CHAPTER X.

“ALL SORTS AND CONDITIONS OF MEN.”

“After all,” some readers will say, “what does it matter? These people are all outlaws; they deserve what they get, whatever it is.” But the net of the New York police was exceeding wide, and the mesh was exceeding fine, and no class of the community escaped. As the sun riseth upon the evil and the just, so the blackmailer of the Police Department marked as his prey the honest and virtuous as well as the vicious and criminal. The Lexow Committee report:--

The evidence of blackmail and extortion does not rest alone on the evidence of criminals or persons accused of the commission of crime. It has been abundantly proven that bootblacks, push-cart, and fruit vendors, as well as keepers of soda-water stands, corner grocerymen, sailmakers with flag poles extending a few feet beyond the place which they occupy, boxmakers, provision dealers, wholesale drygoods merchants, and builders, who are compelled at times to use the sidewalk and street, steamboat and steamship companies, who require police service on their docks, those who give public exhibitions, and in fact all persons, and all classes of persons whose business is subject to the observation of the police, or who may be reported as violating ordinances, or who may require the aid of the police, all have to contribute in substantial sums to the vast amounts which flow into the station-houses, and which, after leaving something of the nature of a deposit, then flow on higher. The commerce of the port even is taxed when the functions of the police department touch it, so that the shippers are compelled to submit to exactions in the city of New York that they do not meet with in any other port.--Vol. i., p. 42.

The chief sufferers, of course, were the poor and those who had no helper. They were as much at the mercy of their oppressors as the French people before the Revolution were at the mercy of their nobles. Again and again the senators expressed their amazement that a population so harassed and oppressed did not rise in revolt. Their wrongs certainly were immeasurably greater than those which led to the Tea-party in Boston Harbour and the Declaration of Independence. The chief abuse, the great grievance, might be summed up in one sentence. There was no justice for the poor. A witness of the name of Collins, speaking of the notorious Alderman, Silver Dollar Smith, and the gang by which he reigned supreme on the east side, said:--

Smith has a regular organisation; you couldn’t convict them people neither; you couldn’t convict them people in Court neither. It is an organisation to represent witnesses to condemn people if they have no money. If they have money to give, they are innocent; they perjure themselves if they pay money.--Vol. v., p. 4,894.

But it is not necessary to go beyond the finding of the Lexow Committee in their official Report:--

The co-ordination of all the departments of city government, under the sway of the dominant Democratic faction in that city, has produced a harmony of action operating so as to render it impossible for oppressed citizens, particularly those in the humbler walks of life, the poor and needy, to obtain redress or relief from the oppression or the tyranny of the police. Their path to justice was completely blocked. It is not credible that the abuses shown to exist have been the creation of but a short time. It is clear from the evidence that abuses have existed for many years back; that they have been constantly increasing through the years, but that they did not reach their full and perfect development until Tammany Hall obtained absolute control of the city government, and under that control the practices which have been shown conclusively before your Committee, were brought into a well regulated and comprehensive system, conducted apparently upon business principles.--Vol. i., p. 37.

The way in which the criminals in uniform and on the judge’s bench acted when by any chance they could punish any one for doing what they themselves were doing all the time has already been remarked in the case of Captain Creedon, who was the only captain suspended by the Police Board during the whole investigation. A more cruel case was that of Karl Werner. This man had tried to bribe a policeman with five dollars, and was promptly arrested. Every difficulty was placed in the way of letting him have bail. At last the Court promised to accept bail, and a professional bondsman offered to give bonds for 100 dollars. His wife raised 95 dollars, and because she could not raise the additional five on the spot, the bondsman confiscated the 95 dollars, and the poor wretch was sent to gaol. The professional bondsman is one of the worst of the harpies who prey upon the unfortunate. Mr. Goff, who reported this incident to the Commission, deplored the impotence to save the victim of the bondsman and the police. “It is,” he said, “simply another of the many instances of the terrible reign of terrorism” (vol. iv., p. 4,225).

Yet at the very time when Werner was being treated so harshly, the police were collecting blackmail by thousands of dollars every week. At first the Committee was incredulous. The Chairman asked once:--

Do you conscientiously believe that, notwithstanding these revelations, notwithstanding the situation that we are brought face to face with now, and what has occurred, there are police officers to-day in this city who accept blackmail?

But he was speedily convinced that the revelations and the terrors of exposure had only reduced the amount of the blackmail levied by reducing the number of those who could be compelled to pay. The evidence of Captain Meakin’s collector, Edward Shalvey, was conclusive on this point. He swore in the witness-box that he had gone on collecting, without making the slightest change, right down to September:--

Q. You collected from these several places, liquor dealers, policy shops, and houses of ill-fame as you did under the previous captain?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. Did you ever meet with any refusal to pay from people engaged in this class of business, or did they all pay as matter of course?

