Chapter VII: Preface (7)

Then A. No. 1 paused long enough to draw his breath and showed a medal certifying that in 1894 he had hoboed his way across the continent in eleven days and six hours in company with the representative of an Eastern paper and had been given $1,000 for doing it.

"That's how I first became famous," he said, "but I took good care of the money. I went and bought myself a lot in a graveyard at Cambridge Springs, Pa., so I could be buried respectably when I die, and I paid part of the premium on a sick benefit so that I can be taken care of in case I fall sick suddenly. I'm a member of the Chamber of Commerce of that town, too. I believe in looking out for A. No. 1, and that's why I've been so prosperous in the tramping way."

Then A. No. 1 launched into a long and picturesque description of the ways of tramps in general and himself in particular.

"I've always been particular about some things," said he, "and one is to keep clean. I find that in asking for a handout the man who looks up-to-date is the man who gets it. I always wear a suit of overalls when I'm tramping, for I find that it prevents me from being annoyed by watchmen in railroad yards. I am generally taken for an engineer. While I was down in a yard here in Chicago one man came and asked if I had a car lock, thinking I was a railroad man. I told him I did not have one and walked off. I have prevented a number of train wrecks, tramping about, probably at least one every year. The last one, as you see by this letter, was a few months ago. I saw a freight running along with a broken truck dragging. I jumped aboard and gave the warning, as you can see by this clipping. I have also been in a number of wrecks myself, and have never been injured. I always carry a little bottle of cyanide of potassium in my pocket so that in case I am ever fatally injured and in great agony I can take it and end all my trouble in about 20 seconds."

COLONIES FOR TRAMPS.

Teaching Vagrants a Trade.

The vagrancy problem, growing so great in every part of the country, has caused the authorities of Massachusetts to make a trial of the German plan of farm colonies for quasi-criminals. Vagrants are sent to such farms under indeterminate sentences, forced to support themselves by honest labor and made to stay there until they give evidence that upon release they will become useful and self-respecting citizens.

This is a modification of the penal colony idea, which is to send confirmed criminals to such a place for life. It is a great advance upon the plan in use in Chicago, which is to send vagrants to the Bridewell for a stipulated time and let them out again. While they are confined they are an expense to honest citizens, they acquire more extensive knowledge of crime, and when released they are less likely than they were beforehand to go to work and support themselves.

The Massachusetts scheme promises well, so far as it goes. The trouble with it is that in this climate a farm provides work for only a small part of the year. From November to March other work would have to be found for inmates, and up to this time society has failed to agree upon any that would be satisfactory.

Persons interested in charities and prison reforms are indorsing a plan for "tramp colonies," "forced colonies" and "free colonies." Into the one put criminals, or incurable tramps who are unwilling to work. The other would contain tramps who are unable to find work, neuropaths, cripples and those who are judged to be curable. Both kinds of colonies would be strictly agricultural, and their products would pay all expenses of operation and relieve the country of the enormous sums now required to be spent.

But why confine this plan, admirable and satisfactory as it is, to tramps? Why not extend it so as to include criminals? Criminals cost honest taxpayers millions of dollars every year. Why not reorganize a system of confinement in such a way as to compel criminals to support themselves?

But financial relief is not the only advantage. If habitual criminals--that is to say, criminals who have served two terms in the penitentiary, and then have committed another crime--were placed in a penal colony, remote from society and kept there for life, the moral tone of the country would at once be raised. The bad example of such men, which leads youths into crime, would be removed. The knowledge that there was no escape, that return was impossible, once an offender was sent to the penal colony, would deter many would-be criminals. The possibility that hardened criminals might propagate themselves would end.

The penal colony is the one rational solution of the crime problem, which becomes more difficult and menacing each year. It will be adopted, sooner or later.

THE YOUNG CRIMINAL

HOW HE IS BRED IN CHICAGO.

Chicago Raises Its Own Criminals.

There is material in this subject for earnest thought. Men under twenty-five are responsible for 75 per cent of crimes committed in Chicago, and 50 per cent of robberies and burglaries are done by boys under nineteen.

If that is true, then the idea many people have had that crimes in this city are mostly committed by a roving army of criminals, alien to Chicago and attracted hither by one cause or another, must be abandoned. If it is true, then Chicago itself is responsible for most crimes committed here. The men who are guilty have grown up in this environment, which has given them the evil impetus under which they act.

The thought that Chicago boys are the criminals who terrorize the city, rob houses and flats, hold up citizens on the streets and assault women is distressing. It was much pleasanter to attribute these crimes to desperate men from elsewhere, descending upon Chicago like raiders and leaving the city again as soon as possible. But that is a misconception. We ourselves have reared most of our criminals. They are a Chicago product. They have received their notions of right and wrong here among us. We are responsible for them.

What is the matter with Chicago? What are the elements in its life that breed criminals? What causes thousands of young boys to take up a criminal life? What must we do to change conditions?

These are questions that should engage every good citizen in anxious endeavor to find answers to them. If we are to reform criminals and lessen crime, we must first learn how to reform our own city.

