Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The White Slave Hell, or With Christ at Midnight in the Slums of Chicago
When this book was first under consideration the writer did not dream of the depths of iniquity to be found in the Slums of Chicago. After personal soundings were taken the enormity of the task assumed overwhelm ing proportions. In fear and trembling, under the di rection and encouragement of friends and God's good grace, the work was undertaken.
The writer himself saw the vice sections of the Levee, the endless tramp of the men on the-street and the dens in which the painted women sat smoking cigarettes or guzzling beer with their degenerate paramours. He saw the mirrored rooms and costly furnishings on which lolled the half clad forms of the harlots yet fresh and beautiful in the first full stages of the life.
Scarcely a block farther down the Line lay the cheaper dens where the raucous rattle of cheap instruments struck their discordant strumpet call on the lust-laden air. Here the Habitue purchased disease and a lingering death for a silver' dollar. As he dropped it into the Madam's yellow palm the gleam of an electric light fell on its rough round rim and spelled the sacrilegious phrase, In God we Trust.
Here the withered fingers of Disease painted the ashen hue of death on her wasting mortality which Parisian cosmetics could not hide - telltale marks pointing to the open grave. Later the poor creature was wheeled into the incurable ward of'the Cook County Hospital, a vic tim of the Great Black Plague. Others entered the Dunning Insane Asylum there to pound out their miser able existence against padded walls until death shifted the shuddering scene.
Twenty to thirty full page illustrations have helped us to give a detailed account of many of the sin-saddened lives. The System yearly forces girls into the Levee, the West Side Slums, the Strand and other vice sections of Chicago. In arraigning the White Slave Traffic before the Church and One Common Humanity, we hope not only to thwart the System's designs on Vir tue, but with one united stroke to kill the vaunting old Hag in Scarlet. For this we pray, and invite your study of the book.
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