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Twenty Years a Detective
in the Wickedest City in the World.

CLIFTON R. WOOLDRIDGE.

Twenty Years a Detective

IN THE WICKEDEST CITY IN THE WORLD.

20,000 ARRESTS MADE
12,900 CONVICTIONS ON STATE AND CITY LAWS
200 PENITENTIARY CONVICTIONS

The Devil and the Grafter

AND

HOW THEY WORK TOGETHER TO DECEIVE,
SWINDLE AND DESTROY MANKIND

AN ARMY OF 600,000 CRIMINALS AT WAR WITH
SOCIETY AND RELIGION

By CLIFTON R. WOOLDRIDGE

The World-Famous Criminologist and Detective

"The Incorruptible Sherlock Holmes of America"

After twenty years of heroic warfare and scores of hair-breadth
escapes, in his unceasing battle with the devil and the grafter,
Mr. Wooldridge tells in a graphic manner how Wildcat Insurance,
Fake Mines and Oil Wells, Turf Swindlers, Home Buying Swindlers,
Fake Bond and Investment Companies, Bucket Shops, Blind
Pools in Grain and Stocks, Pool Rooms and Hand Books, Fake
Mail Order Houses, ordinary Gambling Houses, Panel Houses,
Matrimonial Bureaus, Fake Underwriting, Fake Banks, Collecting
Agencies, Fake Medicine Companies, Clairvoyants, Fortune Tellers,
Palmists and other criminals of all classes operate, and how their
organizations have been broken up and destroyed by hundreds.

THE WORK ALSO CONTAINS

Detective Clifton R. Wooldridge's "Never-Fail" System

For Detecting and Outwitting All Classes of
Grafters and Swindlers

Copyright, 1908,
BY
CLIFTON R. WOOLDRIDGE.


Chicago Publishing Co.,
83-91 Plymouth Place,
Chicago.

PREFACE.

In presenting this work to the public the author has no apologies to make nor favors to ask. It is a simple history of his connection with the Police Department of Chicago, compiled from his own memoranda, the newspapers, and the official records. The matter herein contained differs from those records only in details, as many facts are given in the book which have never been made public. The author has no disposition to malign any one, and names are used only in cases in which the facts are supported by the archives of the Police Department and of the criminal court. In the conscientious discharge of his duties as an officer of the law, the author has in all cases studied the mode of legal procedure. His aim has been solely to protect society and the taxpayer, and to punish the guilty. The evidences of his sincerity accompany the book in the form of letters from the highest officers in the city government, from the mayor down to the precinct captain, and furnish overwhelming testimony as to his endeavors to serve the public faithfully and honestly. No effort has been made to bestow self-praise, and where this occurs, it is only a reproduction, perhaps in different language, of the comments indulged in by the newspapers of Chicago and other cities, whose reporters are among the brightest and most talented young men in all the walks and professions of life. To them the officer acknowledges his obligations in many instances. Often he has worked hand-in-hand with them. They have traveled with him in the dead hours of the night, in his efforts to suppress crime or track a criminal, and have often given him assistance in the way of suggestions.

He now submits his work and his record to the public, hoping it will give him a kindly reception.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

Preface

7

-

8

Testimonials

11

Biography of the Author

27

Graft Nation's Worst Foe

51

The "Never-Fail" System to Beat the Get-Rich-Quick Swindles

112

The Best Rules for Health

116

Matrimonial Agents Coining Cupid's Wiles

119

The Great Mistake. Our Penal System is a Relic of Early Savagery

192

Vagrants, Who and Why

204

The Young Criminals and How They Are Bred in Chicago

230

Wiles of Fortune Telling

246

Wife or Gallows

267

A Clever Shop Lifter (Fainting Bertha)

272

Front

284

The Criminal's Last Chance Gone

288

Burglary a Science

311

Cell Terms for "Con" Men

341

Panel-House Thieves

348

Gambling and Crime

358

A Heartless Fraud

401

The Bogus Mine

409

A Giant Swindle

418

Quacks

426

Fabulous Losses in Big Turf Frauds

448

Fake Drug Vendors

462

Bucket-Shop

471

On "Sure Things." How to Learn Their Real Character

482

Huge Swindles Bared

487

The Social Evil

500

Suppress Manufacture and Sale of Dangerous Weapons

508

Getting Something for Nothing

517

Want Ad. Fakers

527

Millionaire Banker and Broker Arrested

533

Dora McDonald

551

Mike McDonald

581

PUBLISHER'S PREFACE.

The two arch enemies of happiness and prosperity are the Devil and the Grafter. The church is fighting the Devil, the law is fighting the Grafter. The great mass of human beings, as they journey along the pathway of life, know not the dangers that lie in wait from these two sources. Honest themselves, credulous and innocent, they trust their fellow man.

Statistics show that four-fifths of all young men and women, and nine-tenths of the widows are swindled out of the money and property that comes to them by inheritance. Every year thousands of laboring men spend their hard earnings and beggar their families by falling in traps laid for them. Thousands of innocent girls and women, struggling for a respectable livelihood, fall victims to the demons who traffic in human honor.

The Grafters spend millions upon millions of dollars annually in advertising in America alone. There is not a Post Office in the land where every mail does not carry their appeals and thieving schemes; and they collect hundreds of millions of dollars annually from the trusting public. The State and National Governments spend millions of dollars a year in trying to catch and curb these grafters. Some of Satan's worst grafters are found in the church, working the brethren; and he has them by thousands in every walk of life.

The object of this book is to protect the public by joining hands with the church and the government in their work against the Devil and the Grafter. The author reveals and exposes the Grafter with his schemes, his traps, his pitfalls and his victims. The reader of this book will be fortified and armed with knowledge, facts and law, that should forever protect him, his family and his friends from the wiles of the Grafters.

It is with the confidence that this work fills an imperative need, and that it should be in the hands of every minister, every physician, every teacher and every mother and father in the land, that the author and publisher send it forth on what they believe to be a mission of good to the world.

WORDS OF COMMENDATION.

From Chas. S. Deneen, Governor of Illinois:

"It is with pleasure that I am able to say that Detective Wooldridge has conducted all his cases with zeal and intelligence."

J. M. Longenecker, former State's Attorney, says:

"Mr. Wooldridge has thorough knowledge of evidence and is an expert in preparing a criminal case for trial. I have found him to be one of the most efficient officers in the Department."

R. W. McClaughrey, Warden of U. S. Prison at Leavenworth, Kans., Ex-Warden of Illinois State Penitentiary and Ex-Chief of Police of Chicago, says in a letter to the author:

"You were not only subject to bribes, but also frequently a target of perjurers and scoundrels of every degree. You came out from every ordeal unscathed, and maintained a character for integrity and fearlessness in the discharge of your duties that warranted the highest commendation. It gives me pleasure to make this statement."

J. J. Badenoch, Ex-General Supt. of Police, writing Mr. Wooldridge, says:

"Dear Sir—Before I retire from the command of the Police Department, I desire to thank you for your bravery and loyal service. The character of your work being such that bribes are frequently offered by the criminal class, it becomes necessary to select men of perfect integrity for the purpose, and I now know that I made no mistake in selecting you for this trying duty. It affords me great pleasure to commend you for your bravery and fidelity to your duties."

Nicholas Hunt, Inspector Commanding Second Division, says:

"I have known Clifton R. Wooldridge for the last ten years. As an officer he is par-excellent, absolutely without fear and with a detective ability so strongly developed it almost appealed to me as an extra sense. If I wanted to secure the arrest of a desperate man, I would put Mr. Wooldridge in charge of the case in preference to any one I know, as, with his bravery, he has discretion."

Geo. M. Shippy, Chief of Police, of Chicago, writing Mr. Wooldridge, says:

"Your heart is in the right place, and while I have always found you stern and persistent in the pursuit and prosecution of criminals, you were very kind and considerate, and I can truthfully say that more than one evil doer was helped to reform and was given material assistance by you."

Luke P. Colleran, Chief of Detectives, says:

"His book is most worthy and truthful and commendable; and I take pleasure in commending it to all."

SHERLOCK HOLMES IN REAL LIFE.

From The Chicago Tribune of November 25, 1906.

"Chicago may be surprised to learn that it has a Sherlock Holmes of its own, but it has; and before his actual experiences in crime-hunting, the fictional experiences through which Poe, Doyle, and Nick Carter put their detectives pale into insignificance. His name is Clifton R. Wooldridge.

"Truth is stranger even than detective fiction, and in the number of his adventures of mystery, danger and excitement he has all the detective heroes of fiction and reality beaten easily.

"He has personally arrested 19,500 people, 200 of them were sent to the penitentiary; 3,000 to the house of correction; 6,000 paid fines; 100 girls under age were rescued from lives of shame; $100,000 worth of property was recovered; 100 panel houses were closed; 100 matrimonial bureaus were broken up.

Disguised as a JEW IN THE GHETTO

"Wooldridge has refused perhaps 500 bribes of from $500 to $5,000 each. He has been under fire forty-four times. He has been wounded dozens of times. He has impersonated almost every kind of character. He has, in his crime hunting, associated with members of the '400' and fraternized with hobos. He has dined with the elite and smoked in opium dens. He has done everything that one expects the detective of fiction to do and which the real detective seldom does.

"When occasion requires he ceases to appear as Wooldridge. He can make a disguise so quickly and effectively that even an actor would be astonished. Gilded youth, negro gambler, honest farmer or lodging house 'bum,' it requires but a few minutes to 'make-up,' to run to earth elusive wrong-doers."

The pictures which appear here are actual photographs taken from life in the garb and disguises worn by the author in several famous cases.

"HECK HOUSTON"—STOCK-RAISER FROM WYOMING

In this garb the author makes himself an easy mark for the crooks and grafters of the Stock-Yard district. The hold-up man—the card-sharp—the bunco-steerer—the get-rich-quick stock-broker fall "easy game" to the detective thus disguised.

ASSOCIATING WITH THE STOCK AND BOND GRAFTERS

Disguised as an Englishman who has money and is looking for a good investment, Mr. Wooldridge is easily mistaken for a "sucker." The trap is set. He apparently walks into it; but, in a few minutes, the grafter finds himself on the way to prison.

POLICY-SAM JOHNSON

This is a favorite disguise of the author when doing detective duty among the lowest and most disreputable criminals. Unsuspectingly the crooks offer him all sorts of dirty work at small prices for assistance in criminal acts.

WE NEVER SLEEP

Detectives disguised as tramps: "I am made all things to all men," says St. Paul. The Detective must also make himself all things to all men, that he may find and catch the rascals. To be up-to-date it is necessary to be able to assume as many disguises as there are classes of people among whom criminals hide.

POLICY-SAM JOHNSON SHOOTING CRAPS

An illustration of the way the detective employs himself in the gambling dens. It is often necessary to play and lose money in these places that he may get at the facts. Observe that he is watching proceedings in another part of the room while he is throwing the dice.

SHADOWING ONE OF THE FOUR HUNDRED.

Some of the most dangerous grafters in the world hobnob with the elite. Here we have our author in evening dress, passing as a man of society at a banquet of the rich, shadowing a "high-flyer" crook.

CRAPS AND CARDS

The gambling house is a station on the road to crime. In proportion to population there are, perhaps, more negro gamblers than of any other race.

A LITTLE GAME IN THE ALLEY AT NOON

Many boys and young men spend their noon hour in cultivating bad habits that lead to nights of gambling; and then come crimes to get money that they may gamble more.

A RESTING PLACE ON THE ROAD TO CRIME.

The gilded saloon is the club-room of the crook. Here he hatches his plots; here he drinks to get desperate courage to carry them out; and here he returns when the crime has been committed to drown remorse and harden conscience.

YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE

A GAME OF POKER FOR "A SMALL STAKE"

This is a clangorous stop. Many a ruined man traces his downfall to the day he began in youth to "bet" a little "to make the game interesting."

Emma Ford (Sisters) Pearl Smith

Mary White, Flossie Moore

FOUR FAMOUS NEGRO WOMEN GRAFTERS

As confidence workers, highway robbers, and desperate criminals they were the terror of officers and courts. Together they stole and robbed people of more than $200,000.00. They were finally run to earth and put in prison. Our author followed one of them across the continent and back.

THE DESTINATION OF THE GRAFTER.

"The way of the transgressor is hard." "Be sure your sin will find you out." The penitentiary is full of bright men who might have been eminently successful—an honor to themselves and a blessing to mankind, if they had only heeded the old adage—"Honesty is the best policy."

WOOLDRIDGE'S CABINET OF BURGLAR TOOLS.

At the police headquarters in Chicago, one of the most attractive curios is the above cabinet of burglar-tools and weapons taken by the author from robbers and crooks during his eighteen years of service.

TURNING THE BOYS FROM CRIMINAL PATHS

This is a photograph of the Juvenile Court in Chicago, where boys who commit crimes are tried and sent to the Reformatory, instead of to prison with hardened criminals. The author claims that our prison system is filling the country with criminals.

CLIFTON R. WOOLDRIDGE
AMERICA'S FOREMOST DETECTIVE.

Clifton R. Wooldridge was born February 25, 1854, in Franklin county, Kentucky. He received a common school education, and then started out in the world to shift for himself. From 1868 to 1871, he held the position of shipping clerk and collector for the Washington Foundry in St. Louis, Missouri. Severing his connection with that company, he went to Washington, D. C., and was attached to the United States Signal Bureau from March 1, 1871, to December 5, 1872. He then took up the business of railroading, and for the following nine years occupied positions as fireman, brakeman, switchman, conductor and general yard master.