PREVENTING CRIME BETTER THAN CURE.

Instead of attempting to prevent crime, we wait until after the crime is committed, then burden ourselves with the expense of apprehending, trying, convicting and imprisoning the criminal.

Our first duty is to adopt those measures that will prevent the further commission of crime.

Among the problems of Chicago there is no one, perhaps, that is more baffling than that of the vicious boy.

His years protect him from the rigors of the law, and it is a difficult matter to know just what to do with him.

There are all sorts of organizations formed for his aid and his reformation. There is the Juvenile Court, for instance, and there are innumerable homes and shelters, and still the problem is not solved. The boy looms large in the public eye these days, when he is sent to prison for life for murder and spends long years in durance for burglary and other serious crimes.

The story of the car-barn bandits and their tragic end is too recent to need more than a passing reference.

The car-barn bandits met an ignominious death on the gallows. Rudolph Gamof will spend the remainder of his years behind prison bars and it is quite likely Alfred Lafferty will know what hard work means in Pontiac or some other such institution before he is once more at liberty.

THE END OF THE GAMIN.

It will be remembered that little Gavroche, the gamin in "Les Miserables," came to his death on a barricade in the streets of Paris. It was during the fatal insurrection of 1830. The lad allied himself with the insurrectionists and found he was in his element. He did prodigies of valor and was robbing the dead bodies of the enemy of cartridges when he was shot. Even after he had been shot once and had fallen to the earth he raised himself to a sitting posture and began to sing a revolutionary song.

"He did not finish," says Hugo. "A second bullet from the same marksman stopped him short. This time he fell face downward on the pavement and moved no more. This grand little soul had taken flight."

Thus it is to be seen that Hugo has made a hero of this lad. But what of the little gamins that throng Chicago's streets? Will they find any such glorious end? It is not likely.

Jacob Leib is but 17 years old, and Alfred Lafferty, accused of twenty-three burglaries, is only 16. The John Worthy School is full of boys who have been gathered in by the police; the Junior Business Club, another reform organization, has a big membership, and the Juvenile Protective League is hard at work trying to do something to arrest the boy in his mad race to the reform school, prison and the penitentiary.

In looking about for the causes of crime among boys I found that poverty, liquor, divorce, yellow newspapers, cigarettes and bad company played important parts. Certain streets of Chicago are schools of crime, where boys are taught the rudiments of larceny and soon become adepts.

Hardened criminals use the more agile youths they find idle to do work they are unable to do. Certain sections of the city swarm with boys who are steeped in vice and crime and are in embryo the murderers, the burglars and the forgers of tomorrow.

CHICAGO HAS HER CHILDREN.

Turning again to the pages of "Les Miserables," the story of Gavroche, the gamin of Paris, may easily be found, and the tale of this youth is not far different from that of the "kid" of Chicago. Here is what Victor Hugo says of Gavroche in that section of his great novel called "Marius": "This child was muffled up in a pair of man's trousers, but he did not get them from his father, and a woman's chemise, but he did not get it from his mother.

"Some people or other had clothed him in rags out of charity. Still he had a father and a mother. But his father did not think of him and his mother did not love him.

"He was one of those children most deserving of pity, among all; one of those who have father and mother and who are orphans nevertheless.

"This child never felt so well as when he was in the street. The pavements were less hard to him than his mother's heart.

"His parents had dispatched him into life with a kick. He simply took flight.

"He was a boisterous, pallid, nimble, wideawake, jeering lad, with a vicious but sickly air. He went and came, sang, played, scraped the gutters, stole a little, but like cats and sparrows. He had no shelter, no bread, no fire, no love. When these poor creatures grow to be men the millstones of the social order meet them and crush them, but so long as they are children they escape because of their smallness."

This is a true picture of the urchin of Chicago. These tiny atoms of humanity are sponges that absorb all the filth, the vice, the sin and the crime of the streets. They pick up all that is evil and nothing that is good. They are nurtured at the breast of poverty and viciousness, and are reared on a diet of depravity and degradation. There is nothing they do not know of crime and of wickedness. They are thoroughly saturated with everything that is evil, unprincipled and debased.

Is it any wonder, then, that the city brings forth an appalling annual crop of criminals? There may be heroes among the gamins in Chicago, but most of them are only heroes so long as they remain uncaught.

When they fall into the hands of the police and are taken to jail they are sorry-looking heroes.

And in the meantime the problem of the boy is still unsolved.

GRADUATE OF THE STREETS.

This, then, is a good specimen of the kind of boy the schools of the street graduate. From these petty classes of crime they go to the high school, the prison, where they are further grounded in the knowledge of wickedness, and as like as not return to Chicago once more, full-fledged criminals, ready for anything. But this is only one of hundreds of such cases that are brought to the attention of the police and the public every year.

Most of the boys who come here are either orphans or half orphans. Drink has wrecked their homes, perhaps, and they are thrown out on the world to shift for themselves. If they get into bad company they soon make their appearance in the Juvenile Court or in jail.