A. They all paid as matter of course.

Q. So that, officer, even beneath the terrible frown of the Lexow Committee, the collections went on just the same?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. The old, old story continued, is that not so?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. And while, as a matter of fact, while there were exposures made and being testified to before this Committee since last April or May, right along the collections continued unbroken, did they not?

A. Yes, sir; not to such an extent.

Q. And the captains took the money in the same way?

A. Yes, sir.

Chairman Lexow: It seems incredible!--Vol. i., pp. 5,407-8.

“It is a tough old world, sir,” as the old stager remarked to an enthusiastic young Reformer, “and takes a deal of moving.” It is a very tough old world, and in the whole hemisphere there are few places tougher than New York.

The contributions paid by contractors to Mr. Croker can easily be understood. One Michael Moran, who was engaged in the towboat business, towing garbage under the Street Cleaning Department, made various subscriptions of from £10 to £30 to Tammany Hall. He was asked why he did so. He replied that Mr. Croker was the treasurer of the organisation he was doing some work for. “Tammany Hall, you mean?” asked the Chairman. “Well, I guess so,” replied Moran. “Don’t you know there is a distinction between the City and the organisation known as Tammany Hall?” asked the Chairman. There was no reply. But Moran evidently did not. Tammany Hall was the organisation that stood for the City. For him it was the City, and Moran said to subscribe to Tammany was the natural feeling amongst everybody that worked for the City; “one done it, and I didn’t want to be left behind by anybody else; I thought I would hold my own end up”:--

Q. Did any one suggest to you the advisability of giving up this money?

A. I have had conversations with other men that were in the employ of the City, and we compared notes occasionally to know what was done, and how we could keep ourselves solid.

No political contributions were made by Moran before Tammany came into power. So the Chairman asked:--

Q. How is it then that when the Department changed you felt called upon to send a cheque to Mr. Croker?

A. Well, because I didn’t think I could go on and do the amount of business I had for the City without recognising the people that were in power.

In 1892, when the Presidential Election was on, Moran doubled his subscription. Why was that? He replied:--

I compared notes with somebody in the same business that I was in myself, and found out somebody was paying a little more than I did, and I was afraid somebody in my line of business would put in a little more and I would get left.--Vol. v., pp. 4,912-6.

When once an evil system has got itself established, innumerable other influences combine to render its extirpation extremely difficult. The Committee was much scandalised by discovering that for premises whose licence had been cancelled for immorality, a new licence was granted almost immediately. But when the President of the Excise Board was asked to explain, he said:--

There came into consideration property interests; we found that if licences were refused for places where business was carried on, that the banks were affected who had loaned money on mortgages, persons who had loaned on mortgages, the banks who had notes of parties in business; the rents went to the support of persons who depended upon them solely; the tax commissioners of the city protested to the Board of Excise against the refusal to license premises, because it reduces the value of property, and for that reason reduces the taxable values, and affected the city in that way; real estate agents and other persons interested, and owners of property came to us and protested at the start that we ought not to refuse to allow a reputable business to be carried on on any premises, because they had been improperly conducted before.--Vol. iv., p. 4,379.

And it came to pass that no sooner was a saloon closed for vice or crime than it was opened again with a fresh licence.

The most mournful and tragic part of all these stories of oppression is that which relates to the treatment of the forlorn and desolate women who have no money with which to bribe the police. For them there is no mercy. The theory of the police, as we have seen, seems to have been that prostitutes existed for the purpose of raising revenue for the force. The women of the streets were the irregular tax-gatherers of the Department. Their vice was not merely connived at, but actively encouraged, so long as the police received their stipulated proportion of the wages of shame.

The women were the bondslaves of the Administration. By law they had no right to ply for hire; but, in consideration of the payment of a regular ransom, they were left free to earn their precarious living.

“This is a phase,” said Mr. Goff, “and a revolting phase, of a custom that exists in New York. I suppose it is the lowest form of oppression and corruption that possibly could be conceived by the human mind; and that is, a tax upon these unfortunate women in the streets at night; for they will not be allowed to walk the streets at night unless they pay so much to the officer, and this has been the custom in many districts of this city for years.”--Vol. iv., p. 3,617.

