THE CRIMES OF YOUNG MEN.
"The great majority of criminals now are young men--an appalling crop of them year by year. After seven and a half years" experience in the state"s attorney"s office, during which I have dealt with six thousand criminal cases, sending seven to the gallows and hundreds to the penitentiary and reformatory, I believe that the chief causes of crime among young men are: 1, Liquor; 2, l.u.s.t; 3, Drugs; 4, Bad a.s.sociates. Of these, liquor, bad as it is, is not the chief cause of crime among young men. The chief cause is that next after liquor. The welfare of the city, of the commonwealth, of society as a whole, of the national life itself, is menaced, to a degree exceeding any other cause, by the social evil."
We have never hesitated to warn our hearers by the prisons, by the gallows, by the most tremendous issues of life, death and eternity.
INSANITY, SURGERY, BLINDNESS.
Some who are willing to harden themselves against the laws of G.o.d and man alike, lay to heart the evidence of a standard medical treatise on insanity when it is opened and read to them in the street. The description of the brain of a dead lunatic, who lost his mind and his life as the wages of the sin upon which they are bent, brings a pallor over the faces of crowds that seem nailed down to the pavement and unable to move away. Others heed the medical testimony concerning the fearful suffering likely to come upon their present or future wives in consequence of their iniquity. Modern surgeons attribute 25 per cent of surgical operations upon women--mostly innocent wives--to these sins against chast.i.ty. Statistics of the German Empire, Austria, Denmark, and Holland show that 40.25 per cent of the blind in the asylums of those countries owe their blindness, usually dating from earliest infancy, to one of the diseases a.s.sociated with prost.i.tution--not the disease commonly most dreaded.
We distribute leaflets specially prepared and attractively printed in two colors, telling plainly the criminality of vice and the ruin that it brings upon the body and brain and character of transgressors. We have printed more than 150,000 tracts and cards, which are eagerly taken by many thousands of young men, to the anger and loss of the keepers of the criminal resorts. The work of tract distribution is carried on in all weather, often when street meetings are impossible.
This educational work is carried on in friendly co-operation with The Chicago Society of Social Hygiene--organized by the Chicago Medical Society--which supplies us with circulars for this purpose. This feature of our work led to an invitation to our superintendent to address The Physicians" Club concerning the work of The Midnight Mission. Dr.
Archibald Church, editor of The Chicago Medical Recorder, has asked for and accepted an article on this work for his paper.
IN RAIN AND SNOW.
"I respect you," said a divekeeper who with others has since abandoned his loathsome business, "because you work in the rain and you work in the cold." I find it equally blessed to be Christ"s witness by the Martyrs" Memorial in cla.s.sic Oxford, on the hot sand beneath the palm trees of Ceylon and India, and on a s...o...b..nk among Chicago"s red lights.
Everywhere large audiences stand eagerly listening to the messengers of G.o.d. Our midnight street meetings continue three, four, five, and even six hours at one place, in the summer.
CONVERSIONS--AND BETTER.
Several women have repented and have been cared for or restored to their relatives. But our effort has been chiefly directed toward the thousands of men and youths whose money supports the inst.i.tutions that destroy manhood and womanhood alike. Hundreds of repentant men and boys have knelt in the dust of Custom House Place, Peoria Street, and Armour Avenue. In social and business position they range from a wholesale merchant and a fallen minister to gamblers and wrecks.
But what can be better than conversions--that make glad the heart of G.o.d? Nothing, except preventing the children of G.o.d from plunging into deadly sin. If the only good accomplished by our midnight cry were the prevention of the ruin of a dozen youths in a year, it would be gloriously worth while to keep on crying. But hundreds have turned back from the brink of perdition, including university students and Church members. With outstretched hands and glad grat.i.tude, they say to us: "We thank you; you have kept us from sin tonight!" When we recall Dr. Prince A. Morrow"s estimate, quoted by Dr. Howard A. Kelly in a paper read before the American Medical a.s.sociation, that 450,000 American young men make the plunge into the moral sewer every year, we see what an enormous field there is for this preventive work.
One Sunday night a young husband from Racine, Wisconsin, whose wife was in poor health, listened to our plain words and turned back from the sin he intended. He had never been warned and he was very thankful; he told me he was a Catholic and had never gone wrong. Another evening a very handsome young man, twenty-eight years old, listened to the words of warning and then came to me quietly and said: "I am a Christian and a church member and I have never gone wrong, but I was just about to go into one of these houses of shame, while waiting for a train which is late, when I saw your gospel meeting and have been kept back from sin by your message. Most men would be ashamed to tell you, but I tell you for your encouragement."
IF THIS WERE YOUR SON.
Among the hundreds of repentant men and youths who have knelt in the dust of Chicago"s most infamous streets, in the open air meetings of The Midnight Mission, is one whom we will call Joe.