10,000 BOYS WORSE THAN HOMELESS.

A charitable worker who has come in touch with the young of the poorer districts, whence comes the tough lad, estimates that there are over 10,000 boys in Chicago who are worse than homeless. In other words, they are in direct line of becoming criminals or public charges, under the teaching of the trained criminal who makes the city his refuge.

Anderson, the stickup youth who operated extensively on the north side, choosing women for his victims, is but 23 years old. The men who relieved Alderman C. M. Foell at the point of a gun are less than 20, and thus it goes down the line.

They laugh at the efforts of the police to catch them. For the most part they live at home or with relatives, and in the neighborhoods are known as dissipated and tough boys, but not as hold-up men. With companions they sally out at night to isolated sections of the city where they know the police protection to be inadequate. They choose secluded spots offering the protection of darkness and lay in wait.

Then, with plenty of time deliberately to stop the victim and take from him valuables, they operate until it is time for the policeman to be in the vicinity, or until the profits of the expedition are sufficient to satisfy their spirit of revelry and riot.

SCHOOLS FOR PICKPOCKETS.

There are numerous places in Chicago where boys are taught to become pickpockets. Poolrooms are gathering places for such young criminals and certain saloons of a low order harbor others. There is one saloon in West Madison street, for instance, not far from Canal street, where a lot of pickpockets are in the habit of congregating. They are young fellows for the most part and adepts in their particular field.

They find a sort of home in this saloon, where they can get a big glass of beer and a generous free lunch for 5 cents. They are in and out of this place day and night and manage to keep out of the clutches of the law through their sleekness and cleverness. There is one young man in there at least who has made a good living by forging orders for goods. So far he has escaped detection.

His method is to forge an order on some big business house and get certain goods. One day he got a lot of belting from a well-known firm on a forged order. He sold this later and realized $4.50 on the deal. This he spent freely in the saloon mentioned and made no bones of how he got the money. Others run out, snatch a pocketbook and make for cover. Later on they look up their cronies at the saloon and spend the money for beer and cheap whisky, and eat free lunch provided by the management.

There are numerous other such places, more especially on South Clark near Van Buren street. Some of the saloons in that section are alive with young fellows who prey upon the public for a living. They do not always beg their way, either, for they often take a run out and stick up somebody, filch a purse or break into a store. When one of them has been up to some devilment his companions can usually detect it, for he will come back and be very flush for a few hours, or a few days, all depending, of course, upon how much he was able to steal.

MODERN BOYS ARE GAMBLERS.

But it is not only in the slums that the tendencies of the modern boy may be studied. In the more respectable parts of town, in the vicinity of schools and in the neighborhood of churches may be seen evidences of what the youth of today think play.

Time was when boys were content to play marbles. Some of them, of course, had the temerity to play for keeps. Others were taught it was wicked, and even at the risk of being called "sissy" refrained from disobeying their mothers. But now marbles are a thing of the past. As soon as spring comes boys want to shoot "craps." They want to play for money. They want to gamble.

A visit to almost any school playground during recess or the noon hour will convince any person that the modern boy is a very wise youth. His conversation is not a well of English pure and undefiled by any manner of means. In the first place, his profanity is something shocking, and, in the next place, his knowledge of the world and its wickedness is thorough.

There is nothing the modern schoolboy does not know. He is conversant with all sorts of vice and crime, even if he does not take an actual part in it. If this sort of thing obtains among schoolboys and youths of that class it is little wonder, then, that the boys of the slums are what they are. And the pictures is not overdrawn. The conversation of boys of ten and a dozen years will bring the blush of shame even to a grown man.

Just how to cure all this is a question that is bothering a good many people. Societies are being organized right and left. Homes for boys are being established, schools are being started and other efforts are being made to reclaim the delinquents. It has been found that good playgrounds in the tenement districts have been beneficial. The boy is exuberant. He must let out some of his animal spirits. If he has a good place in which to play he will not be half as apt to get into mischief.

REMEDIES SUGGESTED BY SOME.

There are some who insist that moral suasion should be used at all times in an attempt to reform the juvenile. But this has been found to fall short in many instances in Chicago. Even the Juvenile Court, with all its benefits, is found to come somewhat short of doing everything for the vicious lad. It is found that boys who are herded together in penal institutions are inclined to leave such places much worse than when they entered. The bad boys dominate. The evil spreads and the good is suppressed. One bad boy is able to do much, while the influence of one good boy amounts to almost nothing.

Those who have made a study of the matter aver that the only true solution of the boy problem is individual work. The lad's characteristics must be studied, the conditions under which he has been living must be scrutinized and all the influences that have been brought to bear upon his particular case must be looked into. Under these circumstances it would take a reformer for every dozen boys, and so far the money has not been forthcoming to support so many reformers, for even a reformer must live. A good many of the delinquent youths of Chicago have been reared in squalid surroundings and have been nurtured in filth and unloveliness. They have been surrounded from babyhood by poverty, drunkenness and depravity. These boys take to crime as naturally as a duck does to water.