When the gold fever broke out in the Black Hills in 1879, Mr. Wooldridge along with many others went to that region to better his fortune. Six months later he joined the engineering corps of the Denver & Rio Grande railroad and assisted in locating the line from Canon City to Leadville, as well as several of the branches. The work was not only very difficult, but very dangerous, and at times, when he was assisting in locating the line through the Royal Gorge in the Grand Canon of the Arkansas, he was suspended from a rope, which ran from the peak of one cliff to the other, with his surveying instruments strapped to his back. This gorge is fifty feet wide at the bottom and seventy feet wide at the top, the walls of solid rock rising three thousand feet above the level of the river below. The work was slow and required a great deal of skill, but it was accomplished successfully.

Mr. Wooldridge went to Denver in 1880 and engaged in contracting and mining the following eighteen months. He then took a position as engineer and foreman of the Denver Daily Republican, where he remained until May 29, 1883. The following August he came to Chicago and took a position with the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul railway. In 1886, he severed his connection with the railroad and founded the "Switchman's Journal." He conducted and edited the paper until May 26th, when he was burned out, together with the firm of Donohue & Henneberry at the corner of Congress street and Wabash avenue, as well as many other business houses in that locality, entailing a total loss of nearly $1,000,000. Thus the savings of many years were swept away, leaving him penniless and in debt. He again turned his attention to railroading and secured a position with the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy railroad and had accumulated enough money to pay the indebtedness which resulted from the fire, when the great strike was inaugurated on that road in February, 1888. The strike included the engineers, firemen and switchmen, and continued nearly a year. On October 5th of that year Mr. Wooldridge made application for a position on the Chicago police force, and having the highest endorsements, he was appointed and assigned to the Desplaines Street Station. It was soon discovered that Wooldridge as a police officer had no superiors and few equals. Neither politics, religion, creed, color, or nationality obstructed him in the performance of his police duties, and the fact was demonstrated and conceded times without number that he could not be bought, bribed, or intimidated. He selected for his motto, "Right wrongs no man; equal justice to all." His superior officers soon recognized the fact that no braver, more honest or efficient police officer ever wore a star or carried a club.

The mass of records on file in the police headquarters and in the office of the clerk of the municipal and criminal court demonstrate conclusively that he has made one of the most remarkable records of any police officer in the United States if not in the world. Mr. Wooldridge has seen twenty years of experience and training in active police work. Ten years of this time he was located in what is commonly known as the Levee district, a territory where criminals congregate and where crimes of all degrees are committed.

Born in Kentucky.

Mr. Wooldridge is therefore of Southern extraction. And in spite of the "big stick" which this terror of the grafters has carried for twenty years, he still "speaks softly," the gentle accent of the old South. But behind that soft speech there is a determined soul. The smooth-running accents of the South are in this case the velvet which hides the glove of iron.

The following are some of the deeds of valor, work and achievements he has accomplished:

AN UNPARALLELED RECORD.

20,000 arrests made by Detective Wooldridge.

He keeps a record of each arrest, time, place and disposition of the case.

14,000 arrests made for violation State and city misdemeanors.

6,000 arrests made on criminal charges.

10,500 of these prisoners paid fines.

2,400 of these prisoners were sent to jail or the house of correction.

200 of these were convicted and sent to the penitentiary.

1,000 get-rich-quick concerns were raided and broken up.

60 wagon loads of literature seized and destroyed.

A conservative estimate of the sum contributed annually by this highly civilized nation to "safe investment" and "get-rich-quick" concerns is $150,000,000.

300 poker, crap and gambling games raided and closed; $1,000,000 lost.

200 wine rooms closed up. These wine rooms were the downfall and ruination of hundreds of innocent girls.

185 wildcat insurance companies raided and closed.

2,500,000 bogus securities and 10 patrol wagon loads of books, papers and literature seized. These companies paid no losses, and there were, it is estimated, 1,000,000 persons who had taken out fire insurance policies in these wildcat companies.

They had sustained fire losses and were not indemnified. The conservative estimated loss by these wildcat insurance companies is $10,000,000.

$200,000 of lost and stolen property was recovered and returned to the owners by Detective Wooldridge.

129 slot machines seized and broken up; valued at $10,000.

130 policy shops raided and closed: $100,000 would be a conservative estimate of the amount lost by the players.

125 matrimonial agencies raided and broken up.

4,500,000 matrimonial letters seized and destroyed.

1,500,000 matrimonial agencies' stock letters seized and destroyed.

1,400,000 matrimonial stock photographs seized and destroyed.

500,000 photographs sent to the matrimonial agencies by men and women who were seeking their affinities seized and destroyed.

40 wagon loads of matrimonial literature seized and destroyed.

110 turf frauds raided and closed: $8,000,000 lost by the public.

$20,000 bribe was offered Wooldridge by the turf swindlers to let them run, but he refused to take it.

105 panel houses raided and closed.

$1,500,000 was stolen annually from 1889 to October, 1896. At that time there were 64 uniformed officers stationed in front of the panel houses. Detectives Wooldridge and Schubert were assigned to break them, which was accomplished in three weeks' time.

100 bucketshops raided and closed; $5,000,000 lost through them.

July 31, 1900, Detective Wooldridge, in charge of 50 officers, arrested 415 men and landed them in the Harrison Street Police Station, and dismantled the following bucketshops:

10 and 12 Pacific avenue, 25 Sherman street, 14 Pacific avenue, 10 Pacific avenue, 210 Opera House Block, 7 Exchange court, 19 Lyric Building, and 37 Dearborn street. It was one of the largest and most sensational raids ever made in Chicago, and will be long remembered.

73 opium joints raided and closed; $100,000 spent, and hundreds of persons were wrecked and ruined by the use of opium.

75 girls under age rescued from a house of ill fame and a life of shame, and returned to their parents or guardians, or sent to the Juvenile School or the House of Good Shepherd.

50 home-buying swindles raided and closed; $6,000,000 lost.

48 palmists and fortune tellers raided and closed; $500,000 lost.

45 spurious employment agencies raided and closed; $200,000 lost.

40 bogus charity swindles raided and closed; $300,000 lost.

38 blind pools in grain and stock raided and closed; $500,000 lost.

35 bogus mail order houses raided and closed; $3,000,000 lost.

34 sure-thing gambling devices raided and closed; $2,500,000 lost.

33 fraudulent and guarantee companies raided and closed; $900,000 lost.

30 fraudulent book concerns raided and closed; $1,000,000 lost.

28 panel-house keepers were indicted and convicted.

15 owners of the property were indicted and convicted.

This broke the panel-house keepers' backbone and they never recovered to resume business again.

Emma Ford, sentenced to the penitentiary April 5, 1902, for five years. Pearl Smith, her sister, sentenced to the penitentiary June 19, 1893, for five years. Mary White, May 20, 1893, for two years. Flossie Moore, March 27, 1893, for five years. Seventy-five thousand dollars is said to have been stolen by her in eighteen months.

$8,000 bribe was offered Detective Wooldridge to let Flossie Moore slip through his fingers.

$3,000 bribe was offered by the same woman for the address of Sadie Jorden, who was an eye witness of the robbery of E. S. Johnson, a retired merchant, aged 74 years.

28 wire tappers were raided and closed. These men secured the quotations from the Board of Trade and pool rooms, and hundreds of thousands of dollars were secured from the speculators who were victimized; $200,000 lost.

27 dishonest collecting agencies raided and closed; $200,000 lost.

25 swindling brokers raided and closed; $800,000 lost.

23 lotteries raided and closed; $1,700,000 lost.

$100 per month bribe to run his lottery was offered Detective Wooldridge, April 21, 1900, by J. J. Jacobs, 217 Dearborn street, who conducted the Montana Loan & Investment Co. He was arrested and fined $1,500 by Judge Chetlain, June 21, 1903.

22 promoters raided and closed; $1,000,000 lost.

22 salted mines and well companies raided and closed; $2,000,000 lost.

20 city lot swindles raided and closed; $1,000,000 lost.

20 spurious medicine concerns raided and closed; $300,000 lost.

$30,000 worth of poison and bogus medicines seized October 29, 1904, as follows:

$12,000 worth of spurious medicines seized by Detective Wooldridge from Edward Kuehmsted, 6323 Ingleside avenue.

$5,000 worth of spurious drugs seized from J. S. Dean, 6121 Ellis avenue.

$2,500 worth of spurious drugs seized from Burtis B. McCann, 6113 Madison avenue.

$500 worth of spurious drugs seized from J. N. Levy, 356 Dearborn street.

$2,000 worth of spurious medicines seized from W. G. Nay, 1452 Fulton street.

17 women arrested for having young girls under age in a house of prostitution.

16 fraudulent theater agencies raided and closed; $100,000 lost.

15 procurists of young girls for houses of ill fame and prostitution arrested and fined.

$8,000 bribe offered Detective Wooldridge, September 27, 1895, by Mary Hastings, who kept a house of prostitution at 128 Custom House place. She went to Toledo, O., and secured six girls under age and brought them in the house of prostitution.

One of the girls escaped in her night clothes by tying a sheet to the window. There were six in number, as follows:

Lizzie Lehrman, May Casey, Ida Martin, Gertie Harris, Kittie McCarty and Lizzie Winzel.

After Mary Hastings was arrested and she found out that she could not bribe Wooldridge she gave bonds and fled. Some months later she was again arrested, and the case dragged along for two years.

The witnesses were bought up and shipped out of the state. The case was stricken off, with leave to reinstate. It is said it cost her $20,000.

Four notorious negro women, footpads and highway robbers, arrested by Detective Wooldridge, whose stealings are estimated by the police to have been over $200,000. The following are the names of the women arrested:

5 mushroom banks raided and closed; $500,000 lost.

Detective Wooldridge has been under fire over forty times, and it is said that he bears a charmed life, and fears nothing. He has met with many hair-breadth escapes in his efforts to apprehend criminals who, by means of revolver and other concealed weapons, tried to fight their way to liberty.

He has impersonated almost every kind of character. He has in his crime hunting associated with members of the "400" and fraternized with hobos. He has dined with the elite and smoked in the opium dens; he has done everything that one expects a detective of fiction to do, and which the real detective seldom does.

Wooldridge, the incorruptible! That describes him. The keenest, shrewdest, most indefatigable man that ever wore a detective's star, the equal of Lecocq and far the superior of the fictitious Sherlock Holmes, the man who has time and again achieved the seemingly impossible with the most tremendous odds against him, the man who might, had such been his desire, be wealthy, be a "foremost citizen" as tainted money goes, has earned the title given him in these headlines. And if ever any one man earned this title it is Clifton R. Wooldridge.

It is refreshing to the citizenship of America, rich and poor alike, to contemplate the career of this wonderful man. It fills men with respect for the law, with confidence in the administration of the law, to know that there are such men as Wooldridge at the helm of justice.

The writer of this article has enjoyed intimate personal association with the great detective, both in the capacity of a newspaper reporter, magazine writer and anti-graft worker. The ins and outs of the nature of the greatest secret service worker in Chicago, Clifton R. Wooldridge, have been to me an open book. And when I call him Wooldridge, the incorruptible, I know whereof I speak.

I have seen him when all the "influences" (and they are the same "influences" which have been denounced all over the country of late) were brought to bear upon him, when even his own chiefs were inclined to be frightened, but no "influence" from any source, howsoever high, has ever availed to swerve him one inch from the path of duty.

Cannot Be Bribed.

He has been offered bribes innumerable; but in each and every instance the would-be briber has learned a very unpleasant lesson. For this man, who might be worth almost anything he wished, is by no means affluent. But he has kept his name untarnished and his spirit high through good fortune and through bad, through evil repute and good.

Wooldridge does not know the meaning of a lie. A lie is something so foreign to his nature that he has trouble in comprehending how others can see profit in falsifying. It has been his cardinal principle through life that liars always come to a bad end finally. And he has seen his healthy estimate of life vindicated, both in the high circles of frenzied finance and in the low levels of sneak-thievery.

Tremendous Amount of Work Done.

But the most remarkable thing to me about Wooldridge is the work he has done. Consider for a moment the record which heads this article. Could anything shout forth the tremendous energy of the man in any plainer terms? There are men in the same line of work with Wooldridge, who have been in the service for the same length of time, who have not made one arrest where he has made thousands.

Twenty thousand arrests in twenty years of service, a thousand arrests every year, on an average. A thousand get-rich-quick concerns, victimizing more than a million people, raided and put out of business; thirteen thousand one hundred convictions; hundreds upon hundreds of wine rooms, gambling houses, bucketshops, opium joints, houses of ill fame, turf frauds, bogus charity swindles, policy shops, matrimonial agencies, fraudulent guarantee companies, spurious medicine concerns, thieving theater agencies and mushroom banks brought to the bar of justice and made to expiate their crimes.

That is the record of the almost inconceivable work done by Clifton R. Wooldridge on the Chicago police force. The figures are almost appalling in their greatness. It is hard for the mind to comprehend how any one man could have achieved all this vast amount of labor, even if he worked twenty-four hours a day all the time. And yet it is the bare record of the "big" work done by Wooldridge, aside from his routine.

Life History of Wooldridge.

Detective Wooldridge from March, 1898, until April 5, 1907, was attached to the office of the General Superintendent of Police and worked out of his office. During that time over 1,200 letters and complaints were referred to him for investigation and action.

