women of this class was the late Madam S——. A large part of her income was derived from the sale of drugs warranted to bring on miscarriages. She amassed a large fortune, by her business, built a magnificent house on a prominent street, and lived in royal style. She would never commit an abortion outright, but would safely deliver her patients, take care of the children born in her house, and use them as means of extorting money from the parents. Her patients were invariably women of position in society, in the city and other parts of the country, and she received no one in her house unless “backed” by a man of known wealth. At length her wicked ways threw her into the hands of the police. The evidence against her was overwhelming, and to escape the just punishment of her crimes, the wretched woman committed suicide.

A physician of standing in his profession once said to me, “The number of young girls in their teens who come here begging my services is astounding. Many, of course, have been betrayed, and seek to remove the consequences of their sin.”

Life Under the Shadows

Poverty in Chicago.

It is a terrible thing to be poor in any part of the world. In Chicago poverty is simply a living death. The city is full of suffering and misery. Some of the wretched people who endure it have, no doubt, brought it upon themselves by drink, by idleness, or by other faults, but a large majority are simply unfortunate. Their poverty has come upon them through no fault of their own; they struggle bravely against it, and would better their condition if they could only find employment. They are held down by an iron hand, however, and vainly endeavor to rise out of their misery. They dwell in wretched tenement houses, in cellars of buildings in the more thickly populated parts of the city, and in shanties, and hovels in almost every quarter of the city. A few families, even in the midst of their sufferings, manage to keep their poor quarters clean and neat, but the majority live in squalor and filth. But little furniture is to be seen in the rooms of the poor. Everything that can bring money has been sold for the means with which to buy food. Many of these wretched homes have been stripped of all their contents for this purpose. A cooking stove sometimes constitutes the only article of furniture in a room, and the inmates sleep upon the floor. Not a chair or table is to be seen. Often there is no stove, and the only food that passes the lips of the occupants of these rooms is what is given them in charity.

The inmates of these wretched homes are often families who have seen better days. Once the husband and father could give those dependent upon him a comfortable home, and provide at least the necessaries of life. But sickness came upon him, or death took him, and the little family was deprived of his support. In vain the mother sought to procure work to keep her children in comfort. What work she could procure was at intervals, and the little she earned barely sufficed to keep a roof over their heads. Little by little they sank lower and lower, until poverty in its worst form settled upon them. The city is full of such cases, and missionaries, whose labors among the poor bring them in constant contact with scenes of suffering, confess that they do not know how these poor people manage to live. Whole blocks are filled with families on the verge of starvation. They would gladly work if they could get employment; but the city is so full of sufferers like themselves that they cannot escape from their wretched condition. The so-called Ghetto and other localities present scenes of misery which almost surpass belief. Many of the dwellers here pick up a bare subsistence.

To those who visit these sections of the city, each one seems worse than the other. The “Ghetto” is the most wretched haunt occupied by human beings in the country. It is easily found. Cross the river at Harrison street, go west to Jefferson street, turn south. Anybody can tell you where it is. There is no mistaking the place. A junkman’s cellar in the front of the house opens widely to the street, and, peering down, one may see a scene of men and women half buried in dirty rags and papers which they are gathering up and putting in bales for the paper mills. This is the general depot to which the rag-picker brings his odds and ends for sale after he has assorted them. Just as we emerge from this cellar, a rag-picker, heavily laden, passes up the stoop, and enters the hall above. Standing here and looking up, one beholds a sight that cannot be imagined. Rags to the right of him, rags to the left of him, on all sides nothing but rags. Lines in the yard draped with them, windows hung with them, every available object dressed in rags—and such rags! of every possible size, shape and color. Some of them have been drawn through the wash-tub to get off the worst dirt, but for the most part they are hung up just as they were taken from the bags, and left to the rain and snow to cleanse them. The exterior of the buildings is wretched enough; the interior equally so.