In order to reach boys and try to help them individually a movement is now on foot to form juvenile protective leagues in all parts of the city. One organization is now working in the vicinity of Halsted and Twenty-second streets to put a stop to race wars between school children. It is thought by some that this new movement will fill a long-needed want. It is admitted by those who have given the matter close study that something must be done.

The records of the Juvenile Court and the books of the John Worthy School emphatically bear out this contention.

FAILURE TO RULE CHILDREN MAKES CRIMINALS.

What are you doing with your child's sense of right and wrong? Are you certain that you are not training a criminal, beginning with him at two years old? What is your boy at six years of age? Is he liar, thief--perhaps of insane ego as he was when he first toddled from his mother's arms? Inferentially President Roosevelt may have complimented you on the acquisition of a large family, but rather than this, has it occurred to you that the father and mother of one child, brought up in the light of wisdom, may be deliverers of mankind against the numerical inroads of the other type of parent?

Insanity is the mental condition out of which it is impossible for the person of any age to recognize the rights of others in any form. This insanity may be due wholly to the overdevelopment of the primary ego in the child. At one year old the infant may be a potential criminal of the worst type. It lies to the mother by screaming as if in pain in order that she may be brought to its bedside. If the adult should steal personal property as this babe steals food wilfully, the penitentiary would be his end. Angered, this same babe might attempt murder in babyhood, the spirit fostered by the same selfish intolerance that is filling jails and crowding gallows traps.

RESPECT RIGHTS OF OTHERS.

Ego in the community life is the basis of all ill or all good, even to the dream of Utopia. The basis of all ill is the primary ego which is inseparable from the child until teaching has eliminated it. The basis of all good is that secondary ego which recognizes the rights of others.

Morality--good--virtue--all that is considered desirable in the best type of citizenship develop out of the community life. Even in the lower orders of animals a greater intelligence marks the creatures that live community existences than is to be seen in the isolated creatures. And this is from the development of the secondary ego which exacts rights for others.

The child has no knowledge of this secondary virtue save as it is taught it. The mother who, by responding out of a mistaken affection to every wail of the infant, encouraging all, no longer is susceptible to home influences in teaching the lesson. If this youth shall become entangled in the toils of the law and the mistaken parents intercede for him, gaining their ends in saving him from all punishment for his misdeeds, the boy receives through it only another selfish impetus toward more and greater offenses against society.

REFORMATORY AFTER FIRST CRIME.

Here in this first offense of magnitude sufficient to call for the intervention of the law the parents have their opportunity, if only they would see. The place for such a youth at this period is a reformatory in which are sufficient educational facilities and the strictest discipline, which in justice visits the full penalty of community transgressions upon the head of the offender. In this reformatory environment the offending one finds none of the intercessions that may have been made for him in his home. In sterner fashion than he ever dreamed before he discovers that as he transgresses the community laws he receives a full penalty for the offense. Young enough, he may be led to discover that his transgressions are not worth while. Too old for these teachings, he becomes the persistent lawbreaker, or, on the other hand, degenerates to the asylum for the insane.

How intimately some of the fundamentals of training are associated with everyday lives in the home, and yet not recognized, is shown in the college life of the country. "Sophomore" is a class term in schools which needs interpreting. As a word, it is from the Greek, meaning "wise fool." Its application in the higher education is to the second-year "men"--to those students who are in that period of mental and physical stress after the age of fifteen is reached. In school parlance the word associates itself with the flamboyant youth who prates, and preaches, and struts, and lays down the law of all things as he sees it. Until twenty-five years old, indeed, the "Sophomoric" period is not fully passed.

Broadly stated for all men, it may be reiterated that in the parents' failure to enforce the subjection of the selfish first nature in the child lies the seed of his destruction. Encouraging the infant to wail again when nothing ails it is already catering to this criminal ego. Later, when a parent humors its every whim, he is stunting its growth toward good citizenship. And later still, in that crisis in physical life, between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five years, such a parent may awaken suddenly to a realization of the criminal which he has made.

Ego in the child mind prompts it to take instantly anything which it desires and which it can take. Unchecked by training, this primary ego grows with that upon which it feeds. At two years old the child should have had its lessons in the rights of others administered in any way in which it can be reached, but always in all justice. Justice in this lesson should be the first consideration. At six years of age these lessons are of special significance. It is an age in the development of the child when they may be taught with especial emphasis, with lasting results.

GUIDE CHILD OF FIFTEEN CAREFULLY.

At fifteen years old a new condition arises in the life of the child. At this time the race condition and the individual condition are at war. It is at the beginning of this period that an unbridled, untrained youth may take his first step toward crime, simply because the primary ego in him has not been set toward the background by the lessons of his duty toward the rights of others. Here it is that the heedless, ignorant parents may come to the first realization of what his own sins of omission have been.

If for any of the reasons suggested a youth's parents have not given him this necessary training in recognition of the rights of others, the age brings with it a condition making it impossible in ordinary cases for the parental conscience and home environment to avail.