April 5, 1907, Detective Wooldridge was relieved of this work and transferred, and crusade and extermination of the get-rich-quick concerns ceased.

September 20, 1889, Detective Wooldridge was placed in charge of twenty-five picked detectives, who were placed in charge of the suppression of hand-books and other gambling in Chicago. He remained in charge of this detail for three years.

On December 13, 1890, at the residence of Charles Partdridge, Michigan avenue and Thirty-second street, while three desperate burglars were trying to effect an entrance into the house, Detective Wooldridge espied them and in his attempt to arrest them was fired upon by the trio. One shot passed through his cap, clipping off a lock of his hair and grazing his scalp. The next shot struck him squarely in the buckle of his belt, which saved his life.

Numberless Hair-Breadth Escapes.

August 20, 1891, he met with another narrow escape at Thirtieth and Dearborn streets, while attempting to arrest Nathan Judd, a crazed and desperate colored man. Judd threw a brick at him, striking him over his left temple, and inflicting a wound two inches long.

Judd was shot through the thigh, and afterwards was sent to the house of correction for one year.

Detective Wooldridge, alone in a drenching rainstorm at 4 o'clock on the morning of June 23, 1892, at Michigan avenue and Madison street, intercepted three horsethieves and hold-up men in a buggy trying to make their escape.

At the point of a revolver he commanded them to halt. As they approached him no attention was paid to him, or to what he was saying. Seizing the bridle of the horse, he was dragged nearly a block before the horse was checked. A twenty-pound horse weight was hurled at him by one of the robbers, which just missed his head. Another one of the robbers leaped upon the horse and rained blow after blow upon his head with the buggy whip.

Detective Wooldridge shot this man in the leg; he jumped off the horse and made good his escape while Wooldridge was engaged in a desperate hand to hand encounter with the other two robbers. Wooldridge knocked both senseless with the butt of his revolver. They were taken to the police station and gave their names as John Crosby and John McGinis. Both were found guilty a month later and sent to the penitentiary by Judge Baker.

Saves Women and Children in Fire.

March 4, 1892, Detective Wooldridge by his prompt and courageous actions, and the immediate risk of his own life, succeeded in rescuing from the Waverly Hotel (which was on fire), at 262 and 264 S. Clark street, two ladies who were overcome by smoke on the second floor of the burning building: also a lady and two children, aged two years and five months, respectively, from the fourth floor.

This act was performed by tying a silk handkerchief around his mouth, and on his hands and knees crawling up the winding stairs to the fourth floor, where he found Mrs. E. C. Dwyer unconscious. Placing the two children in a bed quilt, he threw it over his shoulder, and seizing Mrs. E. C. Dwyer by the hand, dragged her down the stairs to a place of safety, where medical assistance was called.

Sept. 21, 1902, Detective Wooldridge was placed in charge of the Get-Rich-Quick concerns with which Chicago was infested. He also had charge of the suppression of gambling at parks and other places of amusement, the inspection and supervision of picture exhibitions in penny arcades and museums, and the inspection and supervision of illustrated postal cards sold throughout the city for the purpose of preventing the exhibition, sale and circulation of vulgar and obscene pictures, the work of gathering evidence against and the suppression of dealers in "sure thing" gambling devices, viz., loaded dice, marked cards, roulette wheels, spindle faro layouts, card hold-outs, nickel slot machines and many other devices.

Oct. 25, 1893, Detective Wooldridge had a narrow escape while trying to arrest Charles Sales, a desperate colored man, for committing a robbery at State and Harrison streets. Sales whipped out his gun and fired four shots at Wooldridge at short range; two of the shots passing harmlessly through his coat. Sales was arrested and given one year in the house of correction.

Rides to Station on Prisoner's Back.

June 6, 1894, Detective Wooldridge arrested Eugene Buchanan for committing a highway robbery at Polk and Clark streets. A few days prior he had held up and robbed Philip Schneider and kicked out one of his eyes. Buchanan was met in the alley between Clark street and Pacific avenue, where he resisted arrest and fought like a demon, using his hands, club and head. In the scuffle he ran his head between Wooldridge's legs and tried to throw him, but Wooldridge was to quick for him and fastened his legs around Buchanan's neck like a clam. Buchanan could not free himself. Wooldridge pulled his gun and placing it in the ear of Buchanan compelled him to carry him to the Harrison street police station on his shoulder. It was one of the most novel sights ever witnessed, and will be long remembered by those who saw it.

Buchanan was convicted and sent to the penitentiary for three years. Upon his release he applied to Wooldridge to assist him in securing a position. Wooldridge took him to his home, fed him and secured employment for him with Nelson Morris & Co., where he remained three years. He afterwards committed a highway robbery in Washington Park and is now serving an indefinite term in the penitentiary.

Hangs on Window Sill.

May 16, 1895, Detective Wooldridge, accompanied by Officers Kern, O'Connor and Cameron, located Matt Kelly at 411 State street, who was wanted for a criminal assault. Kelly was a hold-up man, ex-convict and a notorious safe-blower, who several years prior to this shot two officers in St. Louis, Mo. Kelly was found behind locked doors on the second-floor and refused to open the doors. Detective Wooldridge went to the adjoining flat, opened a window and crawled along the ledge until he had reached Kelly's room; with a revolver in his mouth he pushed up the sash and was faced by Kelly and his wife.

"Go back or I'll kill you," said Kelly as he pushed his revolver in Wooldridge's face.

Wooldridge had meanwhile secured a good hold on the sill of the window, but was not in a position to defend himself. The Kelly woman tried her best to shove him off; she succeeded in loosening one of his hands, and for an instant Detective Wooldridge thought he would have to fall. With an almost superhuman effort Wooldridge broke in the window and covering Kelly with his own revolver ordered him to throw up his hands, which he did. He was taken to the police station and heavily fined.

A Plot to Kill Detective Wooldridge.

A dozen of the highwaymen and robbers on whom Wooldridge was waging a relentless warfare gathered together on the morning of July 4, 1895, and formed a plot to kill Wooldridge and get him out of the way. They concluded that the night of July 4, when everyone was firing off revolvers and celebrating, would afford the best opportunity. They imagined it would be an easy thing to shoot him from one of the windows or from a housetop while he was on duty patrolling his post, and no one would know where the shot came from, as there was shooting from every direction.

An oath of secrecy was taken by all present, and lots drawn to see who was to do the deed. In all probability their plan would have been carried out had it not been for a colored woman, who was watching them and heard the whole plot, and who went with the information to the Harrison Street Police Station.

Captain Koch and Lieutenant Laughlin were notified and upon investigation found the report to be true. They took immediate steps to protect Wooldridge by placing three additional officers in full uniform with him, and also placing six men in citizen's clothes on his post. Every man they met was searched for a gun; every crook, vagrant and thief that they could lay their hands on was placed under lock and key in the station, and by 11 o'clock that night there was no square in the city quieter than the one this officer patrolled, and in two weeks' time "Coon Hollow" and the whole neighborhood for half a mile in every direction had undergone the most remarkable change known to police history, and this change was apparent for a long time thereafter.

February 11, 1896, Detective Wooldridge, while trying to arrest a panel-house keeper and three colored hold-up men at 412 Dearborn street, was fired upon by one of the trio, Kid White, the shot striking the bar of his watch chain, which was attached to the lower button of his vest. When the bar was struck the bullet was diverted from entering Wooldridge's stomach, and it glanced off and passed through his overcoat.

Detective Wooldridge Roughly Handled.

In 1896 Wooldridge's fiercest fight came when he arrested George Kinnucan in his saloon at 435 Clark street. A dozen roughs, henchmen of Kinnucan, who were in the saloon at the time, came to the saloonkeeper's rescue. The officer was knocked down, his billy taken from him and himself beaten unconscious with it, and his face and head kicked into one mass of bruises. Through it all he managed to hang on to his revolver. This alone saved him. He finally managed to shoot Kinnucan through the hand and forearm, and a moment later a uniformed man burst in and evened up the battle. Six of the toughs were arrested, and Wooldridge was left alone by them for a long time.

Fine Work in a Thieves' Resort.

In the same year of 1896, Detective Wooldridge, disguising himself as a cheap thief, entered a Clark street criminals' resort and fraternized with thieves, murderers and vagabonds of all kinds, in order to obtain information, leading Wooldridge into the most amazing school of crime ever witnessed by a Chicago police officer. He was accepted in good faith as a proper sneak thief by the brotherhood, and for his benefit the "manager" of the den put his "pupils" through their "lessons."

These lessons were in shoplifting, pocket picking, purse snatching and other forms of larceny requiring skill and deftness. When he had seen enough Wooldridge generously volunteered to "rush the growler" and went out—and called the patrol wagon. Twenty-three crooks were arrested this time. Each one of them swore he would have killed the detective had his makeup or conduct for an instant directed suspicion toward him.

Makes High Dive.

November 20, 1896, Detective Wooldridge made a high dive.

To offset his aerial stunt he took a high dive from the top of a building, landing on his head in a pile of refuse with such force as to go "in over his head" and stick there so tightly that it required the combined strength of two officers to pull him out by the legs.

It was near Twelfth and State streets while pursuing two women across a roof that his remarkable stunt took place. The women jumped from the roof into a pile of refuse. They landed on their feet. Wooldridge came after them. He landed on his head. As he landed he grasped a woman with either hand, and held them until the arrival of his brother officers effected his release and their capture.

But these are only humorous incidents, things to laugh over when the day's work is done. In the parlance of the detectives, they belong to "straight police work." As a direct antithesis to them is the story of the murder and the black cat, which is in real life a weirder and more startling affair than Poe's fantastic tale of the same subject. A black cat helped solve a murder in a way which puts a distinct strain on the credulity of the uninitiated.

Story Rivals Poe's "Black Cat."

A rich man had been murdered in a certain part of the city. He was in his library at the time of the crime. His family was in an adjoining room, yet none of them heard any noise, or knew what had been done until they found him lifeless on the floor. Investigation proved that he had been shot, but not with an ordinary weapon. The missile in his heart was a combination of bullet and dart, evidently propelled from a powerful air rifle or spring gun. But no clew was left by the perpetrator of the crime, and Wooldridge carried the strange missile in his pocket for several months before a single prospect of apprehending the murderer appeared. Then it was the black cat that did it. What strange coincidence or freak of fate it was that impelled the cat to literally lead the detective to a little pile of dirt in an alley that night Wooldridge never has attempted to explain. But lead him it did, and when he dug into the disturbed ground he found something entirely new in the gun line, the weapon that had discharged the fatal bullet in his pocket. Eventually he traced the gun to its inventor, and from there to the man who had purchased it, a young fellow named Johnson, and a supposed friend of the murdered man's family. The consequence was that this man proved to be the murderer. When arrested he at first denied his guilt, broke down under the sweatbox ordeal and confessed, and—killed himself in his cell next morning.

For mystery and good fortune in bringing an apparently untraceable criminal to justice this incident perhaps has never been equaled in Chicago's police records.

On Duty in Great Strike.

In 1900 Chicago's great building trade strike occurred in which 60,000 men were thrown out of employment. Many acts of violence were committed. Several men were killed and many maimed and injured.

Detective Wooldridge was placed in charge of thirty picked detectives from the detective bureau with orders to suppress these lawless acts and arrest the guilty offenders. Through his vigilance and untiring efforts law and order were soon restored, and he was highly complimented by Chief of Police Joseph Kipley and the public press.

Literally speaking, the darkest situation into which his experiences have led him was the tunnel by which inmates of Mattie Lee's famous resort at 150 Custom House place escaped when the place was raided. Mattie had decided that it was a nuisance to go to the station every time the police wanted to arrest her, so she had the tunnel dug.

After that when the police called on her Mattie greeted them with an empty house and a sweet smile, while underground the inmates were crawling on their hands and knees to safety. Wooldridge found the tunnel and, crawling in, "snaked out" six colored men and women whom he found in the darkness. Versatility is a requisite with the successful detective.

Remarkable Work as a Ragpicker.

May 28, 1905, perhaps, his appearance in the role of a ragpicker, which led to the arrest and conviction of two negro highwaymen, Henry Reed and Ed Lane, was his most daring and successful effort at disguise. Lane is at present serving a life sentence in Joliet for the murder of Robert Metcalfe.

The assault and robbery of a contractor named Anderson was the occasion for Wooldridge's assumption of the guise of ragpicker. Anderson had described Lane so accurately that the detective was sure of recognizing him once he put his eyes upon him, but in those days a detective to go into the black belt looking for a criminal was to spread a wide alarm over the whole district. Consequently he "made up." A pair of large, worn overalls, a coat three sizes too large, a bunch of papers between his shoulder blades to give him a hunch back, burnt cork, a curly wig, a bag and a piece of telegraph wire, and the erstwhile shrewd-looking detective was in ten minutes the typical negro ragpicker who shambles up and down alleys on the south side in hope of picking up enough for his day's bread.

While thus pursuing his way Wooldridge not only discovered the presence of Reed and Lane, but actually worked through the refuse in a garbage box upon which Lane was sitting quarreling with some confederates over the division of the previous night's spoils. He even went so far as to pick up an old coat which Lane had discarded. Thereupon Lane ordered him to get out of the alley or get his throat cut from ear to ear. Wooldridge went humbly out, and waited.

Hero of Some Fierce Fights.