Some of the rooms on a cloudy day are as dark as dungeons, with but little light coming through the dirty window on the front and the smaller one on the back. Every inch of the ceiling and walls is black and dirty. Against this dark background are hung numerous hats, kettles, pans, joints of raw meat, partly consumed Bologna sausages, gowns of women, and so on. The beds are almost invariably covered with old carpets, that still retain some bits of their original color. None of the chairs have backs, and hardly any of them have four legs. Seated upon these uncertain supports, or often an empty soap box or upturned boiler, are the rag-pickers. Every man in the house has his hat on, including the one in bed napping after the hard work of the early morning. Not one bare-headed man is seen anywhere. Some of them are sitting dreamily by the stove, but most of them are sorting rags or cutting up old coats and pantaloons that are too much used to wear, and stuffing the bits into the bags for the junk dealer. In one room is a woman washing bones with her dirty hands, in another place four men are seated on a big chest, with a bit of Bologna sausage in one hand and a chunk of black bread in the other, making their noon-day meal. These same hands have just finished turning over filthy scraps from the garbage boxes and the gutters. On the ground floor a man, who looks for all the world like a brigand, is stirring broth over the fire, and the horrible odor of rottenness that comes from the pot is enough to knock one down.

Few of the members of the Italian colony speak English, except here and there one has mastered a few common phrases; but there is one word that all of them understand, and that is “Beer.” Here, as in other quarters where the poor are found, sour beer is dealt out at a cent a glass. I once asked a police officer if there was much drunkenness there. “Oh, yes, sir,” he replied; “we can go in there any night and get a cart load of drunken men and women.”

Passing through these quarters of abode of our foreign born brethren you will often find two or more families occupying a single room. Sometimes as many as a dozen people are to be found living in a small room. Often a family of five will take in lodgers at five cents a night. There are no beds. Chalk marks are made on the floor allotting a space 2x6 feet to each other. To add to their income they sell sour beer at 2 cents a quart. The place is filthy beyond belief. The upper floors are not quite so bad; but they contain sights that baffle description. The inmates are huddled together in disregard of cleanliness and decency. The rooms are dirty and the air is foul. The food is gathered principally from the garbage boxes of the streets or from the offal of the markets. The cooking is done from time to time and fills the room with horrible odors. There are no bedsteads. Filthy looking mattresses on the floor, or on boards placed upon supports. The inmates never undress, but go to bed with their clothes on, including their boots and shoes. The children are wan and pinched in appearance, and frightfully dirty. What wonder that sickness and disease hold high revel here!

Bad as is the lot of these people, they at least exist upon the face of the earth. Those who dwell in the cellars of these wretched quarters are infinitely worse off. They have but one entrance, and a single window gives light and ventilation. There is no outlet in the rear and the filth of the street drains steadily into them. They are occupied by the poorest of the poor, and the amount, of misery and wretchedness, dirt and squalor to be witnessed in them passes description. In the winter a stove heats the place, and renders the air so foul that one unaccustomed to it cannot breath in the room. Many of these cellars are lodging houses into which the wretched outcasts who walk the streets during the day, crowd for shelter at night. They pay from two to five cents for a night’s lodging, and sometimes as many as from twenty-five to fifty are packed in these terrible holes.

There are sections of many streets in the business part of the city that equal in wretchedness and misery those previously described. They are terrible streets, and even the police venture into them with caution. Drunken brawls, fights and stabbing affrays are of nightly occurrence.

John Chinaman is a stranger and a waif in the great city, but he has managed to establish a distinct quarter in Clark street. In other portions of the city are Chinese laundries, where the almond-eyed Celestials conduct their business of washing and ironing; but here are the headquarters of the Mongolians, their gaming and opium dens. Though peaceable as a rule, they are sometimes troublesome, and the police find them hard customers to handle. They are inveterate gamblers, and one of their chief dissipations consists in stupifying themselves by smoking opium. The opium dens are simply dirty rooms provided with wooden bunks, and sometimes beds, in which the smokers may lie and sleep off the effects of the terrible drug. Many of these places are patronized by white people, and some number women of the lower class among their customers. Half nude men and women of all nationalities and colors are sometimes found lying in heaps in a single room. These cases are rare, however, as the authorities are watchful for this class of law-breakers.