For example, the fact that the boy becomes a thief, or burglar, indicates in any or many things that disregard for the rights of others which is destructive to all law and order. Properly handled in the home he would have been amenable to all of these conditions.

Raise the child like a plant, care for it as you do for the rarest specimen of vegetation, bring it up in an atmosphere of love. Child raising and plant development are akin.

If the child has but the smallest trace of some characteristic you desire to develop, take hold of it, care for it, surround it with proper conditions and it will change more certainly and readily than any plant quality.

CHILD LIKE A PLANT.

The child in nature and processes of growth is essentially the same as the plant, only the child has a thousand strings instead of but a few, as has the plant.

Where one can produce one change for the betterment of the plant one can produce a thousand changes for the betterment of the child.

Surround the child with the proper environment to bring out certain qualities and the result is inevitable.

Working in the same way as one does with the plant, the development of the individual is practically unlimited.

Take the common daisy and train it and cultivate it by proper selection and environment until it has been increased in size, beauty and productiveness at least four hundred fold.

Do our educational methods do as much for our children? If not, where is the weakness?

REAR CHILD IN LOVE.

Have the child reared for the first ten years of its life in the open, in close touch with nature, a barefoot boy with all that implies for physical stamina, but have him reared in love.

Take the little yellow California poppy and by selecting over and over again the qualities you wish to develop you have brought forth an orange poppy, a crimson poppy, a blue poppy. Cannot the same results be accomplished with the human being? Is not the child as responsive?

THE GREATEST REFORM MOVEMENT OF THE DAY IS THE CHICAGO JUVENILE COURT.

The statistics show conclusively that the operation of the Juvenile Court is an advance step in the treatment of the young and helpless. It shows that not only are the dependents helpless, but that the delinquents are helpless to extricate themselves from a life of idleness and crime, for most criminals are made, not born, and the sooner time is devoted to changing the environments of the young, the sooner will be solved the problem of criminology.

ILLINOIS IN THE LEAD.

Various claims have been put forth from time to time as to the State which was the first to inaugurate the Juvenile Court idea.

The Juvenile Court Law went into effect July 1, 1899, and immediately the Juvenile Court was established. The Judges of the Circuit Court assigned one of their members to preside in the Juvenile Court.

The law gave the court jurisdiction of all dependent and delinquent children who are under seventeen and eighteen years of age, and defines dependents and delinquents. The word "dependent" shall mean any child who for any reason is destitute or homeless or abandoned, or dependent upon the public for support, or has not proper parental care or guardianship, or who habitually begs or receives alms, or who is found living in any house of ill-fame or with any vicious or disreputable persons, or whose home, by reason of neglect, cruelty or depravity on the part of its parents, guardian or other persons whose care it may be, is an unfit place for said child, and any child under the age of ten years who is found begging, peddling or selling any article, or singing or playing any musical instrument upon the street, or giving any public entertainment, or who accompanies or is used in aid of any person so doing.

The word "delinquent" shall mean any boy under seventeen or any girl under eighteen years of age who violates any law of this State or any city or village ordinance, or who is incorrigible, or who knowingly associates with thieves, vicious or immoral persons, or who is growing up in idleness or crime, or who knowingly frequents a house of ill-fame, or who knowingly patronizes any policy shop or place where any gaming device is or shall be operated.

A boy of seventeen is at a period of life where he is neither a boy nor a man. In many cases he has the mind of the boy and the impulses of the savage; his ideals are force, and his ambitions that of the wild, erratic western rover. Why the wise head and steady hand of the court and probation officer should be withdrawn at this period is not explainable on any reasonable theory.

It may be contended that a boy of seventeen years is too advanced in the knowledge of crime, but it can also be contended that the boy of fifteen years is too old in crime. Just what standard can be used to find the responsibility of a boy when measured by his age and physical proportions I am unable to discover. The only just standard is mental capacity. The Judge and probation officers, who are familiar with the boy, know his parents or guardians and his environments, should be allowed to exercise their judgment as to the moral responsibility of the boy, for there are many boys at fifteen who are more responsible for their acts than others at eighteen.

In many cases where children were committed to an institution the parents were placed under the care of a probation officer and the number of failures to reform the parent are few.

In cases where the parents are responsible for the dependency of existence those parents mean well, but they are unfitted for the duties they have assumed. The father thinks he has fulfilled his whole duty to his family when he provides food, shelter and clothing; the mother thinks she has fulfilled her whole duty when she does her house work and attends to the mending and washing. The children are masters of both parents before the parents take cognizance of the actual mental state of the child.

What should be done when the boy's home is the case of his delinquency is to provide for him a place where every home impulse would be developed and where industry and economy would be practiced. He should live in this home under the jurisdiction of the court until he has reached his eighteenth year.

What is said of the boys is equally true of the girls, and, in many cases, more important. Where the father is directly responsible for the downfall of the girl, the girl should not be allowed to return to her parental home.

WILES OF FORTUNE TELLING.

FORTUNE TELLERS HAVE EXISTED SINCE RECORDS OF EVENTS BEGAN TO BE KEPT.