Presently Lane and Reed appeared and went south on State street. Wooldridge followed, and at an opportune moment seized them both from behind. The fight that followed is historic. Only sheer luck and the threat to kill both antagonists on the spot if they did not cease resistance saved the detective's life. After knocking both men down with his billy he succeeded in holding them until a fellow officer came to his rescue. They were arrested and convicted June 25, 1905, and sent to the penitentiary for three years.

May 19, 1906, Detective Wooldridge raided the following places: H. C. Evins, 125 S. Clark street; George Deshone, 64 N. Clark street; E. Manning Stockton, Bar & Co., 56 Fifth avenue, seizing some $30,000 worth of gambling paraphernalia.

Disclosures of conditions which so seriously threatened the discipline of the United States army and navy that the secretaries of the two departments and even President Roosevelt himself were called upon to aid in their suppression.

It was charged that a coterie of Chicago men engaged in making and selling these devices had formed a "trust" and had for years robbed, swindled and corrupted the enlisted men of the army and navy through loaded dice, "hold-outs," magnetized roulette wheels and other crooked gambling apparatus.

Crooked Gambling Trust.

The "crooked" gambling "trust" in Chicago spread over the civilized world, had its clutches on nearly every United States battleship, army post and military prison; caused wholesale desertions, and in general corrupted the entire defensive institution of the nation.

Try to Corrupt Schoolboys.

Besides the corruption of the army, these companies are said to have aimed a blow at the foundation of the nation by offering, through a mail order plan, for six cents, loaded dice to schoolboys, provided they sent the names of likely gamblers among their playmates.

This plan had not reached its full growth when nipped. But the disruption of the army and navy had been under way for several years and had reached such gigantic proportions that the military service was in danger of complete disorganization.

Thousands of men were mulcted of their pay monthly. Desertions followed these wholesale robberies. The war department could not find the specific trouble. Post commanders and battleship commanders were instructed to investigate.

The army investigation, confirmed after the raid and arrests, showed that the whole army had been honeycombed with corruption by these companies. Express books and registered mail return cards showed that most of the goods were sold to soldiers and sailors.

Detective Wooldridge Secures Evidence in Novel Way.

In August, 1890, complaints had been made at the Stanton Avenue Police Station for several weeks concerning the establishment of a disorderly house at 306 Thirty-first street, but try as they would uniformed officers were helpless so far as securing evidence enough to convict was concerned. Wooldridge at that time a uniformed man, was put in plain clothes and detailed on the case. One of the great stumbling blocks in the way of the police had been the high basement under the house, which made it impossible for any one to look in the windows of the flat without the aid of the ladder. As the presence of a ladder would arouse suspicion, the problem of viewing the inside of the flat was a difficult one.

One thing the other men on the case had overlooked. This was the presence of a beam jutting out from the top of the building to which a rope, pulley, and barrel were attached, used as a means of lowering garbage and ashes from the second floor to the alley. Wooldridge saw the possibilities of the rope and barrel trick. Attaching to the rope a vinegar barrel with holes bored in it at convenient intervals, he awaited an opportune time, curled up in the barrel, and had himself drawn up to the level of the windows by two officers. The lowering and raising of the barrel being a customary thing in the building, excited no suspicion in the minds of those in the flat, and Wooldridge, with his sleuth's eye at one of the holes, saw what served to drive the place out of existence and secure the conviction of its keeper.

Acts as Vendor of Fighting "Chickens."

One of the last exploits of Detective Wooldridge before his completion of the twenty years of service, was the breaking up of the cock-fighting mains, which infested Chicago during the latter part of 1906 and the early part of 1907.

The story savors of the burlesque. Wooldridge obtained information as to the whereabouts of a cock-fight which was to be pulled off. Then he sought out and purchased a pair of decrepit old roosters, that would not fight an English sparrow, bundled them into a sack and started for scene of action. Arrived in what he knew to be the neighborhood of the fight, he declared that he had been sent to deliver some "fightin' chickuns." He was directed to an old, abandoned building. Here he was admitted and left the antique roosters. Then he said he was going for more birds. Instead he went for a patrol wagon. And that was the end of the chicken fight.

The trapping of the Wildcat Insurance companies furnishes one of the most dramatic chapters in the financial history of the United States, if not in the world. It involves millions of stolen dollars, brutal filching from the poor, heartless commercial brigandage and finally the running to earth and conviction of the ringleaders and promoters of the "WILDCAT INSURANCE COMPANIES" OF CHICAGO, by Detective Wooldridge.

The police and postal authorities worked together. Two thousand eight hundred letters were sent out asking for information and gathering evidence.

At the trial of Dr. S. W. Jacobs, on one of these cases, there were 200 witnesses present. Five of these witnesses were victims, and lived in tents. Three were living in wagons: One, Samuel James, of Westfield, Illinois, a carpenter, 64 years of age, had a wife and six children. He had built his house morning and evening.

Bribery Tactics of No Avail.

James accomplished the end of his heart's desire. It cost him $900 and his health, for he was in the clutches of consumption when the cottage was finally paid for. Fearing lest the fruit of his life-work should be swept away by fire, James took out an insurance policy in one of Dr. S. W. Jacobs' Wildcat Insurance companies. The house burned down and he was not indemnified. With his wife and six little children James was forced to take shelter in a chicken coop, where they were living when the broken-hearted father came to Chicago as a witness against Dr. S. W. Jacobs.

Twenty-five thousand dollars was tendered to an attorney to bribe Wooldridge in the case.

The breaking up of the drug ring, however, was a delicate task. It was strongly backed financially, and it was aided and abetted throughout the United States by political rings galore. Chicago was the headquarters.

A ten thousand dollar bribe was offered Detective Wooldridge, October 29, 1904, by the spurious medicine concerns to return their goods and stop the prosecution; this failed. Then false and malicious charges were filed with the Civil Service Commissioners against Wooldridge, which was taken up and the trial lasted nineteen sessions.

Detective Wooldridge was exonerated by the entire board of commissioners, and complimented by the press and public-spirited citizens.

Detective Wooldridge secured four indictments against the above four men, which was returned by the Cook county grand jury May 25, 1905. J. S. Dean turned state's evidence and assisted the prosecution.

J. H. Carson promoted and run eighteen different matrimonial agencies. He was arrested eighteen times. He offered Wooldridge a bribe of $100 per month not to arrest him. This failed and he brought suit in the Superior Court against Wooldridge for $5,000 damages, thinking this would stop him. The next day after filing the suit he was arrested again, and was finally driven out of Chicago.

From $10,000 to $20,000 has been offered at a time for his discharge or transfer by these get-rich-quick concerns. Every political pressure was brought to bear, but to no avail.

Ex-Chief of Police Francis O'Neill, in his annual report of 1905, states that Detective Wooldridge accomplished more work in breaking up the get-rich-quick concerns in Chicago, in the year 1904, than the whole Chicago police department had in its lifetime. He did equally as much work, if not more, in the years of 1905, 1906 and 1907.

The day is never too long nor the night too dark for Detective Wooldridge to find time to succor or save a young girl who has gone wrong or strayed from the path of rectitude.

Detective Wooldridge, without fear or favor, for many years inaugurated crusades and waged wars against the hosts of criminal enterprise. Whenever a man or concern could not show a "clear bill of health" he forced him to "disinfect, depart, or submit to the quarantine of the county jail."

By vigilance and hard work he succeeded in obtaining good results. Units, scores, and legions of fraudulent concerns have been exposed and driven out of existence. Owners of others, anticipating exposure, did not wait, but closed their places and fled. Many headquarters of contraband schemes have been raided and their promoters arrested, fined, and forced to cease operations. During that time retributive justice has been visited upon countless heads that were devoted to devising criminal schemes.

Detective Wooldridge permits no creed, color, religion or politics to interfere with him in his sworn duty. He wants and exacts the truth, and a square deal for himself, and accords the same to his fellow men. He has never been known to wilfully persecute any man or to lie or strain a point to convict him, neither will he suffer the same to be done by any man if he can prevent it.

Wooldridge's motto is equal justice to all—be sure you are right, then go ahead.

James P. Wilson.

What Are YOU Going to Do About It?

GRAFT NATION'S WORST FOE.

THE REIGN OF GRAFT.

Recent Exposures That Show How Strongly It Is Intrenched.

ARE YOU A GRAFTER?

Those Shocked at Exposures May Not Be Clean Themselves.

"A 'grafter' is one who makes his living (and sometimes his fortune) by 'grafting.' He may be a political boss, a mayor, a chief of police, a warden of a penitentiary, a municipal contractor, a member of a town council, a representative in the legislature, a judge in the courts, and the upper world may know him only in his political capacity; but if the under world has had occasion to approach him for purposes of 'graft' and found him corrupt, he is immediately classified as an 'unmugged grafter'—one whose photograph is not in the rogues' gallery, but ought to be. The professional thief is the 'mugged grafter'; his photograph and Bertillon measurements are known and recorded.

The world of graft is whereever known and unknown thieves or bribetakers congregate. In the United States it is found mainly in the large cities, but its boundaries take in small county seats and even villages. A correct map of it is impossible, because in a great many places it is represented by an unknown rather than by a known inhabitant, by a dishonest official or an unscrupulous and wary politician rather than a confessed thief, and the geographer is helpless until he can collect the facts, which may never come to light. The most that one man can do is to make voyages of discovery, find out what he can and report upon his experiences to the general public.

Within the last year or two it has become practically a synonym for a thief who filches public money and money of large enterprises. It has been so largely used in the public prints and periodicals, and more recently in books, that it has spread abroad; and London and Paris and Berlin, in referring to many American disclosures, adopt the word without any translation. So today no American word is better known either in this country or in Europe.

When men in office take a bribe and give away what does not belong to them, it is more than the double crime of extorting and stealing; it is treason. Graft is the worst form of despotism. It is a usurpation of government by the forces of crime. There have been many virtuous kings and honest feudal lords, but the despotism of graft never founded its rule upon a semblance of the moral law.

Graft in its highest personification is the king of the American nation in political, commercial and social life.

Graft is Overlord.

Overlord of 80,000,000 people in the greatest republic of history, commanding his tens of millions of dollars annually as tribute to graft in a million of his impersonations—was Solomon in all his glory to be compared with this?

Nine states in the union of forty-five states recently have declared that graft exposures have not been in their categories of political publicity for a year. They are Maine, North Carolina, Mississippi, Iowa, Michigan, Colorado, New York, Illinois and California. But who shall say what another six months may bring forth?

30 CENTURIES OF GRAFT LOOKS DOWN UPON ITS HEADLESS VICTIMS

In industrial, commercial and social life of the American people there is not a state in which King Graft has not his court and his following. In the capital of capitals at Washington for generations the powers of government as dreamed of for the republic have been superseded by King Graft time after time, and the impeachment of his princes, grand dukes and courtiers generally have not threatened his reign in future generations.

Scores of Proud Names Smirched.

Within the last few years names that have stood honored for a generation in financial, political and social life have been dragged down from high places perhaps as never before in America. The court of King Graft has been attacked and threatened as never before, and with greater showing. There is war in the open against this pretender king, and his legions everywhere are retiring behind their breastworks, broken but not defeated.

Graft in its nakedness, has been exposed and the people are aroused, fearing that the grafter has sucked the life blood of the republic.

What they have seen is but a glimpse of real conditions—the ulcer spots where the rottenness beneath has broken through—but they have seen enough to realize the peril and attack it. While the conditions revealed are astounding and alarming, they are signs of improvement.

The nation is better than it was a decade ago, since tens of thousands of grafters have been stamped out, since the leaders of the greatest grafts of the land have been exposed to the withering light of contempt of all decent Americans.

Life of Nation Imperiled.

Also, born of the conditions, there has arisen a little army of leaders willing to engage the enemy and lead the people against the grafters. They have been raised up to meet the crisis of the nation's life, and with every blow they strike new recruits are joining them in the war against graft.

They are still weak, and King Graft and his votaries are still strong, but during the last year the leaders have won some remarkable skirmishes and routed the grafters.

WHICH ROAD SHALL HE TAKE?

A GRAFTER IN EVERY ROAD.

The Public stands at the crossing of the roads, wondering which way he shall go with his money. Wherever he turns he sees a grafter in the road before him. The labels on these seven grafters give the names of a few of those that beset every honest man's pathway. The grafters spend twenty million dollars a year advertising; and they swindle the people out of one hundred and sixty million dollars annually.

Nation, States and Cities Aroused.

Senators and congressmen at the national capital have been impeached, and indicted, and tried, and convicted of grafting.

Bureau officials, as in the cotton scandal, the postoffice frauds, and other of the departments, and civil service exposes have been arraigned by their own democracy for traitor intrigues with King Graft, and have been beheaded.

State senators, representatives, treasurers and the innumerable "small fry" of official life, together with the millionaire briber and his henchmen at state capitals, have been uncovered and convicted of debauching democracy in behalf of a pretender sovereign.

Great cities have been shaken with the inquisitorial rounds of investigations. Philadelphia of Independence memories has been weighed in the balance and found wanting; in St. Louis the prosecutor governor, Folk, has stirred corruption to the depths; New York has been moved as it has not been since the overthrow of Tammany; Minneapolis has been cleansed; and the spectacular "graft hunt" in Milwaukee has been a lesson in "how to do it." Perhaps never before in the history of America have so many grafters been scattered to the winds, in hiding or locked behind the bars of prisons.

President Leads Foes of Graft.

