Part 33

At the present time in all parts of the United States the lower strata of men and women are deprived of the results of their labor except in quantities barely sufficient to retain life in their bodies. They are huddled together indiscriminately as to sex, in close, crowded quarters, so that the ordinary delicacies of life cannot be practiced even if there should be a desire.

The chiefest and often the only form of pleasure within their reach is that given by nature for the purest and best use in life, but which comes to be the veriest debauchery. Children and youth growing up among adults, depraved because no ray of light was shed to show the way for moral and physical uplifting, must naturally imbibe the miasma of social impurity. From the very cradle through life their influence is to further degrade themselves.

On the other hand are the extreme rich, who, not being compelled to labor for sustenance, spend their time and money in selfish enjoyment. In contrast with the extreme poor, they have every possibility to cultivate the good in themselves, but will not, and it grows pale and sickly among the rank weeds of their selfishness.

Chiefly, among self-gratifications, are social evil habits, especially on part of the men of wealth. Their manner of life, the food they eat, creates a fictitious force which must expend itself. They may have a chivalrous regard for the women of their class, but consider all women below them to be legitimate prey.

Relying on their wealth to insinuate themselves into the good graces of young women by supplying them with such things as will gratify vanity, the offspring of rich parentage find fascination in pursuit of their object. When she is at last won, and her virtuous scruples overcome, she is thrown aside like the wilted flower which has yielded all its perfume. The brothel is open to receive all such, particularly if she be handsome of face or form.

ONLY BURNED ORPHAN ASYLUM.

New York, Chicago, St. Louis, any great city will furnish examples by the thousands. Where one girl enters this life from choice (through sensuality inherited from the lust of her father, no doubt), ninety-nine are sucked into its whirlpool by force of circumstances. The young woman who is a clerk is paid an amount which will barely cover the cost of living. She is expected to dress well, and if she protests that she can not, is told to rely on some "gentleman friend" for other expenses. Likewise in factories and shops. Only she who is protected by home associations, and whose labor is done to add to the general home comfort, can hope to escape, and then not always.

The grim, irrefutable facts in connection with the thrusting of the working girl into prostitution by the wealthy owners of department stores, was never better expressed than in a recent story by O. Henry, in McClure's Magazine.

Henry dreamed that he had been dead a long while, and that he had finally arrived at the Judgment Day. An Angel policeman was haling him before the Great Court of Last Resort. As he was forced into the waiting room the Angel policeman asked him kindly if he belonged with a certain crowd which he saw near him. The members of this coterie were dressed in frock coats, gray trousers, spats, patent leather shoes, and all of them boasted of high silk hats.

"Who are they?" asked the trembling Henry. "Oh, they are the men who ran big department stores and paid their poor girls five dollars a week in order that they themselves might belong to clubs, go to Europe and own fine residences and automobiles," replied the angel.

"Not on your life," replied Henry. "I'm only the feller that murdered a blind man for his pennies and burned down the orphan asylum. I don't belong with that bunch."

With the present system of government, each year tends to annihilate the middle class, in which lies a nation's strength.

"Ill fares the Hand, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates, and men decay."

While extreme poverty exists on the one hand, and extreme wealth on the other, it would be as plausible to dam up Niagara Falls as to stop prostitution by legislating against it. The current, checked in one course, is bound to break out in another, and with all its pent-up force. Human life, like the river, is bound to flow in the channel of the least resistance.

Nature planned the association of the sexes as surely and as inevitably as any other of her laws. Whenever her laws are trespassed upon in any way there is suffering. The wretched conditions of the poor and the perverted natures of the wealthy turn sex association into social evil.

GIVE ALL HONEST CHANCE.

Giving to all young men and women honest means of livelihood with extra times and resources for the cultivation of their talents and their better selves, honorable marriage would be preferred to prostitution in nearly every case.

There is no hope for moral purification among the wealthy until such time as they will use their time and talents in useful work. An enormous field for missionary work would be for some one of ability to convert the wealthy world to the religion of useful work. As a self-evident truth, no able-bodied person has the right to live off the labor of another person. Instead of the many working to the last notch of human endurance that the few may live in luxury and idleness, there should be labor for all, and enough for all. Money, however, is without love, or patriotism, or kindness--is all-powerful, and is fawned upon, and catered to by those possessing it in limited quantities.

The remedy for prostitution, as well as other evils, lies in the hands of the American people themselves, if they only knew it. Just a few years of intelligent voting and legislating for better conditions for the many, instead of for the few extremely wealthy, would tend to overcome all injustice and inequality. The social evil would be weeded out because people would then have time to obey the injunction, "Know Thyself."