One Sat.u.r.day night Joe came to our meeting and told us that he was a gambler, a pickpocket, a drunkard, a libertine and worse--enticing girls from their homes and placing them in houses of infamy. He asked us to pray for him, which of course we did. Joe disappeared for an hour or so, but returned at midnight to our meeting, and at half-past twelve knelt in the street, with another repentant young man, confessing his ruinous and shameful sin.
For four years since that night we have kept in touch with Joe. We were obliged to advise his father--living in another state, an elder in the Presbyterian church, who never suspected anything wrong in his son--to take more interest in Joe, and not to take less interest in the cla.s.s of other men"s sons that he was teaching in Sunday School. On his own motion Joe told his father the whole heart-breaking truth. Unspeakably humiliated, the father proved himself a father indeed, and did everything in his power to restore the young man to a right life, at great cost to himself.
Joe now has his own home and his own business. He is a respected citizen, instead of--G.o.d knows what--most likely a despicable white slave trader in Chicago or Detroit or New York. He is one of hundreds who have heeded our midnight protest against terrible sin, our midnight testimony for the Lamb of G.o.d, who takes away sin.
ANTAGONISM--PROTECTION--TRIUMPH.
At the beginning of our work the keepers of evil resorts were respectful and to a degree friendly. During the second summer, 1905, the meetings increased very greatly in power. Sometimes we continued preaching from ten o"clock at night till three in the morning. Workers reached their homes after daylight, with hearts almost bursting for gladness because many sinners had repented. As many as fifty workers were engaged in the same block at once, holding four simultaneous meetings. All were working voluntarily and without pay. I myself was earning my expenses with my pen.
Thousands of misguided men had their attention called to the cross of Christ and the holy life every week. The revenues of the resorts were seriously diminished. One manager, who had been misled in his boyhood and genuinely regretted the loathsome life he was leading, said to me, "If you Christian people keep coming, we"ve got to go." The Christian people kept coming. That man has since quit his awful business.
With our increasing spiritual power, keepers of saloons and resorts became alarmed for their revenues and began to offer resistance. They hired express men to drive into our meetings and organ grinders to disturb us with their noise. On one occasion a cab driver was paid to drive at high speed into our meeting, where deaconesses and many Christian women were a.s.sisting. Many times automobiles were stationed near us and made as noisy as possible in order to hara.s.s us. They wasted some nice fresh eggs on us, and a melon. As we were proceeding lawfully, under legal permits from the police department, we called upon the police for complete protection. While an American patrolman was on the beat we had no trouble, but a foreign-born officer showed us considerable disfavor. We had our own opinion of the source of his ill-will. Chief Collins was entirely just and friendly and took all necessary measures for our protection.
At length, managers of resorts, saloons and gambling dens in notorious Custom House Place calculated that each hour we worked they lost $250, and they determined to give us "the worst of it" even if they had to hire thugs to slug me. We kept steadily calling upon G.o.d and faithfully preaching His truth. At length, near the end of October, such representations were made to Chief Collins that he ordered our meetings stopped at ten o"clock--when they began--on the ground that we were disturbing the sleep of lodgers in hotels two blocks away!
Thereupon, accompanied by Mr. Arthur Burrage Farwell, Miss Lucy Page Gaston, Deaconess Lucy A. Hall, Miss Eva Marshall Shonts and others, eleven in all, we called upon the chief of police, explained our surprise at being stopped in our work, which was entirely lawful, and requested him to cleanse that street of resorts which were entirely unlawful. This he immediately promised to do, on condition that we would not stir the newspapers or arouse public sentiment to compel him to do it. We accepted his word and awaited fulfillment. Two months later--namely, at Christmas, 1905, he notified the resorts, and published in the newspapers, that they must vacate on the first of May, 1906.
THE DIVES OFFER A BRIBE OF $50,000.
During the intervening months the white slave traders, gamblers, keepers of the worst disorderly saloons and some property owners and real estate agents who made money out of that precinct of perdition, raised a slush fund, employed an attorney and used every device in their power to gain a continuance of their nefarious traffic in the heart of Chicago--for they were between the Federal building containing the postoffice, and the Dearborn pa.s.senger station, used by the Erie, Grand Trunk, Santa Fe and Monon railways.
Mayor Dunne told Pastor Boynton and myself, at the Sherman House on the evening of March 15, 1907, when his political enemies were accusing him falsely of being the friend of vice, that the divekeepers offered him $50,000 if he would allow them to remain four months more in Custom House Place. Mayor Dunne, a man of the highest character, attested this statement by an appeal to G.o.d. Chief Collins had previously told me that the dives had made this offer but he had replied to them, "If you had Marshall Field"s money you cannot stay there after the first of May, if I am chief of police, so help me G.o.d." No political or other influence could induce him to waver or to reverse his order, and when the first of May came he drove them out with a mailed fist.