Some of Their Methods--Charlatans Have a Great Hold on the
Poorer Classes of Big Cities, Much Alike--Schools of Crime
Run Full Blast--Silly and Ignorant People Undone by Vicious
and Wide-Open Fraud.

War against the swindlers, impostors and blackmailers who operate in Chicago under the guise of clairvoyants, trance mediums, astro-psychics, palmists, magicians and fortune tellers, of whom there are about 1,500 in Chicago, should be driven out of the city and never allowed to return.

There exist in Chicago a horde of these brazen frauds, who ply their trade in the most open and unblushing manner. Few of them are other than organized schools for the propagation of crime, injustice and indecencies that would make an unjailed denizen of the red light district blush to even mention. We particularly refer to the army of fortune tellers, clairvoyants, Hindoo fakers, mediums, palmists, hypnotists and other skillful artists, whose sole occupation is to rob and mislead the superstitious, foolish and ignorant. The business is a paying industry, realizing, it is said, an enormous sum of money every month in Chicago, all of which is obtained by false pretenses.

Here is a very large field for police investigation. The practices of these people are of the most demoralizing tendency. Can there be anything worse than holding out love potions to married women to compel other women's husbands to love them? Those dens of iniquity offer their services and even actually aid in the procuring of abortions, and in showing how and where a good haul can be made by robbery or burglary. They bring together the depraved of both sexes. Many of them are purveyors to our brothels and stews.

They flaunt their profession, their "spiritual mysteries," brazenly in public in our busy thoroughfares, even invading some of our hotels. They are the hotbeds of vice and crime, from the robbing of orphans to the deflowering of innocent girls. They fall into "trances" and call up spirits from the vaults of heaven, or elsewhere, to testify to their truth, and in the turn-up of an ace of spades they see a "dark lady" or a "dark gentleman" who is pining for you, and furnish the address of either.

Upper Row (left) Real Ghost. (right) Marx's Imitation.

Lower Row (left) Fake Ghost & drawings by von Marx Showing Make up]

PANDERERS TO DEPRAVITY.

Why these panderers to depravity in all its most hideous forms are permitted to continue their depredations among every rank of society without attracting the attention of "reformers" or the grand jury is something beyond the ken of human knowledge. And as a block is a small cityful in some parts of the town, the reading of palms, the casting of horoscopes and the looking into seeds of time through the backs of a greasy pack of thumb-marked, tear-stained cards is a profitable calling. Perhaps it should be explained that the tears are not shed by the prophets of the tenements, but by the patrons who go to the oracle to learn if they are to be dispossessed next month or if their ambitious children will sometime learn a little Yiddish, so that they may talk with their own parents in their own homes, are sources of information for the settlement workers and others who try to learn the hopes and fears and ambitions, the real life of such places. But the fortune tellers are the real custodians of the Ghetto's secrets. In their little back rooms, some of which are cluttered with the trash that suggests the occult to the believer, some as bare as the room of a lodger who has pawned the last stick of furniture, they hear confessions that court interpreters never have a chance to translate, and listen to tales of hard luck that are never told to the rabbis.

PROGNOSTICATIONS ARE VAGUE.

But they don't use the mails to drum up trade, and they have no barkers at the doorsteps to cajole the credulous to step inside to learn what the future has in store for them. And so, in a legal sense, they are guilty of no fraud. They are not very serious frauds in any sense, for their tricks are harmless and their prognostications are vague as the weather predictions of an almanac and as probable as the sayings of the cart-tail orators who hold forth at the street corners in campaign time.

"About this time, look for cold winds, with some snow," sagely remarks the almanac writer, stringing the ten words of his prediction down the entire column of the month.

"In a few years," says the fortune teller, solemnly, "you will have good friends and more money than you have now."

"If you vote for this man," shrieks the cart-tail orator, "rents will be lower and the street cleaner and you will get jobs. The other ticket stands for graft and greed. Vote for it if you want your children to run in the streets, because there is no room for them in the schools."

PREDICTS LIKE A SPELLBINDER.

Like the spellbinder, the oracle frequently builds on the look-on-this-picture-and-then-on-that plan.

"This is a strong line," mumbles the palmist. "You will meet a man with blue eyes who will help you, but beware of a man with dark hair."

Sometimes the helper has light hair and the man to be avoided black eyes. But invariably the good friend of the future is blond and the devil is brunette. No seer would any more think of changing that color scheme than the writer of a melodrama would dare stage a villain who didn't have hair and mustache as black as night. That prediction is one of the traditions of the art, and no future has ever been complete without the dark and the light men or the dark and the light woman, as the case might be.

One of the most famous of fortune tellers, a woman, died suddenly. She had been reading cards in the same house for forty years, and on the day of her funeral her house was crowded with mourners, whose future she had foreseen with so much shrewdness that not one of the 200 or more men and women who filed by the coffin, to view the body had any fault to find with the services she had rendered. On the contrary, they compared notes, each trying to pay the best tribute to the dead by telling the most wonderful story of her predictions.

