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Authors: John Kobler
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have set foot inside "this hellhole of sin" had not Gipsy Smith led them there, remained to taste the forbidden fruits. The district had never been livelier. "We are glad of the business, of course," said Minna Everleigh, wickedly, "but I am sorry to see so many nice young men coming down here for the first time."
The long-range repercussions, however, advanced the cause of rectitude. The evangelist had focused the attention of powerful church and civic groups on the extent of prostitution and white slavery in Chicago. Two months after Smith's march the Federated Protestant Churches, representing 600 parishes, passed a resolution demanding the appointment of an investigative Vice Commission. The Republican mayor, Fred A. Busse, an obese barroom brawler and crony of racketeers, found it expedient to comply. The commission's blunt 400-page report, published the following year, enumerating the city's brothels and estimating their enormous profits, jolted the normally apathetic citizenry. The newspapers joined in the clamor for reform.
Busse, meanwhile, had been succeeded by a cultivated, debonair Democrat, Carter H. Harrison, Jr. Like most of Chicago's officials, whether corrupt or honest, like Busse before him, Mayor Harrison believed that a red-light district, tolerated though not legalized, offered the best chance of containing and controlling prostitution. Abolition, they argued, would not eliminate the evil; it would only disperse it. But to appease the reformers, Harrison ordered the police to clean out the flats and houses of assignation along South Michigan Avenue skirting the Levee. Inside the Levee the only major casualties were the Everleigh sisters, who had been brash enough to distribute a glossy illustrated brochure advertising their establishment ("Steam heat throughout, with electric fans in summer, one never feels the winter's chill or summer's heat in this luxurious resort. Fortunate indeed, with all the comforts of life surrounding them, are the members of the Everleigh Club . . ."). Incensed, Mayor Harri son determined upon the immediate extinction of the bagnio. The sisters quit Chicago and the brothel business forever, settling eventually on New York's Central Park West, where they lived in affluence and dignity to an old age.
The reform movement in Chicago coincided with a sweeping governmental investigation of white slavery throughout the country. In New York a girl who had traveled the Colosimo-Van Bever circuit defied threats of death and publicly exposed the system. Pending indictments against the white slavers, she was whisked away for safekeeping to a hideout in Bridgeport, Connecticut. There, according to neighborhood witnesses, two men called for her in a car, showing Department of justice credentials and saying they required an affidavit from her. The next morning her body, torn by a dozen slugs, was found sprawled across a grave in a cemetery outside Bridgeport. From the neighbors' descriptions the investigators identified the two callers as members of Torrio's old James Street gang, but they could prove nothing. The case against Colosimo collapsed. Upon this happy denouement Big Jim handed Torrio a percentage of all his brothel and gambling interests.
After routing the Everleigh sisters, the Chicago police relapsed into inertia. Torrio, however, harbored no false optimism. He convinced Colosimo that the days of the Levee as a center of unbridled crime and vice were numbered and that they should plan for the future. What prompted their first major step was the new mobility of the American pleasure seeker. In six years, from 1908 to 1913, the registration of motor vehicles in the United States increased tenfold to a total of 1,192,262, and they were used a great deal more for pleasure than for business. One by-product was the roadhouse. It occurred to Torrio that the hinterland, with its meager police force, offered scope for the expansion of the vice industry. Colosimo agreed. All they needed
The long-range repercussions, however, advanced the cause of rectitude. The evangelist had focused the attention of powerful church and civic groups on the extent of prostitution and white slavery in Chicago. Two months after Smith's march the Federated Protestant Churches, representing 600 parishes, passed a resolution demanding the appointment of an investigative Vice Commission. The Republican mayor, Fred A. Busse, an obese barroom brawler and crony of racketeers, found it expedient to comply. The commission's blunt 400-page report, published the following year, enumerating the city's brothels and estimating their enormous profits, jolted the normally apathetic citizenry. The newspapers joined in the clamor for reform.
Busse, meanwhile, had been succeeded by a cultivated, debonair Democrat, Carter H. Harrison, Jr. Like most of Chicago's officials, whether corrupt or honest, like Busse before him, Mayor Harrison believed that a red-light district, tolerated though not legalized, offered the best chance of containing and controlling prostitution. Abolition, they argued, would not eliminate the evil; it would only disperse it. But to appease the reformers, Harrison ordered the police to clean out the flats and houses of assignation along South Michigan Avenue skirting the Levee. Inside the Levee the only major casualties were the Everleigh sisters, who had been brash enough to distribute a glossy illustrated brochure advertising their establishment ("Steam heat throughout, with electric fans in summer, one never feels the winter's chill or summer's heat in this luxurious resort. Fortunate indeed, with all the comforts of life surrounding them, are the members of the Everleigh Club . . ."). Incensed, Mayor Harri son determined upon the immediate extinction of the bagnio. The sisters quit Chicago and the brothel business forever, settling eventually on New York's Central Park West, where they lived in affluence and dignity to an old age.
The reform movement in Chicago coincided with a sweeping governmental investigation of white slavery throughout the country. In New York a girl who had traveled the Colosimo-Van Bever circuit defied threats of death and publicly exposed the system. Pending indictments against the white slavers, she was whisked away for safekeeping to a hideout in Bridgeport, Connecticut. There, according to neighborhood witnesses, two men called for her in a car, showing Department of justice credentials and saying they required an affidavit from her. The next morning her body, torn by a dozen slugs, was found sprawled across a grave in a cemetery outside Bridgeport. From the neighbors' descriptions the investigators identified the two callers as members of Torrio's old James Street gang, but they could prove nothing. The case against Colosimo collapsed. Upon this happy denouement Big Jim handed Torrio a percentage of all his brothel and gambling interests.
After routing the Everleigh sisters, the Chicago police relapsed into inertia. Torrio, however, harbored no false optimism. He convinced Colosimo that the days of the Levee as a center of unbridled crime and vice were numbered and that they should plan for the future. What prompted their first major step was the new mobility of the American pleasure seeker. In six years, from 1908 to 1913, the registration of motor vehicles in the United States increased tenfold to a total of 1,192,262, and they were used a great deal more for pleasure than for business. One by-product was the roadhouse. It occurred to Torrio that the hinterland, with its meager police force, offered scope for the expansion of the vice industry. Colosimo agreed. All they needed
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