Mayor Dunne told us that while he was on the bench the case of a Polish girl came before him, which had prepared his mind to act against the resorts if he should ever have power. This innocent immigrant girl had arrived at the Dearborn station and had been lured into one of the adjacent dens, her clothes taken from her, and herself made a white slave.
ON THE WEST SIDE.
In 1906 we worked princ.i.p.ally on the vice-ridden streets of the West Side. After the earthquake in San Francisco many depraved women, with their parasites, took refuge in Chicago. These were very brazen women, and the vile young men who lived on their shameful earnings were cunning in thwarting the police. Conditions became insufferable. So wide open was the district that a secretary of the Young Men"s Christian a.s.sociation in walking four blocks on the sidewalk was solicited by sixty-two women from their open doors and windows. A police court justice was accused of a.s.sessing petty fines against these offenders when the police brought them into court.
We steadily preached the word and prayed to G.o.d to abolish those frightful traps for boys. We learned of one boy, a choir boy in a Methodist church, who was dragged forcibly into one of those dens, and infected with a disease from which he soon died.
Captain Barcal, of the Desplaines street police station, in plain clothes and unknown to the evangelists, visited our midnight gospel meeting in Peoria street at the corner of Randolph, Sat.u.r.day night, September 15. Several repentant young men were on their knees in the dust, surrounded by missionaries working with them and praying for them.
The captain said to Alexander Cleland, one of the secretaries of the Central Young Men"s Christian a.s.sociation: "I will not tolerate any interference with this good work."
One Sunday afternoon as we were working on Sangamon street a beautiful, sinful Jewess insulted me and justified herself by saying with a strong Jewish accent, "You spoil our business." The next Sunday or so a young Jew parasite succeeded in breaking up our meeting. Captain Barcal was indignant and took better care of us than ever. One Sunday a Jew said to me, "The girls say you have spoiled their business." Soon afterward a police order and the new munic.i.p.al courts utterly transformed that region. Business interest were weary of such outrageous conditions and demanded a decisive change. Some months afterward a policeman remarked upon the transformation and explained, "The Lord"s time came to work and He has been working." There is still very much to be done there, but the former flagrancy of vice has been abolished.
Mr. Henry De Vries, Mr. and Mrs. F. J. Macdonald and Mr. R. M. Hawkins worked with me during our conflict on the West Side. Mr. Macdonald was killed the next year by a train.
AT TWENTY-SECOND STREET.
For the last three years since our mission was organized, chiefly through the efforts of the Rev. Dr. John Balcom Shaw, we have labored mostly in the great vice district and white slave market at Twenty-second street. Of course we had no very glad welcome, after the preceding conflicts. I have been a.s.saulted three times in that district and several who have worked with us have been roughly handled. Vile drugs have been thrown into our meetings and on our clothes--a.s.safoetida and hydrogen sulphide. Viler words have been hurled into our ears. One French trader threatened to break me to pieces and send me to a hospital if it cost him a mint of money, but he afterward became friendly and finally quit his loathsome business.
Objection was made to our scientific teaching and circulars. Even the police captains, who have always taken splendid care of us, were influenced by our adversaries to object to our telling the young men about the diseases that are on sale in the resorts. Our circulars and the circulars of the Chicago Society of Social Hygiene were referred by the chief of police to the corporation counsel who promptly approved them. He said we were like the Knights of the Garter and our circulars not immoral but highly moral. We have circulated nearly a million pages of these circulars. Young men hear us gladly and accept the circulars with thanks. I have counted two hundred men listening at once to Evangelist J. R. Beveridge, who is very plain speaking, while he was working with us.
OTHER WORKERS IN THE NIGHT.
The Salvation Army and the Volunteers of America do not hold meetings in the vice districts of Chicago, but women officers of those societies do visit the resorts selling papers. At times both Salvationists and Volunteers have taken part in our midnight meetings. Many people pa.s.sing our meetings suppose that we are from the Salvation Army, as it is believed to do such work. The Army has rescue and maternity homes and does much good work for the fallen, but the preaching in the vice districts is done by our own and similar recent organizations.
Rev. V. A. M. Mortensen, a Lutheran minister, has organized The Rescue League, which looks for support chiefly to the Lutheran churches. Mr.
Mortensen preaches in the night, chiefly on the West Side. He is much interested in the work against the white slave trade. Through his agency Jennie Moulton was sent to Joliet under a sentence of twenty years for procuring young girls for some degraded Greeks. Mr. Mortensen has also been very diligent against dealers in obscene pictures and postcards.
Rev. N. K. Clarkson has worked part of the time with The Midnight Mission and part of the time independently. He has organized The White Cross Midnight Missionary a.s.sociation, which is very diligent, preaching sometimes almost all night and never ceasing for rain or snow. This heroic work compels respect.
Dan Martin works Sat.u.r.day nights in the vice district with a large company of devoted people. Hundreds of men and youths have knelt in the dust, confessing their sins, in Mr. Martin"s meetings.
JUSTICE