The tariff varied.[1] On some profitable beats, the licence fee was fifty cents per night. But as a general rule the rate for “cruising” was a dollar a week. So long as she paid she was all right--always with the understanding that the policeman was to be free to arrest her if she was complained of by any whom she molested. Irregulars--occasional clandestine unfortunates--were, of course, regarded as interlopers and hunted down remorselessly. The zeal of the policeman, which was not stirred in the least by the breach of the law, rose to white heat when a woman who had not paid her fees attempted to pick up customers.

[1] The following table of some of the rates enforced by the police may be found convenient for reference:--

Pool-rooms from £10 to £60 per month. Policy shops from £4 per month. Liquor dealers, 8s. per month. Prostitutes, outside, from 4s. a week to 2s. per night. Prostitutes, inside, 4s. per week. Houses of ill-fame from £2 to £10 per month. Ditto. Initiation fee on opening, from £100 to £400. Price of Police appointment, £60. " of a Sergeant’s post, £300. " of Captaincy, £3,000.

In theory, in New York--and, alas, in many other great cities--the right of a woman to freedom from arbitrary arrest without process of trial, and to redress for wrongful arrest, is absolute. In practice it does not exist. Every poor woman who is out after dark is liable to be arrested by a policeman, and to a woman friendless and forlorn there is written over the portals of every police-station, “All hope abandon ye who enter here.” Before the Police Justice, the policeman’s word goes. No corroborative evidence seems to have been demanded in New York. As one worthy testified before the Committee, he made arrests on general principles, and swore that his victim was loitering for purposes of prostitution. It was not necessary that she should commit any overt act, that she should molest any one, or that any citizen should complain of her molestation. It was enough that she should be loitering in the street. The oath of the policeman as to her intent settled her fate. A hurried gabble of words in a crowded court, and she was packed off to gaol.

This is the besetting sin of all attempts to keep the streets clear of immoral women by giving men, more or less immoral themselves, absolute liberty to arrest any woman whom they please to say is loitering for purposes of prostitution. It was with a flush of pride that I came all unawares upon a reference made before the Lexow Committee to the case of Miss Cass, which made the name of Endacott a byword and a reproach in London some dozen years ago. Counsel had not got the story quite right. His version curiously mixed up the Trafalgar Square agitation with the arrest of the dressmaker in Regent Circus, but he had the main idea quite right. Scotland Yard and Mr. Matthews hit the poor girl a foul blow before the incident was ended, but it was a welcome thing to find that their belated vengeance had failed to silence the reverberations of indignation evoked by her scandalous arrest.

Americans and foreigners are often shocked at the state of London streets. Mr. Croker, I remember, expressed himself as being much horrified at the state of Piccadilly at midnight. But better a thousand times have the scandal of our streets than place the liberty of all women at the mercy of the police. The arrests of women fell 50 per cent. in London after the uproar that was made about Miss Cass, and they are not likely to rise so long as the authorities insist upon the most just and salutary rule then introduced, that no woman shall be arrested for molesting by solicitation, unless the citizen who is molested is willing to give evidence next day in the police-court to that effect. The right of a human being to walk about the streets, to loiter about the streets, does not depend, and ought not to depend, upon the chastity of that individual. But if that principle were to be adopted as a principle of police action, it ought in justice to be applied impartially to both sexes.

Some very scandalous instances of the arbitrary arrest of innocent women, and their consignment to prison on the uncorroborated oath of a policeman, were brought before the Committee. The case of Ettie Kelter is one instance of the kind of thing that follows inevitably from making the policeman practically at once sole accuser and sole judge of the right of a woman to be at large in the streets.

Ettie Kelter was a young married woman of unimpeachable character. She had lived in Albany until August, 1894, when she came to live in New York. One Saturday evening in the following month she went out shopping, and being a stranger in the city she lost her way. She asked a gentleman to direct her to her destination. He did so. She took the wrong turning, so he called after telling her where she should go. She had hardly taken a few steps in the right direction before a young man--a policeman in plain clothes--seized her arm and dragged her off to the police-station. There he gave her in charge, declaring he had known her for years. It was in vain she protested she had never been in the city till the previous month. She was removed under arrest to another police-station, where she was locked up in a cell with a prostitute. She was terrified. She had been dragged through the street at a great rate, and no sooner was she in the cell than a blood-vessel burst. The blood gushed from her nose and mouth, scaring her companion, who thought she was bleeding to death. The blood streamed over the floor of the cell. But all the efforts of her companion failed to attract the attention of the policeman or the matron. She hammered at the door with a tin cup, but no one came. Not until the morning did the officer come to release them from the bloody cell.