But King Graft wears the crown of the pretender still, and there are few of his fighting enemies who are disposed to rest upon their arms in either truce or armistice.

The war against graft is led by the president of the United States, who stands as the foremost foe of grafting—political, financial or social—in the world, and behind him is a phalanx led by Folk, Jerome, Riis, Lawson, Hadley, Miss Tarbell, Deneen, Monnett and others of their type, fighting the nation's most crucial battle.

The grafters have declared that the objects of some of these men were selfish, but, no matter for what object they fight, they are routing the grafters in many fields and showing to the awakening public the peril of the situation; revealing to a commonwealth the worms gnawing at the vitals of the republic.

Forces of Graft Hard Pressed.

Never were the forces of money and commercial and industrial power so bewildered and so uncertain of the way to turn as they are now. Graft, to their best interests, is still covertly a necessity to them, but covert graft never was so hard to keep covert, now that briber and the bribed are the common quarry of the law. The time was when the rich man who bought political power to his uses was unnamed, standing apart. The grafter legislator was the cause and the consequence. Beginning and ending with the corrupt official whose official place was grafted upon corruption, the official became immune from the consequences.

"Grafting in this state never has cost the taxpayer a dollar," was one of the slogans of a machine government in its attempts to perpetuate that machine for the purposes of King Graft and his court.

But this false philosophy slowly was undermined. Not only was it found that graft did cost money to the state, but it became a certainty that it was costing something even more valuable than money. Graft became the one object of the political seeker after office. The impersonal graft-giver was a hanger-on at lawmaking centers, and the political graft-seeker was insisting upon election or appointment to the machine positions.

Hideous Peril is Revealed.

The result, first, was a campaign upon the man who had the graft to dispense. He was sought out, and was found in high places. His lobbyists were more easily marked than was the principal. So the law and the law's executive began also to campaign against the lobbyists. Suddenly the "good fellow" at a state capitol who had with him the perquisites of good fellowship in graft measure found himself facing the interrogation:

"What are you doing here?"

The scope of the query has grown, and it is still growing, in some quarters even to the point of requiring the man who is elected to office to render the cost figure of his successful campaign. All over the country, and touching nearly every relation in official, commercial and financial life, men have been put on the griddle of publicity by courts and commissions, and with backs to the wall have been sitting in the witness chair, holding to the one surly response to an irritating, penetrating cross-examination: "Decline to answer on advice of counsel."

But for all purposes of publicity have not these refusals to answer carried light enough?

"The public be d——d!" was the original first utterance of the millionaire, designed to stop interrogations which would not down.

"What are you going to do about it?" was the counter question of the political grafter who once was charged with grafting.

"Where did he get it?" came to be a question of the politician for political purposes, and within a year the country has heard non-political bodies asking the same question of the millionaire philanthropist who has been trying to give it away. Under the growing interrogations of the time, names have been thrown from pedestals within a year as names never before were juggled by the fates.

THE CAVE OF DESPAIR.

Idols Covered with Slime.

Depew, once a candidate for nomination for the presidency, a United States senator still by some grace of toleration, and at one time referred to in European royal circles as a "representative American citizen."

United States Senator Mitchell became a derelict, politically and socially.

United States Senator Thomas C. Platt was wrecked in the wreckage.

United States Senator Burton became blackened in the charges of graft.

Depew is a name no longer to conjure with.

Then followed a long list of the commercially and financially prominent civilians, blackened, and with such blackness as never to be white again by any of the old processes which once sufficed.

Graft is still king. But, truer than of any other monarch, it may be repeated: "Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown."

The Unconscious Grafter.

It was a rhetorical and sensational sentence in which a recent speaker in this city declared that the worst grafter is the man who does not vote. But there is much more than a kernel of truth in the words. The citizens of a republic need constant stimulus to the fulfillment of the plainest duties of life. The better the working of the machinery of government, the less the average man is affected. He rarely feels the pressure of taxation. He lives in a generation from which no military service is demanded. He is permitted freedom of thought, speech and religion, and almost insensibly, as a result, he loses sight of the supreme obligation which is due his country. He forgets that that country, in time of public stress, may demand his time, his property and his life, drafting him for its armies if he does not wish to volunteer, governing him under martial law, which sets aside the usual privileges accorded him, and exercising over him, if need be, a tyranny ordinarily associated with despotism among the older peoples.

The very fact that the American citizen does not often feel the exercise of the sovereign power, and is not called upon to pay the supreme obligation of service, makes him careless of his civic duties, when, it might be thought, he would feel the utmost gratitude for the privilege of living under such favoring conditions. This carelessness becomes chronic, and there is abundant need for the constant reiteration of the call to duty. If, then, a citizen is content to enjoy the comforts and the quiet of American life without rendering any return therefor, he may justly be called a grafter, and a grafter of that worst sort, who robs his benefactor. For, with duty faithfully performed by the citizen, public opinion is readily shaped, laws quickly secure enforcement, and public servants are kept clean and true. It all comes back at last to the individual citizen, upon whom must rest the responsibility for failure or success of government. It is easy enough to cry out against the grafter in official position who puts his hand into the public treasury. Perhaps, after all, the worst offender is the citizen who does not vote, who does not take a lively interest in the selection and election of his rulers, who fails to recognize the underlying obligation of service which his country has a just right to demand of him.

War on Graft Just Beginning.

But, thus far, only the beginning of the truth has been shown. There remains the senate of the United States, the railway companies, the Standard Oil Company, the great trusts, the multimillionaires, to be investigated. All of them now are in the limelight. The courts of law are under suspicion and must clear themselves by their acts, for undoubtedly the revelations of the last year have shaken the faith of the people in their judges.

After these, the huge powers of the land, cleansed states, counties and cities must join the Augean stable-cleaning, for graft is everywhere. The fight against graft is only beginning, and it will end only when a new generation learns that honor is above money, and that "grafting" is the most disreputable form of theft.

Wholesale Swindling Grafters.

A chain of stores in various cities for no other purpose than the obtaining of goods under false pretenses from wholesale merchants is the latest novelty in the swindling line. It has often been remarked that the originators of plans to dupe the public might coin their brains into cash without nearly the draft upon their originality that is called for by the devising of a swindling game. But the criminal instinct or incentive seems to lay its hold upon persons who might otherwise fill a leading and respected place in honorable avocations. The men who conceived the system of credit for goods to the value of many thousands of dollars, which they quickly disposed of in different cities by auction and attractive sales, closing up their stores and decamping when they had converted the credited stock into cash, were swindlers of unusual calibre.

The police of several cities now have the task of unearthing the frauds and bringing them to justice. They may or may not succeed in so doing, as the scheme was craftily laid and carried out. A harvest of $100,000 as the returns for a daring exploitation of the credit system will be regarded, even by the gilt-edged among the robbing fraternity, as a fine stroke of craftsmanship. The ingenuity of these cormorants calls for constant readjustment of honest persons to the conditions created. The lesson of the so-called bargain-house fraud will be conned, and for a long time to come it may be practically impossible for the same scheme to be worked again. But the feature of such enterprises is that they are designed only for the one operation. After that they become worthless to their originators.

Religious Graft Pays.

"Fake" religion as a business may have a fanciful sound, but there are plenty of men, and women, too, in this day and age who have found it to be an extremely practical, well-paying proposition. The readiness with which a good share of the people are always anxious to receive any new religion, or an old religion revamped in new fashion, makes the road of the charlatan whose trade is the promulgation of a fake religion one strewn with roses and money. Women are principally his victims, although there are plenty of men with a penchant for adopting strange religions, and from them the faker manages to reap a harvest that makes the pay of the average minister look like the earnings of an office boy. While the manner of securing money through the cloak of a false new sect is generally so hidden that the votaries of the cult are never aware of its existence until after their leader is exposed, the main object is never lost sight of by the leader, and the main object is always, "Get the money."

Out of the great mass of religions or NEW THOUGHT sects started each year in this country, it is declared that but extremely few are started with any idea other than that of separating a lot of people from their money. Occasionally there is a man who sincerely believes that he has discovered something new and precious in the way of a religion, and establishes a cult with the motive only to help people according to his own lights. But the mass of the new religions, sun worshipers, psychists, Brahmins, Hindus, theosophists, mystics, etc., are promoted with the same object in view as that of the old negro voodoo doctors—get the money.

Financial Yields Are Large.

The financial yields of the new religions are incomparably higher than is the voodoo man's gain. His followers, who believe in black art and other foolish, old-fashioned things, are nearly always drawn from the poorer, even the indigent classes—classes that have but little to spend, even on a religion. But the East Indian religionist, or the sun worshiper, draws his clientele from the better classes, and his followers have the money to reward him in a way that is astounding. He dabbles not with the poor—neither, it must be confessed, entirely with the ignorant. His victims come from the upper walks of life, sometimes from near the top, and their name is legion.

There is a Hindu who has now left this country to go back to spend the rest of his days in luxurious idleness, the while chuckling over the gullibility of the smart American people, who came here with a new religion and made a fortune.

This man was an educated, cultured man of high caste. Sent at an early age to England to attend school, he returned to his native country at the age of 28, wise in the things of two worlds, that of his own and that of the occidentals. For a while he buried himself in the native life of a loathsome colony of Fakers. There he learned much of their religious style by rote, and, putting this along with a smattering of Buddhism, psychology and sun worship, he managed to appear in America with a new religion, fairly reeking with the essentials required by those who want mysticism served along with their religious beliefs.

Mysticism Draws Many Converts.

He had a new god, a new heaven and forty different and distinct ways of torturing one's self while worshiping his deity. Mortifying the flesh through fasting and self-denial, torturing one's self by standing with the hands above the head, etc., all were included in the new creed, besides such things as astral bodies and the other things that go with a new religion. He first held forth in a sumptuously furnished city flat, where he managed to draw to him a small gathering of the select who love to dabble in mysterious oriental affairs.

The flat was a dream in itself, and when to it was added a tall, ascetic young Hindu, with the look of the fanatic burning brightly in his eyes, and mystic rites of a religious nature, the effect was irresistible; at least it proved to be to those foregathered under the tutelage of the young oriental. There were incense burnings and incantations galore. At first these things did not cost anything. No. The young mystic was simply working for the enlightenment of the world, working to spread light into the stygian darkness of the old and false dogmas and creeds.

After those who flocked to his standard had been so thoroughly imbued with the sincerity of his teachings that his word was law to them, the money question came to the fore. He, the missionary, wanted nothing for himself—oh, no. But there was need for funds for the establishment of the cult in India. A school and home must be founded for the young devotees of the new religion in that country, a place where they could go and live and be trained in the tenets of the creed and prepared to go out in the world and teach. And it was for this that the Hindu had come to this country, to permit the chosen ones here to acquirement with the new deity by subscribing to the school fund.

Since the beginning of things, when man first beheld the sun and bowed humbly before it, it has been the custom to heap offerings on the altar of worship. So the Hindu went back with funds enough to start half a dozen schools if he had been at all inclined that way, which he wasn't, and the people who were his followers are still living in the hope that he will return.

American Faker Gets the Coin.

Then there is another kind of charlatan, the American fake religionist, of which, perhaps, there are just as many as of the foreigners with the weird doctrines of the orient. This type of faker is coarse compared with the soft-shod, incense-burning Hindu, but he "gets the money" without much trouble. He is generally a ranter as far as preaching goes. His methods are those of the shouter, his religion includes visitation of spirits, shaking of bodies and other manifestations of divine power. He boldly asks for contributions, not for a school to be established for the training of missionaries for his faith, but for the furtherance of his own work right here in this country.

"It takes money to fight the devil," is a favorite cry with this type of sacrilegist. The stronghold of the religious faker is that the people who follow him believe in him implicitly. One faker recently proclaimed himself the son of God, come to revisit earth, and, when assailed by a paper for it, stood up in an audience of his believers and asked them who they thought him to be and how they regarded him. The answer was that he was the son of God, and his mission was to save all mankind from sin. It is obvious that, when a man with such a hold on a clique asks for money, it is sure to be forthcoming without question. At times he does not have to ask for it, one man of this kind having had money showered upon him at a meeting by the hysterical women of his flock.

Faith in Charlatan Strong.

This man has operated in at least four sections of this country, has served a term in state's prison for alienating a wife's affections along with the husband's money, has been driven out of two towns by angry husbands; but now he is again in possession of a following which believes implicitly that through him, and through him only, is it possible to obtain eternal salvation.

In appearance this man is a human shark, long-faced, thin of jaw and nose, and with a mouth that is nothing but a straight line cut in the face. In repose he might be taken for a shyster lawyer, but when he begins to speak and the artificial frenzy is burning in him it is easy enough to see why impressionable women may be drawn to him. Even a strong-willed man, observing his actions and the degree of enthusiasm in him, is apt to feel that he can be nothing other than sincere in his beliefs. But, if he is sincere, his sincerity runs only towards making of his beliefs a good business proposition, and avarice is one of his strongest points.

The persistency with which women will take up and practice the cruelest of religious customs is evidenced by the manner in which a Chicago girl tortured and starved herself to death in an effort to obtain salvation through the mortification of the flesh. She was not of an ignorant type, either, as might be imagined, but fairly well educated and extremely intelligent, with running to intellectuality. But the thrall of a new religion got her in its power, and, believing she was sinful, she strove to cast out her sins and died in the attempt.