WARNED OF THE ENEMY.

"I was sitting right in this room at that table where the flowers are today," said one mourner, "and she said to me: 'You have an enemy. It is here on this card where you can see it plainly. But here is a friend, a tall, light man, who will come between you and your enemy. Put your trust in the tall, light man, but keep away from a dark man. There is a dark-haired woman who pretends to be your friend, but lies about you.'"

Compare that prediction of the oracle with this forecast of Daniel Defoe's famous deaf and dumb predictor, Duncan Campbell.

"To Mme. S----h W----d; I see but one misfortune after the year of 1725. A black man, pretty tall and fat, seems to wish you no good. Never tell your secrets to any such persons, and their malice cannot hurt you."

And that warning wasn't original when Mme. S----h W----d called at Duncan Campbell's lodging in London to learn what was what. No doubt it could be traced beyond Delphi. That's almost as safe a guess as to assume that Mme. S----h W----d was a Sarah Wood. She might have been a Wedd or a Weld, but that is doubtful.

PREDICTIONS CHANGE LITTLE.

So, although the seer of Randolph street and all the rest probably never heard of Duncan Campbell or Nostradamus, or of their predecessors at Delphi, they have kept the profession of forecasting remarkably free of innovations.

"This art of prediction," reads Defoe's Life and Adventures of Duncan Campbell, "is not attainable any otherwise than by these three ways. 1. It is done by the company of familiar spirits and genii, which are of two sorts (some good and some bad), who tell the gifted person the things, of which he informs other people. 2. It is performed by the second sight, which is very various and differs in most of the possessors, it being only a very little in some, very extensive and constant in others; beginning with some in their infancy and leaving them before they come to years, happening to others in a middle age, to others again in an old age that never had it before, and lasting only for a term of years, and now and then for a very short period of time; and in some intermitting, like fits, as it were, of vision that leave them for a time, and then return to be strong in them as ever; and it being in a manner hereditary in some families, whose children have it from their infancy (without intermission) to a great old age, and even to the time of their death, which they even foretell before it comes to pass, to a day--nay, even to an hour. 3. It is attained by the diligent study of the lawful part of the art of magic."

MAKE ENOUGH TO RETIRE.

Nowadays the prophets see to it that their miraculous power does not depart from them for any cause whatsoever until their own palms have been crossed with enough silver to enable them to retire in comfort. A certain Fatima who told fortunes on Madison street for years removed her card from the front window and disappeared altogether. She had bought a farm up the state, where she is now living and raising fancy breeds of poultry. There is no mortgage on the farm, and the hens have grain three times a day.

Just which one of Duncan Campbell's three methods a certain practitioner uses is not apparent, but he was one of the most noted and successful fortune tellers, and his men patrons set more store by what he said than in the promises of the district leaders.

ANSWERS QUESTIONS FOR A DOLLAR.

He has reduced his business to a fine system, and all the questions that anybody could possibly think of are set down in a book with numbers opposite them. And these books, printed in Yiddish, English and German, anticipate all the hopes and fears of the tenements. The questions, all of a strong local flavor, are all answered by the fortune teller off-hand for $1, notwithstanding the fact that they present some of the toughest problems that the philanthropists who support the Educational Alliance and the settlement houses have been trying for years to solve. To illustrate, take this group of questions under the general classifications "Home and Children":

"Can I learn English?"

"Can I make my son or daughter learn Yiddish?"

"Shall my children play with Christians?"

The book printed in Yiddish shows the most wear. It is divided under these heads: "Travel and Letters," "Love and Marriage," "Home and Children," "Business," "Work," "Luck and Losses."

Some of the questions make interesting reading and supplementary to the reports and papers of the various Hebrew charity organizations. One of the more recent of these reports gave statistics of desertions of wives, and "other women" was put down as the cause in a large number of cases.

MARRIED TWO WIVES; WHAT WILL HAPPEN?

The first question in the fortune tellers book under "Travel and Letters" is, "Where did my husband elope to?" The identity of the other woman in the case seems to be secondary in importance to the whereabouts of the deserter.

Under "Love and Marriage" are these questions, among many others:

"Is my bride's dowry as big as she says it is?"

"I have married two wives; what will happen?"

"Shall I be married in court?"

Those who are in doubt about work have many questions to select from, the list starting off like this:

"Shall I be a letter carrier?"

"Shall I be a conductor?"

"Shall I be a street cleaner?"

"Shall I be an actor?"

"Shall I be a lady-figure?"

A lady-figure is undoubtedly a cloak model.

Under "Business" some of the questions are:

"Shall I remain a peddler or keep a store?"

"Shall I sue my partner?"

"Will my partner sue me?"

"Shall I take my wife into the store as a partner?"

"Shall I take my husband into the store as a partner?"

"Shall I buy the goods?"

"Will the bank fail?"

Under "Luck and Losses" are:

"Was I robbed by friends or strangers?"

"Does anybody look in my pockets nights?"

"Will the landlord put me out?"

ROOMFUL OF PATRONS.