AVERAGE EVIL LIFE VERY SHORT.

According to statistics the average life of a prostitute is four years after entering the maelstrom of such a career. The life is never such as to be recommended even by its followers. It is moral as well as physical death when followed, and is well-nigh impossible to escape once having bowed to its seeming fascination.

As to the libertine, he "sells himself for what he buys." He may enjoy pleasure, but not happiness. Happiness comes from within, in the consciousness of doing right. Pleasures come from without, in the gratification of self. In addition to the hollowness of the enjoyment in the lives of prostitute and libertine, is always the danger of loathsome disease which tortures body and brain, lowering them in their own minds. It is about the only ill in the category that does not command sympathy, but it should.

The evils of drunkenness, theft, or prostitution are on the same basis as far as the "necessity" for their existence. All are more or less the result of a badly adjusted economic condition of whatever nation. They can be reduced to a minimum, if not eradicated, by removing the cause.

ARGUMENT AGAINST SEGREGATION.

The first and most convincing argument against the segregation of vice is found in the fact that the law expressly condemns crime of all kinds and requires its relentless prosecution in order to effect its destruction. Besides, vice districts would shortly become breeding spots for the propagation of crime of every kind. Here would be attracted the criminal classes from all parts of the country, because here they would be protected by the very law which they violate.

Not only would the inhabitants of such districts regard themselves within the law, but others, who now fear to enter these resorts because of the probability of arrest and public exposure, would patronize the district, armed with the knowledge that non-arrest was a certainty and exposure highly improbable. The locality and extent of such districts would soon become a matter of common information, and young men would thus find easy access to disreputable resorts which otherwise they might never find.

EVIL NOT NECESSARY.

Many advance the argument that the evil is a necessary one and must be tolerated, else the safety of virtuous women upon our streets would be seriously threatened and imperiled. The fallacy and absurdity of this contention is proved by the conditions which exist in many of the large cities of Great Britain and Canada, where houses of ill-fame are practically unknown, and where women are as safe as in cities where the segregation of vice prevails. This result has been obtained by persistent effort on the part of officials whose duty it is to suppress and punish crime. Such a condition can never be secured here if districts are established where this particular form of vice may flourish with the tacit approval of our public officers. Surely we in Chicago are not willing to admit that which has been done elsewhere cannot be done here.

Chicago could not legally license or regulate this evil, for our state law forbids license. The moral sentiment of our people is also against it. Several years or so ago, when a resolution was introduced into the city council looking toward segregation, medical examination and license, a vigorous protest was made by the Chicago Woman's Club, the Evanston Woman's Club, and other such organizations. The good women of Chicago will not tamely submit to such additional degradation of their wronged sisters.

NOBLER WOMANHOOD THE GOAL.

Chicago women are working hard to protect innocent women from lives of infamy and to help the repentant to a nobler womanhood. If there were men working among their own sex with equal devotions there would be a lessening of the social evil. If physicians would teach men the safety of chastity and the horrors of licentiousness, if preachers would train their guns against impurity, if popular clubs would expel licentious men, if the mayor would order the arrest of every person, man or woman, found in these houses, apparently so well known to the police, and have such arrests continued night after night, these methods would cause a marked lessening of the social evil.

The police of Chicago have done much in recent years to make it a better city. To them is due the credit more than to anyone else for better conditions in our moral life. If they are encouraged and allowed to work out these problems in their own practical way they will do more for our city's good than all the theoretical reformers combined.

Many conditions ought not to exist, but they must and will remain for the present. Your reformer, so-called, writes and pleads for the ideal. The police force deals with what is and knows best what can be done.

SUPPRESS MANUFACTURE AND SALE OF DANGEROUS WEAPONS--THEY ARE A CONSTANT MENACE TO LIFE AND GOOD ORDER.

MADE SOLELY FOR UNLAWFUL USE--ENGENDER CRIME, INCREASE ACCIDENTS AND MAKE SUICIDE EASY--CARRYING CONCEALED WEAPONS A VICIOUS AND INEXCUSABLE HABIT.]

The "lid" should be put upon deadly weapons--pistols, revolvers, dirk knives, brass knuckles--not merely to hide them, but to prevent their manufacture and sale.

While serving as police officer I could not fail to observe that substantially all of the crimes committed with the pistol or revolver resulted from the practice of carrying the weapon upon the person. There would be a controversy in a bar-room, on the street or elsewhere, followed by a fight and ending with a shooting by someone present who had the weapon conveniently concealed upon his person. But for the presence of the weapon on the scene there would have been no shooting.