It is seldom that pernicious practices of religion fakers carry persons to this extreme, but deranged mentalities, wrecked homes and depleted pocketbooks are of such frequent occurrence as to merit a wholesale crusade against this type of fraud, even without raising the question of religious scruples.

Pawn Tickets on Diamonds.

Another instance: Some working man or washing woman, having saved up a little money for a rainy day, reads an alluring advertisement in a newspaper that a party was looking for a small loan on valuable family jewelry and diamonds. The interest offered is much higher than that allowed by any savings bank. Diamonds, as everybody knows, are just as good as money and offer perfect security. In hopes of profiting a little more on their savings, such prospective victims respond to the advertisement. The party looking for the loan appears to be a well-dressed, smoothly-talking man, who represents himself to be the scion of a wealthy or aristocratic family temporarily in hard luck. He produces a pawn shop ticket, on the face of which appears that some pawn broker had advanced on certain diamonds a large sum of money, say $500.

Two minds with but a single thought;

Two heads that beat us all.

Now, it is a matter of common knowledge that pawn brokers know their business, and that no pawn broker would advance more than one-third, or, at the highest, one-half of the actual value of the articles pledged. It is that common belief which the swindler makes, as it were, the psychic basis for his operations. The victim having once jumped at the conclusion that the diamonds offered as security must be worth at least $1,000 or thereabouts, the rest becomes easy.

Victim Anxious for Interest.

The victim naturally considers a further loan on such diamonds of $200 or $250 a desirable risk. The offer of 10 per cent or more interest on the loan is another allurement which makes the transaction still more desirable. The pawn broker recognizes his ticket, and the diamonds, when redeemed, turn out to be worth considerably less than the amount which the broker was supposed to have advanced on them. The victim loses some more by redeeming the diamonds.

Complaints by such victims have been coming thick and fast into the state's attorney's office in Chicago and other large cities. The conspiracy between the swindler and his accomplice, the pawn broker, is almost self-evident. In some instances indictments have been returned against the perpetrators of the fraud, but the prosecution could not succeed. The reason is obvious. On the face of the transaction everything seemed to be regular, and the defendants could not be made criminally responsible for an erroneous conclusion arrived at by the victims as to the business sagacity of the pawn broker or the probable value of the diamonds. And yet who would doubt, in view of the many identical complaints, that the plans in connection with the fraudulent transaction had been laid carefully in pursuance of a conspiracy to defraud the public?

New Law Badly Needed.

On the civil side of legal practice there is the writ of injunction to prevent threatened irreparable injury to property by one person to another. But in case of organized fraud upon the public in general our modern legislatures have not yet grown to the proper appreciation of the wise and ancient saying that comes from the orient, "The rat hole, not the rat, is the thief." Our laws punish the thief when caught, but leave the "hole" intact and ready to give shelter to other "rats."

The authorities may know well the fraudulent character of a concern organized and existing for the express purpose of fleecing the public, and yet, in the absence of a complaining victim, they are absolutely helpless and unable to prevent victims from being ensnared by that concern.

Suppose the legislature would enact a law making it a felony for persons to set in operation any scheme to defraud the public and fix adequate punishment for such offense, would not such a law enable the authorities to anticipate and prevent a great deal of that misery which is caused by organized frauds of all kinds and descriptions, to a class of people that least can afford it?

Postage Stamp Grafter.

The postage stamp grafter is one of the most pestiferous of the "toucher" genus. He bobs up in offices, on the streets, in hotel lobbies, everywhere and at all times. Here is the song he sings:

"I'm broke, mister, but I don't want any money. I am looking for work and have just answered an ad. in the paper, but, to tell the truth, I have only got a nickel, and if I break that to buy a postage stamp I can't get a cup of coffee. Just a 2-cent stamp is all I ask."

It is too small a request to refuse, and besides there is a chance that the fellow may be telling the truth. Anyway, it is only a stamp. You produce the stamp, and may give the "toucher" several stamps so that he can answer more advertisements for work. A half day of industry at this scheme gives any competent "toucher" enough stamps to buy a little food, a good deal of drink and a night's lodging. There is no difficulty in disposing of stamps thus collected, for the salonkeepers and others that buy them—sometimes at a discount—know they have been given, and not stolen.

"You are the third man that has tackled me for a stamp today," said a man in the lobby of a downtown hotel recently to a young man who "wanted to answer an advertisement for work." "Here, give me the letter; I'll stamp and mail it."

Whereupon, to use the vernacular of his kind, the young man made a sensational "getaway" via the side entrance.

Akin to the postage stamp scheme is the one of "touching" for three or some other odd number of pennies to make up the amount necessary "to send a telegram home for money." The "toucher" in this case usually admits frankly that he came to Chicago and got drunk, spending all his money. For victims he picks the men that look like they might sympathize with a fellow in his predicament.

The Clerk Grafter.

It may or may not be so that a sucker is born every minute. Doubt as to the exactness of this has been expressed, the consensus of opinion being that the average runs higher than Barnum's estimate. But as to the natural increase of devious and various ways for making, or trying to make, suckers out of the world's inhabitants there can be little or no just doubt. A new one is born every time the old one gets stale. Here is the latest:

The scene of operation, which is guaranteed to be harmless when performed, but sure to be painful when the reaction sets in, is a small office, store, or shop, any place where the total number of employees is small.

Preferably it is a place where a young woman stenographer, clerk, or other worker is employed, and, preferably, the stenographer, clerk, etc., is of pleasing and attractive appearance. The more so the better, though this is not absolutely necessary.

Plays on Tardy Victim.

In fact, the only condition actually necessary to the successful prosecution of this new game is that one of the employees come down to work later than others. This must be. The operator picks a morning when said employee is late in arriving at his or her place of employment. If the employee is a young woman stenographer, so much the better. Operator may be either male or female, but should be of prosperous appearance—sort of money-no-object appearance.

"Is the Stool Pigeon in?" he inquires. Of course, he doesn't call this party "the Stool Pigeon," having first carefully informed himself as to the individual's Christian name and surname, so as to be in a position to rattle it off with becoming familiarity.

"Not yet, but soon," replies the Fall Guy. He doesn't know that he's the Fall Guy, but he is, unless he happens to possess more than a human average of suspicion and wariness.

Fall Guy Takes Bait.

"Oh, I'm so sorry! Now, I wouldn't have come to deliver this package if he hadn't promised to be here at this moment. And he wanted it so badly—and I can't wait!"

"That's too bad," says Mr. Fall Guy. "But that's all right; you may leave the package in my care and I'll see that he gets it the first thing he comes down."

"So kind of you," purrs the operator. "The only difficulty in the way of that is that I must see him when I deliver it."

Nothing coarse or abrupt, you will see; instead the smooth, purring round of the wheels that grind artistically and well.

Here the operator begins to bite the under lip and look at the clock with clouded brows.

"Hm! I can't wait, and he wanted it so much this morning!"

Sucker Digs Out Coin.

Fall Guy being a friend of Stool Pigeon's (the operator has picked him because of that qualification), gets solicitous. "Well, there's a collection of a dollar on this package; that is all, really." If Fall Guy looks burdened with money the charge may be as high as $2.50. Hardly more than this. It may run as low as 25 cents. The package contains, according to the operator, anything from a pair of cuff buttons to a pair of shoes.

And Fall Guy pays at least often enough to make the game worth playing for the operator.

FLEECING INVALIDS AND CRIPPLES.

This is a story of the most despicable graft extant. For, although it has been broken up in Chicago, it still flourishes in nearly every other large city in the country. It is not only despicable but it is heinous, fiendish, unspeakable. It is the sort of a thing that causes the blood of an honest man or of a manly rogue to boil, and long for a chance to clutch its inventor by the throat. It is the letter-copying scheme. Real criminals take chances on death, or the penitentiary, and on personal encounters with those whose money they unlawfully seek to acquire, but the vultures behind the "ads." promising lucrative work at home content themselves with mulcting helpless invalids, aged and infirm persons who seek to contribute to their own support and persons whom poverty has driven to desperation, and who see in the gilded promises of the cormorant an avenue of escape.

The public is familiar with the advertisements which constantly are seen in the newspapers offering employment that will not necessitate canvassing, or peddling, and which can be done in the home with great profit. Occasionally the "ads." explain that the work is that of copying letters.

AN ATTEMPT TO CATCH YOUR EYE

Write Smooth Letters.

The victim answers the "ad." and in reply receives this stereotyped letter—the form is the same in every instance:

Esteemed Friend:

Replying to your application to write letters for us at your home during spare time, we beg to say that your writing is satisfactory, and we have decided to offer you the appointment.

The work we give out is simply writing letters from a copy which we furnish, for which we pay you direct from this office at the rate of twenty dollars ($20.00) per thousand. You do not have to write any certain number of letters before receiving pay, and all letters you write you return to us. There is no mailing them to your friends, as most other advertisers who advertise for letter writers demand, neither is there any canvassing or selling anything, or anything else to mislead you; you simply write from a copy which we furnish, and we pay you direct. We are an old, reliable firm, always state plainly what is required, do exactly as we promise and treat our employes honestly.

The work is easy; the letters to be written are the length of the ordinary business letter, and all we require is neatness and correctness. We furnish all materials free of charge, paper, etc., and prepay all costs of delivery to your home. You work only when you desire or have leisure time, and no one need know you are doing the work.

We pay spot cash for all work done the same day as received. We use thousands of these letters for advertising our business, because we receive better results from using written letters than from plain printed circulars. We have a large number of people all over the country working for us, and if you desire to become one of our regular workers we request that you send us one dollar, for which we will send you our regular dollar package of goods you are to write about.

This is all you are required to invest, there being no other payments at any further time, and this deposit is returned to you after doing work to the amount of two thousand letters. We are compelled to ask for this small deposit to protect ourselves against unscrupulous persons who do not mean to work and who apply out of idle curiosity.

We also send you first trial lot of letter paper, copy of letter to be written (as we desire all letters to be written on our own letter paper), also instructions and all necessary information. After receiving the outfit you start to work immediately. More reliable workers are needed at once, and we guarantee everything to be exactly as represented. If you find anything different we will refund the amount invested.

Fill out the enclosed blank and send it to us with one dollar or express or postoffice money order (stamps accepted), and we will immediately send everything, all expenses prepaid. You can start to work the same day you receive the outfit by simply following our plain instructions.

Kindly reply at your earliest convenience. Fill out enclosed blank and direct your envelope carefully. Trusting to be favored with your prompt services, we remain,

Very truly yours,
Leslie Novelty Company,
Per C. C. Kendall.

Rob Bed-Ridden Women.

In their investigation of this sort of swindle the police discovered that almost invariably the victims were bed-ridden persons or women in straitened circumstances who were in frantic search of some means of keeping the wolf from the door. Many instances were found where some unfortunate had taken up a collection in the neighborhood in order to raise the necessary dollar to send for the "outfit." Persons were found who were actually starving and who had pawned their last possession to get the money that was to start them on the road to affluence.

Of all the offices raided Detective Wooldridge did not find record of one instance where a victim had been able to keep the requirements of the swindlers. The supposed letter sent to be copied was generally about 800 words in length, full of words difficult to spell, of rude and complicated rhetorical construction and punctuated in a most eccentric manner. The task imposed was practically a life-time job, and even if anyone had fulfilled it there were a hundred loop-holes whereby the thieves could escape payment by declaring their specifications had not been heeded to the letter.

The "outfit" consisted of a cheap penholder, a pen and a box of fake pills.

Imagine the joyous anticipation with which a starving cripple would await the arrival of the "outfit" that was to give him the opportunity of prolonging existence! The bright hopes of the work-worn widow who expected by this genteel means to keep her little ones in bread!

Think of the despair of both upon discovering they had paid out money so sadly needed—money which probably had been begged or borrowed—only to discover that they had been victimized instead of benefited!

"Operators" Cringing Cowards.

Trembling, cringing, whining specimens of humanity were found in charge of each of these fakers' dens when Detective Wooldridge swooped down upon them. They were typical of their graft—small, mean, snake-like, cowardly. None among them was found who would bid defiance to the officers, who would resist intrusion by the law or who would go into court and fight. All were cheap and dirty in mind, loathsome, shrinking, snarling, but not daring to bite.

Among those driven out of business by Detective Wooldridge were the Twain Novelty Company, the Leslie Novelty Company, the Illinois Industrial Company and Blackney & Company.

"I have raided all classes of swindling institutions," said Wooldridge, "but it gave me more pleasure to run down these fellows than all the others put together. They did not dare try to get money out of people who could afford to lose it, or who were out in the world where they could talk with others of more experience. Their dupes were in almost every instance the most pitiable objects of the communities in which they lived. The facts disclosed by these raids were enough to fill the heart of the blackest grafter with indignation and a desire to trounce the perpetrators."

SHARKS RUIN BUSINESS MEN.

New Line of Financial Graft.

A new loan shark, or self-styled "financial agent," who preys on the business man and manufacturer, robbing him of his money and business more relentlessly than the old-time loan shark ever dared with the helpless wage earner, has made his appearance in Chicago and says he has come to stay.

MR. FIRST MORTGAGE; FIELD OF RISKY INVESTMENTS

Under the guise of discounting a manufacturer's accounts at his usual rate of discount, the "financial agent" secures his first hold on the struggling manufacturer, who sees the opportunity to enlarge his business by collecting cash for his merchandise as he sells it. But the first step with the "financial agent" means entering the portals of bankruptcy.