Pale, weak, distracted, almost fainting, Ettie Kelter was bundled into court in the midst of a crowd of the offscourings of the streets, and brought up before Judge Hogan. She could not hear the charge, nor could she make out what the Judge said, excepting that he said something about soliciting. She did not know what it meant, but she passionately denied that she was anything but a respectable married woman who had only just come to New York. She might as well have held her peace. “Two months’ imprisonment. After that, three hundred dollars bail good behaviour.” This was Sunday morning. She was taken back to the cell, and her companion, who had been sentenced to three months’ imprisonment, showed her a lawyer’s card. “Send for that man,” she said, “give him twenty dollars and he will get you out.” Her companion did so and got out. Mrs. Kelter thought it would be better to send for her husband, who was employed as fireman on the emigrant ferryboat. The policeman who arrested her volunteered to go and tell him. But when he saw Kelter the message the policeman delivered was--

“Now you have a good chance of divorce; I arrested your wife last night, and she has got two months on the Island.”

She tried to write to her husband. But she had only two cents, and they would not give her a sheet of paper for less than five, nor would they send it out for less than fifty cents.

So the poor woman was taken to the Island, and kept there in prison for twenty-four days. At the end of that time her husband placed fifteen dollars in an envelope and handed it to Justice Hogan. His wife was released.

And that kind of infamy was going on all the time. The way in which the unfortunates were driven from pillar to post and treated as mere cattle, to be fleeced and plundered, provoked a very remarkable protest from a Police Captain who had sufficient humanity left in him to see the horror of the system which he had to administer. He was asked whose fault it was that the social evil flourished to such an extent. He said it was the fault of the law:--

Q. The law itself?

A. Yes, sir, if you give the women the same protection by law that you do a mule and a dog you will do away with two-thirds of the houses of prostitution and women of the street.--Vol. i., p. 5,198.

In reply to the Chairman he explained how it was that houses of ill-fame were so much more difficult to deal with than gaming houses. He said:--

Because, Senator, you take the women to court, they are fined a few dollars and turned out on the street again to go and get more money, be re-arrested and pay again; the trouble is that prostitutes are fined.

Q. Wasn’t that done with gamblers as well?

A. Well, you could get their paraphernalia and get them away, but you couldn’t with the women; a prostitute should never be fined and her money taken away from her; those women are not bad women until they are made so; they are dragged off the street and dragged before the court and their money taken away from them, and then drove out on the street again; they are not bad until they are drove to it; now, there were fully 30,000 arrests made from January 1st, 1876, to January 1st, 1878, in that little precinct alone, and I will venture to say there were not 1,500 women arrested, but arrested over and over again.--Vol. v., p. 5,213.

He was still further examined by Senator O’Connor:--

Q. I want to ask you a question or two: what do you mean to say, that if people would give the women the same protection given to mules and horses prostitutes would be fewer?

A. What I mean by it is this: when they are arrested, instead of sending them to a magistrate to be fined and money taken from them, send them to a reformatory and inquire into their history, and you will find there are a great many of these people that you see lost in the papers. As I say, the women are not bad naturally; it is only where they are driven to it. If there was a reformatory and the money taken from them and taken care of, and put the institution under good women, good, proper persons to control that reformatory, and not abuse them, not send them to jail or abuse them, but send them to a reformatory. You will find some people from Massachusetts, some from Ohio, some from somewhere else, some from Michigan; send them to their homes, and if they are foreigners, who have not been here five years, send them back to Europe, and you will find as a general thing that the reason why the prostitutes and why the disorderly houses cannot be overcome is that there is no care taken of them; they haven’t a friend in the world. There is no friend to a prostitute; everybody bangs her, everybody beats her; she is dragged into the station-house, taken to court, fined, and thrown on the street to get more money and bring it back.--Vol. i., p. 5,214.

These words deserve to be written up in letters of gold in every place wherever men discuss the question of abating this plague. It is the verdict of experience upon the habitual resource of the unthinking. “Go to, let us harry our sisters!” is the first and last word of most of those who dream it is possible to promote the cause of morality by outraging the principles of justice.

Of the system in New York there is only one good thing to be said. Bad as it was, it is infinitely better than the hideous abomination of the European system of tolerated houses with their _police des mœurs_ and the compulsory weekly surgical examination of their unhappy inmates. Better a thousand times even the rude, irregular tyrannies of Hoch and Koch, and all the diabolical gang of blackmailers, than elaborate all these infamies into a legalised system stamped with the seal of the approval of the State and enforced by the dread penalties of the law.

Prostitution, everywhere hateful, is at least less intolerable when it is free. When to the horrors of prostitution there is added the legalised slavery of the regulation system, you have indeed the sum of all villainies, and the abomination that maketh desolate is at last set up in the very holy of holies.