IMMORALITY AND THE LAW

An attempt of a different kind to strike a blow at once at alcohol and at prostitution has been made in Chicago, with equally unsatisfactory results. Drink and prostitution are connected, so intimately connected, indeed, that no attempt to separate them can ever be more than superficially successful even with the most minute inquisition by the police, least of all by police officers, who, in Chicago, we are officially told, are themselves sometimes found, when in uniform and on duty, drinking among prostitutes in "saloons." On May 1, 1910, the Chicago General Superintendent of Police made a rule prohibiting the sale of liquor in houses of prostitution. On the surface this rule has in most cases been observed (though only on the surface, as the field-workers of the Chicago Vice Commission easily discovered), and a blow was thus dealt to those houses which derive a large profit from the sale of drinks on account of the high price at which they retail them. Yet even so far as the rule has been obeyed, and not evaded, has it effected any good? On this point we may trust the evidence of the Vice Commissioners of Chicago, a municipal body appointed by the Mayor and City Council, and not anxious to discredit the actions of their Police Superintendent. "As to the benefits derived from this order, either to the inmates or the public, opinions differ," they write. "It is undoubtedly true that the result of the order has been to scatter the prostitutes over a wide territory and to transfer the sale of liquor carried on heretofore in houses to the near-by saloon-keepers, and to flats and residential sections, but it is an open question whether it has resulted in the lessening of either of the two evils of prostitution and drink."²⁴ That is a mild statement of the results. It may be noted that there are over seven thousand drinking saloons in Chicago, so that the transfer is not difficult, while the migration to flats—of which an enormous number have been taken for purposes of prostitution (five hundred in one district alone) since this rule came into force—may indeed enable the prostitute to live a freer and more humanizing life, but in no faintest degree diminishes the prevalence of prostitution. From the narrow police