The Pawnbrokers

The stranger passing along Clark street is struck with the number of quiet, dingy looking shops over which are suspended the old sign of the Lombards—three gilt ball signs; all of the latter more or less dingy, may be seen in many other quarters of the city, but they are nowhere so numerous as in the street we have mentioned. These pawnbrokers’ shops, and, as a rule, the proprietors, are leeches—sucking the life blood of the poor, and grow rich upon their miseries. Of course, in all large cities there must of necessity be a great aggregation of poverty and misery. To the poor, the pawnbroker is a necessity. They must have some place to which they can repair at once and, by pledging such articles as they possess, raise the pittance they so sorely need. Municipal legislators the world over recognize this necessity, and endeavor to throw such safeguards around the business of pawnbroking that the poor shall not be entirely at the mercy of the brokers. The great state of Illinois has in the last few years passed a state pawners law which has given to thousands of the poor low rates of interest.

In Chicago the law requires that licenses to do business as pawnbrokers shall be issued to none but persons of known good character. The Mayor of the city alone has the power of issuing such licenses, and mayors of all parties have been in the habit of putting a very liberal construction upon the law. None but those so licensed can do business in Chicago. Mayors of all cliques and parties, have exercised their power with apparently little sense of the responsibility which rests upon them. They have not ordinarily at least, required clear proof of the integrity of the applicants, but have usually licensed every applicant possessed of particular or other influence. There is scarcely an instance where they have revoked a license thus granted, even when they have been furnished with proofs of the dishonesty of the holders.

Very few, if any pawnbrokers, pay any attention to the law. They know that the great majority of their customers are ignorant of the provisions of the statutes and that those who are familiar with it will not avail themselves of its protection, as they fear to lose the favor of the pawnbrokers. Consequently they fix their own rate of interest, which may be said to average five per cent per month, or any fractional part of a month, or sixty per cent per year. Some of the more unscrupulous members of the fraternity, where dealings are exclusively with the poor, charge a much higher rate, extorting as much as ten per cent a month from those whose needs are very great.

The writer recalls a case where a widow of a few days came into a pawnshop on Clark street. She was clad in a light calico wrapper with a small shawl thrown about her head. She was destitute, and had been ordered from her little three-room flat near by, unless the almost fabulous sum, to her, of seven dollars and fifty cents, should be paid over to the landlord at once. Trembling she entered the dingy “store” and offered her engagement ring in pawn. Being asked the amount she wanted for the pledge, she was told that she would receive just one-quarter of that amount.

“Oh, sir,” she pleaded, “I must have that amount, my baby is sick and the doctor said that to remove her now would mean to kill her. The ring is the last and most precious gift I have of my dear, dead husband. I will redeem it, if God gives me life and strength to do so.”

The hardened man refused to give more, and taking the ring from his hand, with tears streaming down her pale cheeks, she started toward the door.

My sympathies were naturally with the poor, grief-stricken woman, and advancing toward her asked if I might assist her in any way. She told me a story of want and deprivation. How she had sold everything of value she had in order to furnish medicine for her husband who had been sick for a long time. How, one by one, her most cherished and useful articles of furniture, bric-a-brac and jewelry had been sold or pawned, keeping to the last, the ring, the one token that meant so much to her.

Turning to the keeper of the shop I instructed him to give her the amount she had previously asked for, stating that I would pay him that amount if the woman in question failed to redeem the ring within sixty days. I shall never forget the expression of gratitude that seemed to permeate her whole being, and with profuse thankfulness, and “God bless you, sir,” she departed.

Another source of profit to the pawnbrokers arises from the sale of unredeemed articles. Advances are made at so low a rate that the property pledged is sure to bring more when put up for sale than the sum loaned upon it.

The majority of the pawnbrokers of Chicago are Polish and Russian Jews, and are the most rascally of that race. They do not monopolize the business, however, for there are Englishmen, Irishmen and even Americans engaged in it. The most honest dealers are found among the Americans and Englishmen. The pawnbroker is by nature a scoundrel, and so far as the observation of the writer goes, has not one redeeming quality. He advances the smallest amount on goods pledged, extorts the highest rates of interest, and is the most merciless in his dealings with his customers of any of the fraternity. The Jews are so numerous in this business, that they have given it its peculiar reputation. These wretches suck the very life blood from the poor, and having gotten possession of their property, do not hesitate to sell it for many times its value, when they see an opportunity for doing so. When the owner comes for his or her property, the pawnbroker declares, with well feigned regret, that it cannot be found, and either turns the owner out of doors, or buys up his pawn ticket at a very heavy discount. He knows the disinclination to seek redress at law. These wretches do not hesitate to deck their families out in the clothing, shawls and jewelry pledged to them. Often the clothes are worn out, and the return of the pledge is either refused or the articles are restored in such a damaged condition as to be useless. Sometimes a spirited depositor will demand full redress for the loss so inflicted upon him, and will threaten the broker with an appeal to the courts. If the broker is convinced that the depositor is in earnest, he settles up promptly; but there is an end to his dealings with that person. He has no wish to have his transactions brought to the light of Justice. Such proceeding would bring unpleasant consequences in its train, and he does not desire such customers.

