rderly 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 passenger 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 God. 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 God." 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 principally 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
Association 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 assessing petty fines against these offenders
when the police brought them into court.

We steadily preached the word and prayed to God 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