The loan shark first finds for his victim an industrious, hard-working manufacturer or wholesaler, who by his push and perseverance has built a business beyond his capital, and approaches him.

"You have a good business here," remarks the agent. "If your customers all paid cash it would be pretty easy sailing. Life would be one long, sweet song if everyone paid for goods as soon as they were ordered, wouldn't it?"

Offer of Cash Arouses Interest.

Even the largest manufacturer in the country could not but accede to this.

"I have been watching your business for some time with a great deal of interest," continues the suave grafter, "and I would be glad to discount your bills at the regular rate of discount, so it would cost you nothing and you would have an opportunity to double your business.

"I presume you give the regular trade discount of 1 per cent a month for cash. On that I can save you a little money and help your credit materially. You receive 1 per cent a month on your purchases.

"This you cannot take, as you are cramped for money, because your customers do not pay their bills promptly. Thus you lose 2 per cent a month by not buying and selling for cash."

Gets $800 for $1,000.

The manufacturer begins to see a thriving business on a cash basis without exposing his weakness, and agrees to allow the banker to discount his bills.

"In the morning," begins the agent in explanation of his system, "you send us $1,000 worth of duplicate invoices of the goods which you shipped today, with shipping bills attached. You attach to the invoices a note for $1,000, so the account may be kept from the notes, and not from the invoices which we hold. In return for the note we will send you a check for $800, less our commission of 2 per cent a month, just what you are paying now because your business is not done on a cash basis. The $200, or 20 per cent, we have to deposit in the bank which loans us the money which we in turn pass to you. When any bills are paid we will refund your 20 per cent which we hold. Any bank compels us to have a representative in your store to look after our interests, as a matter of form. We will just appoint your bookkeeper—a matter of form entirely. Once a month we will send a man over to check up your books. He will see that none of our money has been overlooked."

Begins to Show His Teeth.

All this sounds businesslike and plausible, and the arrangement runs smoothly for a time, probably six months, to allow the manufacturer time to sell all his open accounts to the financial agent. Then the loan shark sends in a statement of the account, and, if the manufacturer complains, begins to show his teeth.

On the statement appears all money the manufacturer has received and in addition an extra charge for $50 a month to cover the services of their agent—the manufacturer's own bookkeeper. Also an additional charge of from 1 to 2 per cent for additional service rendered, although the agency has had absolutely nothing to do with the accounts beyond holding them as security. All overdue accounts are charged back to the manufacturer, and a request for a check to take them up immediately accompanies the statement.

As few accounts, if allowed to mature at all, are received by a manufacturer on the exact day when due, the check called for often is a formidable one. The manufacturer is at his wits' end. He goes to the agency post haste and, after they find it is impossible to hold him up for a check, they say:

"Oh, well, never mind, the bank—always the bank—is pressing us on those overdue accounts, but we can hold up the 20 per cent until these accounts are taken care of. That will be satisfactory, we are sure."

DEBT

Loses His 20 Per Cent.

After this the manufacturer's chance of ever seeing anything more of his 20 per cent has vanished. Each day the agency trumps up some fictitious charge of stamps, new check books, extra labor, taxes, additional fees or other charges that could originate nowhere but in the brain of a financial crook.

Finally the manufacturer finds he has nothing on his books but accounts belonging to the agency, on which he is paying carrying charges of from 5 to 10 per cent a month. The agency refuses to return his 20 per cent, which they claim has been charged off by the bank to take care of the overdue accounts.

The victim, seeing the plight in which he is placed, demands an accounting and threatens legal proceedings. The agency in turn demands he give them an itemized statement of each account, which they have. They agree to check them up, and, if found correct, promise to give him a check for the 20 per cent which they hold. That night the light burns late over the bookkeeper's desk in the manufacturer's office. In the morning the statements go to the office of the loan shark, who says:

"I'll have the auditor check them up and send you a check as soon as we find out everything is straight."

Trade Statements to Customer.

The manufacturer leaves the office. The loan shark gets busy with the statements, and stamps each of them:

"This account has been transferred to Killem's Mercantile Company. You are notified to pay this account to no one else."

These statements are mailed to the customers. When the manufacturer returns the loan shark greets him cordially and remarks:

"Unfortunately one of my clerks mailed out a lot of your statements last night, but I guess that won't matter. He stamped on them that they had been transferred to us and sent them out as he does everyone else's. He didn't understand. I am sorry."

As expected, the manufacturer, when he sees his business and confidence abused in this manner, flies into a rage. Then the suave agent takes the bull by the horns and issues his ultimatum.

"Our bank"—always "our bank"—"thinks we are not getting all the money coming to us from your account. They demand that in the future you deposit all your checks with us. I am sorry, for I know everything is straight, but your using us as a bank will last but a few days. Everything will then run smoothly again."

And unless some friend comes to the aid of the manufacturer the agency's prophecy comes true, and it does last but a little while.

SHREWD BEGGAR GRAFT.

Pretend to be Deaf, Dumb and Blind, Playing on Sympathy—How Philanthropy is Humbugged—Begging for Money to Reach Home—An Army of Frauds and Vagabonds—Mastering the Deaf Mute Language for Swindling Purposes—The Public Should be Careful in Disbursing Alms.

Speech is so common, eyesight so precious, that he who would appeal for charity needs no better warrant than that he is dumb or blind. In an age when words are multiplied and golden silence is seldom found, the very fact that lips can give no utterance is so unusual that their mute assertion of misfortune is seldom questioned. There is nothing so pitiful in all the world as an asylum for the blind. There is nothing which so draws one to share the burdens of another as the appeal of him in whom the wells of speech are all dried up. We sympathize with illness, we grieve at the misfortune which visits our friends, we mourn with them when bereavement comes, but all these things are in the course of nature. They are sad, but they may be expected. But then a figure in health rises and asks for charity in the hushed language of the mute, philanthropy halts and humanity gives alms. But if the dumb can evoke assistance, assuring of sincerity and disarming doubt, how hushed is the questioning when the blind apply! How much stronger than speech or silence are the sightless eyes that stare unblinking at a darkened world! How sad is the fate of that man who was buried by demons when God cried out, "Let there be light"!

But not every man is mute who stretches out his hand in silence. Laziness is such an awfully demoralizing vice that some who choose to beg a living and decline work are even base enough to feign a misfortune they ought to fear. Fellows who find the winter pinching and the ranks of vagabonds full to repletion arm themselves with a slate and pencil and haunt the public with appeals for help on the untrue claim that they are dumb. One of the most persistent beggars of this kind makes the rounds of residence districts with a printed card on which is stated the bearer's desire to reach his home in some distant city—the destination varies from time to time—together with a long-primer endorsement by a group of names which no one knows. The fraud always asks for some slight money offering—nothing can be too small—with which to assist him in the purchase of a ticket.

Usually his paper shows that he needs but a very little more, and he asks one, by a series of pantomimic signs, to enroll his name, together with the sum advanced, in regular order on a blank list which he tenders with his touching appeal. He is so well drilled as never to be surprised into speech, and looks with such straight, honest eyes into the faces of the women, who form much the larger number of his victims, that they cannot question him and usually give up a dime or a quarter without a struggle. The beggar can readily collect a good day's wages in this manner, and it is a matter of surprise if he does not receive an invitation to partake of food three or four times a day. He never lets his list get full. However small a margin he may lack of having raised the sum needed to buy his ticket to his home, he never gets quite enough, for nothing is easier than to stop in some secluded spot and erase the names of his latest donors, thus proving to those on whom he shall presently call that their help is not only needed, but will so nearly end the necessity for continued appeals. This class of beggar never looks like a dissipated man, is always polite, and bears refusal in so noble a way that nine times out of ten the flinty-hearted women who refused him at the back door hurry through to the front and give the more generously that they have harbored suspicion.

Another set of leeches have mastered the deaf mute language, and always ask with a pleading, painful face which meets you as your eyes lift from his written questions, if anyone in the house can talk with him. He supplements the penciled question and the eloquent glance of eyes trained by long use in the art with a few rapid passes of his hands, a few dexterous wavings of the fingers, in a language you have heard of and read about, but cannot understand. If the unexpected happens and a person be present who can converse with him, your beggar is sure of some entertainment, and the usual scene of one you know to be honest talking to one who may be equally so, and certainly seems needy, will almost infallibly wring from you the coveted assistance. It is like two minstrels at a Saxon court. You know your own has seen the holy land, though you have not, and as he tells you, this thread-bare guest talks familiarly and correctly of distant realms. That is all any one can know to a certainty, but you give him the benefit of the chance that he may be honest, and help him with such loose change as comes to hand. Time and again the pretended mutes have been detected in their imposture by men who pitied a misfortune and gave money at their homes in the morning to see it spent for drink by an arguing, contentious fellow in the evening.

Some beggars even assume the appearance of blindness, and haunt the homes of comfortable people, led by a little girl and asking alms in the name of an affliction that is always eloquent of need. He will sometimes carry a small basket full of pencils, or other little trinkets, and glazes over his evident beggary with the appearance of sales. But he does not hesitate, once the money is in his hands, to ask his patron to give back the pencils, as he cannot afford to buy any more. These people can sometimes see as well as the child that seems to lead them, and yet their eyes, when they choose to assume their professional attitude, seem covered with a film through which no light can penetrate.

The public should be chary in bestowing charity, and especially to able-bodied men who appear blind, deaf and dumb, or are still claiming to be victims of some recent disaster. Most any one who has charity to bestow can easily think of some deserving and honest unfortunate in their own neighborhood.

Paralytic a Bad Actor.

The most transparent fraud on the streets of the great cities is the pseudo-paralytic. At almost any street corner can be seen what purports to be a trembling wreck of a man. His legs are twisted into horrible shapes. The hand which he stretches forth for alms is a mere claw, seemingly twisted by pain into all sorts of distorted shapes, trembling and wavering. The arms move back and forth in pathetic twistings as if the pains were shooting up and down the ligaments with all the force of sciatica.

The head bobs from side to side as if it were impossible to keep it still. And the words which come from the half-paralyzed mouth are a mere mumble of inarticulate sounds, as if the tongue, too, were suffering torture.

A more pitiable sight than this could not be conjured up. And the extended hat of the victim of what seems to be a complication of St. Vitus dance, paralysis, sciatic rheumatism, and the delirium tremens, is always a ready receptacle for the pennies, nickels and dimes of the thoughtless. This is one side of the picture; now look on the other.

It is dusk. Just that time of day when the lights are not yet brightening the streets, and when the sun has made the great tunnels between the sky-scrapers, ways of darkness. Detective Wooldridge is watching. He has been watching two of the deplorable fraternity for two hours. As the dusk deepens he sees them both arise, dart swiftly across the street and board a car. By no mere chance is it that they are both on the same car. The detective follows. Before a low saloon on the West Side the victims of innumerable diseases descend from the car, walking upright as six-year soldiers on parade. They enter the saloon. They seat themselves at a table behind an angle in the back which conceals them from the street. The detective loiters down to the end of the bar and watches. From every pocket, even from the hat rim, pours a pile of coins.

The two sort out the quarters, the nickels, the pennies. The heaps are very evenly divided over two or three cheap whiskies or a couple of bottles of five-cent beer.

Then the real finale comes. Detective Wooldridge gets busy, and a goodly portion of the spoil finds its way out of the hands of the sharpers in the way of a fine.

But for every one of these paralytic frauds caught there are dozens, even scores, who get away unscathed. It is the estimate of the best detectives that not one in a thousand of these paralytic beggars is genuine. It is one of the most bare-faced cases of deception of the public which comes under the notice of the police.

Easy Money From Kind Hearts.

Charity covers a multitude of sins, almost as many backs, and quite a bit of graft.

Thoughtless giving is almost a crime. It serve to encourage idleness, and idleness is at the bottom of more crime than any other one thing, unless it is poverty.

Here is a story, given in the words of the man himself, which shows how the charity graft is worked in a number of ways. It covers several fields, and is so dramatic that it is given as the best example of all-round charity grafting:

"In experience in charitable work last summer I discovered some of these truths. It was the first time in all my life that I ever engaged in any charitable enterprise, and the needy that I sought to relieve was myself.

"Any one will beg, borrow, or steal in the name of charity. They may be as personally honest as a trust magnate—and they would be horrified at the idea of begging or stealing for themselves, but charity makes them respectable. At least this is the theory I worked on.

"I was broke and far from home. I decided that I would starve or steal rather than beg. Then a fellow I met accidentally put me on to a way of making a living.

For the Benefit of the Heathen.

"He had a lot of literature either really from a big church, charitable organization, or fraudulently printed, and he explained to me that I was to sell these 25 cents a copy for the benefit of the heathen somewhere, or home missions. I was to get 25 per cent of the money resulting from such sales.

"About a week later, when I had received $12 besides a little expense money from him. I discovered that he was keeping all the money. I took the rest of the literature and destroyed it. Three days later, when I was hungry, I rather regretted destroying it.

"I joined a circus that was moving toward my home town in Western Iowa, intending to leave it there and quit being a tramp. I was then down in Eastern Pennsylvania. I was a canvas hand. We went west by a tortuous route, and I never could accumulate enough coin to pay my way home, so was forced to stick to the place for many weeks.

"The second week one of the canvas hands came to me and asked me to circulate a subscription paper among the men for the benefit of one Will Turner, a member of the band, who, he said, had dropped off the train while running over from the last stop, and badly injured himself.

Gave the Money to Canvas Boss.