The majority of the pawnshops are dirty and repulsive in appearance. Before them hangs the sign of the three balls, and the windows are filled with unredeemed pledges for sale, and are adorned with signs stating that money is loaned here on all kinds of property at the most liberal rates.

Pushing open the dirty door, we enter a dingy apartment. The air is close and stuffy, and the room smells strongly of garlic or onions. A man with an unmistakably Jewish face and a villainous expression of countenance stands behind the narrow counter. We take our stand inside, invisibly of course, and watch the proceedings.

A young man enters, well-dressed, and rather dissipated in appearance. The child of Abraham watches him narrowly, and begins to shake his head and groan, as if in pain. The visitor approaches the counter, and lays a gold watch upon it. The broker clutches it eagerly, examines it, and groans louder than ever.

“Vat you want on dis vatch?” he asks mournfully.

“Fifty dollars. It cost me one hundred and fifty,” is the reply.

“Fifty tollar! fifty tollar! Holy Moshish, vat you take me for?”

Then turning, calls wildly, “Abraham! Abraham! you shust koom heir, quick.”

A second Jew, dirtier and more disreputable looking than the first, makes his appearance, and the proprietor, passing up his hands, shrieks out, as if in despair:

“Abraham! he vants fifty tollars on dat vatch. De man is crazy.”

“Ve shall be ruined,” echoes Abraham, hoarsely. “Ve couldn’t do it. Tish too much.”

The proprietor waves his arms wildly, takes the watch from Abraham, and eyeing the owner sharply for a moment, says:

“I tell you vat I do. I gif you fifteen tollars. How long you vant de monish?”

“Only for a month,” replies the young man, evidently struggling between disgust and despair.

“I let you haf fifteen tollars for de month,” says the pawnbroker, seizing a ticket and commencing to make it out. “You pay me one tollar for de loan, and pay me fifty cents to put de vatch in de safe, you know it might get stole if I leaf it out hier. Dat shuit you, mine young frient?”

The young man has “been there” before, and knows that remonstrance is useless. He nods a silent affirmation, and the pawnbroker makes out a ticket for fifteen dollars, and hands him thirteen dollars and fifty cents, having deducted the interest and the charge for storage. The young man receives the money and ticket, and goes out in silence.

“Dat ish peesness,” says Abraham, admiringly, as the proprietor puts the watch away.

“Yesh,” mutters the pawnbroker, with a satisfied air, “de vatch ish vort a hundred tollar. If he don’t take it up, it will bring us dat.”

The next customer is a poor woman, who comes to pledge some article of household use. She is ground down to the lowest cent, and charged the highest interest; and so the proceedings go on until we become heartsick, and leave the place as invisibly as we can.

The principal dealings of the pawnbrokers are, as we have said, with the poor. Life is hard in Chicago, and those who dwell under the shadow are obliged to make great sacrifices of comfort to keep body and soul together. Everything that will bring money finds its way to the pawn shop and the miserable pittance received for it goes to provide food. Too often articles of household use or clothing are pawned to raise money for drink, and the possessions of the family are one by one sacrificed for this wretched purpose, until nothing is left.

The pawnbrokers find a very profitable class of customers in the respectable working people of the city; many of these regularly pawn articles, sometimes of value, at the first of the week, and redeem them when they receive their wages on Saturday. It is to the broker’s interest to be obliging to these people, since they are regular customers, and he reaps a rich harvest from them in the exhorbitant interest they pay him.

It is a common belief that the pawnbrokers are also receivers of stolen goods. Some of the more unscrupulous may make ventures of this kind, but as a rule the brokers have nothing to do with thieves; the risk of detection is too great, so they confine themselves to what they term their “legitimate business,” and leave dealings in stolen property to the “fences,” who constitute a distinct class.

Pacific Garden Mission