The deviser of these books keeps his office in a rear tenement open from early morning till late at night, and there is generally a roomful of anxious patrons awaiting their turns.

At a single sitting, price $1, the man or woman who wants to know may select three questions. She puts the number corresponding to the questions on a slip of paper. The numbers do not run in regular order through the book or through any section of it.

The slip of paper is kept concealed by the questioner, and later on, when she is in the actual presence of the oracle, she writes those numbers again on another slip of paper, hidden from the fortune teller by a book cover. She also writes her name on two pieces of paper, which she places in two Bibles, opened at random by the fortune teller after she has named any three words she happens to see on the page.

GETS POINTERS FROM CUSTOMER.

Then the books are closed, the soothsayer tells his customer what her name is (he is not often absolutely accurate in that part of the game), and then he begins to talk about the past and future in such a rambling, comprehensive way that he is almost sure to hit upon, directly or indirectly, the questions she has in mind. If he is too far off the trail he asks the woman from time to time if she understands him, and from her replies and questions gets a further clew as to just which three questions she had selected from the lists. Then the rest is simple.

SPOOKS RAIDED.

DETECTIVES WOOLDRIDGE AND BARRY DESCEND ON A WEST SIDE MEDIUM'S PLACE.

Lively Fight Before the Officers Succeed in Making
Arrests--One of the Number Set Upon and Severely Beaten
Before Aided--Spectators at the Seance Take Part and the
Row Becomes General--Search of the Premises Reveals a
Systematic Plan to Deceive--Anger of the Dupes Turns to
Chagrin at the Revelations Made by the Police.

September 2, 1906, Catherine Nichols, Sarah Nichols and Jennie Nichols, 186 Sebor street, fake exponents of materialization of spirits and general "spook" grafters, were arrested, the seances raided and the game closed, by Detectives Wooldridge and Barry.

The scene of the raid was a brick building at 184 Sebor street, which is just east of Halsted and a block south of Harrison street.

The medium arrested was Miss Jennie Nichols, who, with her mother, Mrs. Catherine Nichols, and her sister, Sarah, had been gleaning a harvest of dollars from guillible residents, mostly of the West Side of the city, during the last two years. The establishment of the Nichols family occupies parts of two buildings, the mother and her two daughters living at 186 Sebor street, next door to 184. On the second floor of the latter address was located the hall which they used for their public seances.

PLANS ARE WELL LAID.

The raid was made on the authority of a warrant which was applied for by Miss Muriel Miller, a young woman who was induced by the blandishments of other mediums to come to Chicago from her home in Portland, Ore. Miss Miller, who is employed in a barber shop in Clark street, is slightly deaf. She became interested in Spiritualism, and thus came in touch with the Nichols' outfit.

CATHERINE NICHOLS, JENNIE NICHOLS]

She had written to another Chicago medium, and received letters in answer signed "Professor Venazo."

It was explained to Miss Miller that the wonderful cures which the medium professed to be able to make were brought about while the patient was in a trance. In a letter which had been turned over to the police, "Professor Venazo," which is the name with which an accomplice of certain Chicago mediums signed such communications, explained that because of stress of business it would be impossible to undertake to cure Miss Miller of her deafness unless she was prepared to put up at least $50 in cash.

The letter stated that if she would send to "Professor Venazo" $100 the medium would undertake to go to her home and cure her there. If she did not wish to pay that much money she could come to Chicago, pay the medium $50, and be cured "while in a trance."

Detectives Barry and David Carroll were detailed to assist Wooldridge in serving the warrants and making the raid.

DETECTIVES ATTEND SERVICE.

Barry and Carroll planned to effect an entrance to the "seance." Inspector Revere was informed and asked to give a detail of six officers, who, headed by Detective Wooldridge, went to the hall on Sebor street. Barry and Carroll had preceded them and succeeded in convincing Jennie Nichols, who was the master of ceremonies, that they were interested in spiritualism and desired to witness the materializations.

When they went to the hall, Detective Barry walked in and found twenty-eight or thirty others there before him. Jennie Nichols was busy arranging the spectators in seats. She took a great deal of care about placing them. Carroll and Barry entered and signed their names on the register. This was a book in which everyone who is admitted to a seance is requested to place his name and place of residence. Barry signed as "John Woods"; address, 142 Ashland boulevard.

CALLING UP THE SPIRITS.

When the seance opened Jennie Nichols conducted those who were in the hall through the main room and the one at the rear, before which the curtain was placed. Everything was all right, so far as Detectives Barry and Carroll could see. The cabinet from which the spirits were to come stood across one corner, and opposite it was a door leading into one of the two rooms in the rear of the hall.

They examined the cabinet and the rooms carefully, but found everything all right. After they had been through everything the doors were locked and they returned to their seats, Miss Nichols making some other changes in the arrangements of the seats, and then the place was darkened.

When the place had been made almost entirely dark, Jennie Nichols, the medium, began pacing back and forth in front of the curtain. She rubbed her hands over her head and eyes a number of times, and began to chant: "Come, O queen, O queen."