I recall but one case where the defendant left the scene of the controversy to procure a weapon. Murder committed by lying in wait or with premeditation for any length of time is extremely rare. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the crime is committed on the spur of the moment.

Statistics furnished by the police department show startling facts. Citizens do not realize the number of persons who are either wounded or killed every year by shooting with the revolver. One can hardly pick up a metropolitan paper without finding an account of a shooting, either by accident or design. We have laws forbidding the carrying of concealed weapons, which are to a certain extent effective, but to a very small extent, because it is practically impossible to search every man on the street--and keep him searched. The law, no matter how rigidly enforced, can do but little substantial good.

We must also consider other deadly weapons, such as dirk knives and brass knuckles. So far as these are concerned, they are manufactured solely to be used as instruments of crime. The brass knuckle is never used as a weapon of defense, but always as one of offense. The dirk knife has no use other than as a weapon to be used against human beings. It is not used either in war or for any domestic purpose.

So far as the revolver is concerned, it has no proper use anywhere in the world. It is carried either as a weapon of offense or defense; but as a weapon of defense it is only possibly effective when there is a revolver in the hands of the antagonist. If he has none, none is needed for defense.

An attack made upon a man at close quarters by the use of a sandbag or any other weapon in the hands cannot be met practically with a revolver. There is no time or opportunity for its use.

The proposition is therefore sound that, if no one carried a pistol for offense, none would be needed for defense.

Shotguns and rifles are used in hunting, but not the revolver. The ordinary revolver of commerce, the one which a man can carry concealed, has no use in modern warfare. There is no legitimate use anywhere for such a weapon.

September, 1907, officials of the New York police department, acting under Commissioner Bingham's orders, took 5,000 revolvers out to sea beyond Sandy Hook and threw them overboard. The literary secretary of the commissioner said it reminded him of the Doges who used to wed the sea with rings. If the New York ceremony was not so richly symbolical it certainly was vastly more sensible.

These revolvers were the results of eighteen months of police seizures. Some of them were automatic weapons in the $28 class, and others were of the common variety used by small boy initiates in crime. Together they were worth at least $15,000. Not so very long ago New York City held an auction sale every year just before the Fourth of July at which all confiscated weapons were sold. Thereby Fourth of July killings were made easy and cheap, and crime at all other times of the year was encouraged, for most of the weapons went to pawnbrokers and second-hand dealers, who put them back in the hands that would use them worst. The police have one instance of a revolver that to their knowledge came back into their possession four times in this way.

It is wise to destroy these weapons, but consider how little good is accomplished compared with what might be accomplished by original control of the sale of weapons. The city sacrifices the $15,000 or something less which it might have got for these weapons, but if it would take $15,000 and spend it vigorously in regulating the sale of weapons, in licensing and perhaps heavily taxing all dealers, in requiring the keeping of complete records of sales and in prosecuting all persons carrying concealed weapons, it would accomplish very much more to the same end.

Chicago is a city in which unlimited laxity is allowed dealers in pistols. The way is made easy for the criminal who wants to arm himself. Despite the successful experience of other cities in regulating the sales of weapons, the council is reluctant to give the city a stronger ordinance.

Suicide with the revolver is a favorite method of self-destruction with men. Press the muzzle against the head or heart, a slight pressure of the forefinger--instant oblivion follows.

The bandit who holds up the railroad train and robs the passengers almost invariably uses a revolver. With this small weapon he terrorizes and robs an entire trainload of travelers.

The vicious carry pistols with criminal intent, but there is also a very large class, which might be designated as a "weak" class, which carries the pistol without any criminal intent, but under the influence of a fascination for the handling of deadly weapons. Among certain classes of negroes it is the habit to carry pistols or other deadly weapons to balls, parties or other places where they congregate, and they carry them, apparently, to a certain extent, as a matter of ornament, something on the principle of our gentlemanly forefathers of a few hundred years ago, who considered no full-dress equipment complete without the rapier. The very fact that these weapons are present leads to brawls and quarrels, which result only too frequently in killing, or an attempt to kill.

It is dangerous to put into the hands of a weak person a weapon which may carry death and destruction by the small pressure of the finger. The very handling of such weapons seems to breed the desire to use them. The situation is something similar to that of a man who gazes over the brink of a precipice and to whom there comes an almost irresistible desire to throw himself over.

There would be some force in the argument that the law-abiding citizen has the right to carry a revolver to protect himself from thugs if his pistol were any real protection; but it is not. The attack from the thug on the highway comes so suddenly and unexpectedly that there is rarely an opportunity to use a weapon in defense; and, even if it should occasionally happen that a man would be at a disadvantage because he had no pistol, this loss to the community is outweighed a thousand to one by the evils which follow its use.

Why should we permit men to manufacture and sell instruments of crime--weapons which are designed for no other purpose? We do have laws which prevent the free sale of poisons, based upon the fact that poisons may be used as a means of self-destruction or in the destruction of others. But we have no safeguards against the purchase and use of these other deadly agencies.

A brilliant display of deadly weapons may be found in any first-class hardware store, one which is peculiarly tempting to the young, the weak and the vicious. Pawnshops are heavily stocked with weapons of this character.

There are a hundred places on the streets of Chicago, particularly on Clark and State streets, where may be found in cases standing in front of stores a display of brass knuckles, dirks and revolvers, which can be purchased at a very small price--and without restrictions of any kind. Yet they are purchased, almost exclusively, to be used as instruments of crime.

Experience has demonstrated that the laws which forbid the carrying of concealed weapons are not effective; and it is not possible that, in the very nature of things, they can be entirely so. There is only one sure and effective way of preventing the criminal use of these deadly weapons--that is, to make it impossible for men to get hold of them. This can be done only by forbidding their manufacture and sale. The State, in the exercise of its police power, has authority to pass laws of this character.

I submit that it is the duty of the community to demand the passage of such laws. There seems to be no answer to this proposition when you consider that these articles are not manufactured to sell for any legitimate purpose, and that to deprive men of the privilege of manufacturing and selling deadly weapons does not, in any degree, deprive the community of anything which may be of any real use or benefit.

It is the duty of the State to prevent as well as to punish crime and to protect its weak and vicious citizens, so far as it can, from the temptation to do wrong. We would not tempt men to steal by affording them easy opportunities for theft, especially if we knew that they were either weak or wicked. And yet, we make absolutely no effort to keep deadly weapons out of dangerous hands. We do attempt to forbid their concealment. Practically this attempt is a failure and, in effect, we permit men to carry deadly weapons which may be successfully concealed until the very moment they are brought into use.

A great deal of the lurid literature has grown up around the pistol. The cowboy with his gun play has always been an attractive character in fiction. No doubt there is a time in the pioneer life of a community when there seems to be some excuse for the use of the revolver. But a dispassionate view of this subject, having in mind the welfare of a settled, organized State, every part of which is pervaded by law and within its restraining influence, points to the conclusion that the time has come to legislate revolvers, dirks and brass knuckles out of existence.

QUEERS THE TOWN.

The elaborate display of revolvers, dirks and brass knuckles in shop windows creates a most unfavorable impression on visitors. Many travelers like to walk to their hotels for the exercise after the long journey from the east.

They get their first impression of Chicago from a walk up Clark or State street.

On all sides they see revolvers, bludgeons, sandbags and slung-shots. "Ah! This is the West at last," say many. "Now look out for Indians and grizzy bears."

Upon Chicagoans who witness these exhibitions of criminal tools daily the effect is most depressing. It makes them think that civilization is still far off. In New York there is an ordinance forbidding pawnshops to display such weapons in the window.

The accidental shootings, alone, caused by the careless handling of pistols, would justify a law preventing their manufacture and sale. What possible benefit can be suggested to offset the evils which we have spoken of? Certainly the idea of individual liberty cannot be carried to the extent of making it the duty of a State to afford a man the facilities for the commission of crime. There is no right involved in the matter which is worthy of respect. Let me give you a few illustrations:

A negro carried his revolver with him to a ball. This was customary. During a lull in the dance, while talking with his companions--men and women--he pulls out this revolver and shows it around for the admiration of his friends. He is under the impression that it is not loaded. He places it playfully at the head of his sweetheart, pulls the trigger, and she drops dead.

That chamber happened to be loaded. It was determined to be a case of wanton carelessness on his part and he was sentenced to two years in the penitentiary. Why should a man like that be allowed to carry a pistol at all? Under what possible circumstances could he use it in any legitimate way?

A few months ago the cashier in a bank, a valuable citizen, in a neighboring town, sat down at his desk in a despondent moment. He opened the drawer, saw the revolver lying there, and, overcome by an irresistible impulse, he placed the muzzle to his head, pulled the trigger and--he is a dead man! There is not one chance in a thousand that this man would either have taken poison, with its lingering agonies, cut his throat, hung himself or jumped off the bridge.