"I circulated the paper. The man told me he already had collected from the band on another subscription paper, so I needn't go to them. The man subscribed over $40 to help Turner, and I gave the money and the paper to the canvas boss who asked me to make the collection.

"He took it, and remarked gratefully that he would make it all right with me. I didn't catch the significance of the remark then. About a week after that the same canvas boss came again with another subscription paper for the benefit of John Kane, who, he said, was a gasoline lamp tender and had been horribly burned and taken to the hospital. He told me a graphic story of the accident that aroused all my sympathy. I took the paper and worked hard on it during the afternoon and evening performances, and, as it was the day after pay day, I collected nearly $100.

Worked the Game Once a Month.

"I got a shock when I took the money to the canvas boss. He gave me $50 and said:

"'That's your share. We'll work it again next pay day.'

"Then I went at him, and we had quite a fight. We were both arrested, and at the hearing next morning I learned that he had been working the game with that same circus about once a month. There were so many with the outfit and so few of them knew each other by name, and accidents were so numerous, that no one suspected him. He had grown afraid to work it for himself and used me for a tool.

"The show had pulled out and the boss and two others who had been arrested with us took the first train back to it. I used the $50 to pay my fine and get home, where I found work and honesty—and, as soon as possible, I sent to the chief horseman with the show $50, to be added to the fund for the benefit of the next person really hurt, telling him the entire story. He wrote that he had been among those who helped kick the canvas boss out of the car after he read my letter."

In Name of Charity.

There are probably more "touches" perpetrated in Chicago by professionals in the name of charity than under any other guise. In this matter, more of the protection of honest charities than for the protection of the public, the police have taken a hand and done a great deal to weed out and punish the solicitors for fake charities. An imaginary home for epileptics was one of the favorite plans. There was a home for this class of unfortunates that was honestly run, and the peculiar sympathy enlisted by the mention of the word epilepsy was seized upon by dishonest schemers. Professional women solicitors were garbed as "nurses" and sent forth. They were mostly austere-looking women and silent. Their work of nursing epileptics was supposed to produce this austere silence. This supposed charity appealed with uncommon strength to most people because these "nurses" were supposed to be performing the most unpleasant work imaginable amidst the most grewsome surroundings. Large sums were collected in this way, the promoter keeping everything above the liberal commission paid to solicitors.

RACHEL GORMAN

This One Made Fortune.

Rachel Gorman was the originator of the "nurse for epileptics" graft, and raked in thousands of dollars before she finally was rounded up by the police. Not one cent of all the money collected by her and her garbed and hired solicitors ever got past their pockets. In this case the most shining marks were selected. William Jennings Bryan was touched for $100. as was the Governor of Illinois, and many others. This money for imaginary epileptics came so easily that the Gorman woman confessed that it was almost a shame to take it.

There is little excuse, however, for Chicago men and women allowing themselves to be talked out of money for charity. In no great city are the charity working forces better organized or better known. For virtually every form and case of need there is in Chicago a distinct form of honest, well-organized charity. This condition grew out of necessity, and promiscuous giving to "touchers" who plead as qualification charity cases is dying out as the public comes to know more of the comprehensive systems for the help of the worthy and unfortunate.

It took the hotel detectives years to check the "toucher" with the fake bank account that operated largely in the hotel lobbies. Now he works in other places. He carries a bank book that has all the superficial marks of genuineness. He engages you in conversation, and at what he considers the right psychological moment, he drops a feeler like this:

"It's h—— to be without money when you've got plenty, isn't it?"

If you have met this type of "toucher" before, you instantly see it coming and chase off to a most important engagement. If not, you only can agree. Being without money when you have none is bad; being broke when you have money is worse.

"Look here," says the "toucher," "here is my bank book. Look at this balance?"

Often Worth the Price.

A glance seems to show that the bank owes your new acquaintance many thousands. He then tells how it happened, how he came to be without a cent when he was so far to the good with his banker. It's a complicated tale, too long to tell here. There are lost letters, the cashing of checks for friends and, confidentially, a touch of the pace that flattens bank accounts. By this time you see your finish. When you seek to escape you find yourself backed up to the wall with no chance to sidestep. The best you can do is to scale the original touch from $1 to 50 cents, thereby making 50 cents for yourself and 50 cents for the "toucher."

To "stand for" all the "touches" that are made in Chicago one would require an income far in excess of that enjoyed by most. Those that are responded to are those in cases where the donor generously thinks that the "toucher" really needs the money. Probably in the vast majority of cases there is no delusion as to the fiction woven in order to drag forth the nickel, the dime, the quarter or the dollar. Often it is worth the price to hear the fiction.

But after all one feels refreshed when a frank but hoarse and trembling hobo says:

"Say, Mister, me t'roat is baked and me coppers sizzlin'. Gimme de price of a drink. Did you ever feel like jumpin' from de bridge fur lack of a stingy little dime fur booze?"

Here, you feel, is no misrepresentation. Here you may invest a dime without feeling that you have been stung.

Raffles Bank Robbery.

One of the most annoying of small grafts is the raffle, as conducted for gain. It is bad enough to be held up for 25 cents or 50 cents for a ticket which entitles you to a chance on a rug or a clock when you reasonably are sure that the proceeds will go to charity, but no man likes to be fooled out of his small change by a cheap grafter, even if the grafter happens to need the money.

A story is told of two printers who lived for a month on a cheap silver watch which they raffled off almost daily until they had "worked" nearly all the printing offices of any size in town. These typographical grafters are unworthy of the noble craft to which they belong. They pretended to be jobless on account of last year's strike, and unable to live with their families on the money furnished by the union.

How Skin Raffle is Worked.

During the noon hour, or about closing or opening time, one of the men would saunter into a composing room and put up a hard luck story. He had an old silverine watch that he wanted to raffle off, if he could sell twenty tickets at 25 cents each. He usually managed to sell the tickets.

About the time the drawing was to take place the confederate entered and cheerfully took a chance and won the watch without any difficulty. Thus, they had the watch and the $5 also. They would split the money, and on the first convenient occasion the raffle would be repeated at another place, and by some trick known to themselves the drawing was manipulated so that the confederate always won the watch.

A South Side woman recently had 500 raffle tickets printed, to be sold at 10 cents each, the drawing to be on Thanksgiving day, for a "grand parlor clock," the proceeds to be for the benefit of a "poor widow." As the woman herself happens to be a grass widow, and as the place of the drawing could not be learned, neither could there be obtained a sight of the clock, it is not difficult to guess the final destination of $50 for which the tickets were sold.

Popular Game in Saloons.

At many saloons and cigar stores there is a continuous raffle in progress for a "fine gold watch." It is well for those who buy chances to inspect the time piece with a critical eye. One of these watches was submitted to a jeweler by the man who won it. "It's what we call an auction watch," said the expert. "It is worth about 87 cents wholesale. The case is gilded, and the works are of less value than the movement of a 69-cent alarm clock. It was keep time until the brass begins to show through the plate, and it may not."

One of the attractive forms of the raffle ticket game is valuing the tickets at from 1 cent up to as high as desired. The man who buys a chance draws a little envelope containing his number. If he is lucky and draws a small number he is encouraged to try again. This is a sort of double gamble, and many men cannot resist the temptation to speculate upon the chances, simply in order to have the fun of drawing the little envelopes.

Of course, many of the raffles are for cases of genuine charity, and it is an easy way to raise a fund for some worthy object. Many a person would not accept an outright gift, even in case of sickness or death, will permit friends to raffle off a piano or a bicycle for a good round price in order to obtain a fund to tide him over an emergency. To buy tickets for this kind of a raffle is praiseworthy.

Raffle is Lottery by Law.

But sharpers are not above getting money by the same means. If a strange man, or a doubtful looking woman, wants to sell you a chance for the benefit of "an old soldier," or a "little orphan girl," or a "striker out of work," it might pay you to investigate.

But here is where the easy money comes in for the sharper. It is too much trouble to investigate, and the tender-hearted person would sooner give up the 10, 25 or 50 cents to an unworthy grafter than to take chances of refusing to aid a case of genuine need.

Then, too, there is what might be called a sort of legitimate raffle business. Of course, the raffle is a lottery under the law, and, therefore, is a criminal transaction. But in many cases goods of known value, but slow sale, are disposed of through raffles, and the drawings conducted honestly. A North Side man disposed of an automobile in this way. It had been a good wagon in its day, though the type was old. He wanted to get a new one, and as the makers would not allow him anything in exchange for the old. He sold raffle tickets to the amount of $500, and the winner got a real bargain—the losers paying the bill.

Raffles That Are Steals.

A group of young men who wanted to build themselves a little club house in the Fox Lake region, resorted to a raffle that was almost a downright steal. They had the printer make them tickets, and each one went among his friends and organized a "suit club," selling chances for a $30 tailor-made suit. Of course those who invested understood that the suit probably would be worth about $18, but they were satisfied to help build the club house on that basis, and besides they thought they had a fair chance to get the suit.

It was learned afterward by accident that there were twenty "series" of tickets sold by these young men, and instead of each series standing for a suit, only one drawing was held, and only a single suit made for the entire twenty series of tickets. In other words, they sold $500 worth of tickets for a $30 suit of clothes. They built their club house, however, and laughed at the man who kicked because he thought he did not get a square deal for the half dozen tickets he bought. They thought it was a good joke.

Graft of Train Butcher Easy.

In these days if anything gets past the up-to-date train butcher it isn't because the public knows any more than it did in Barnum's time. We get a customer every minute by the birth records.

For a genuine, all-round, dyed-in-the-wool separator of coin from its proud possessor, the train butcher is the limit. Here is a word for word story by a train "butch" of how the thing is done. He excuses his tactics much the same way that the little rogue does who points out that the giant malefactors are doing the same thing, but "getting away with it." Enter Mr. Butch.

"I got back yesterday from a two days' trip—out and in. I had $29.65 to the good, and the company satisfied, and nary a kick from the railroad. At one little place down the line, though, a railroad detective got aboard and tried to detect.

"'Say, young feller,' he said to me, 'I saw you go through here yesterday lookin' pretty spruce, and I thought I'd better take a look through yer grips as you came back. What yer got in there?'

"He kicked my grip, and I opened her up on the minute. He went through it like an old goat through a cracker barrel, but he didn't find anything—see? If he'd looked under the cushion of a seat in the smoker he might have found a whole lot of stuff that didn't look like a prayer meeting layout.

What Was Hidden Under Seat.

"Say, I bet I had fourteen $2 gold watches, twenty gold-rimmed spectacles that cost me 15 cents apiece, one dozen books, tightly sealed in wrappers, that looked mighty interesting to the jay who couldn't see into the books, and yet who had to do it finally at $2 apiece, and, as a topper of it all, my three-book monte game. Did you ever see the game?

"I've got a line of wild west books about two inches thick, each, and costing me 40 cents a volume. They've got some great pictures on the cloth covers, and maybe there's some hot stuff inside—I don't know. But here's my unparalleled offer: I pick out my man and lay these three volumes across his knees in the car seat and go after him with some of the warmest kind of air about their interest, the binding, and the illustrations.

"You pay me for the set," I explain, "but in doing it I give you a chance to get the books for nothing and at the same time double your investment.

How Three Book Monte Is Played.

"I take out three small, thin spelling books, cloth bound, all alike as the bindery and the presses can make them. Then, careless like, I take a $10 bill out of my pocket, fold it across in a sort of V-shape and slip it into the middle of one of the spelling books, so that just one corner will stick out, probably a quarter of an inch. Of course, I haven't seen it! Sometimes the man on the cars will try to say something about it, but I cut in and drown him out with easy talk till he gets the idea that he might as well have that ten and the books for five, and let it go at that.

"But one corner all the time is torn off that bill, and about a quarter of an inch of that bill is sticking out of the center of one of the other books. Of course the jay hasn't seen that!

Shows Corner of Bill.

"Well, I begin and shuffle the books on the payment of the $5. As they are shuffled the corner of the bill that is still attached gets turned around next to me, while the corner that is torn off gets around next to the passenger, whom I have cornered in the seat in a way that he can't see everything that he really ought to see in order to save his money. When I hold out the three books for the drawing I am in a position where I couldn't possibly see the corner that sticks out, while he is where he can't see anything else.

"And he draws the book with the corner sticking out!

"I take it from him instantly, and hold it up with the bill corner at the bottom, flipping the leaves through from front to back and forward again. In the act the corner of the bill drops out on the floor, where he doesn't see. 'Not here,' I says. 'You made a bad draw. Here's the bill,' I says, taking up the book that holds it and turning to the $10 bill, just where it lies. He doesn't know how it all happened, but I console him that he has the three wild west books for his library when he gets home.

All Suckers Not in Day Coaches.

"I don't find all these suckers in the day coaches—not on your life. I found two pretty boys in the smoking room of a sleeping car a week ago, and I had $7.50 from one of them and $5 from the other, and they didn't know a line about it till they got together after I had gone.

"Friends of mine have kicked because I get $2, or $3, or $4 apiece for gold-rimmed spectacles that cost me $1.80 a dozen. But where is the kick. I know men who have paid $10 or $15 for glasses from an oculist when the glass was cut out of a broken window pane. I save such people money, don't I?

"I am not out after the old farmer with hayseed in his hair and leaf tobacco in his mouth, chewing. There are a lot of gay chaps traveling these days who think they've got the bulge on the train butcher by a sort of birthright or something. They are after me, sometimes, till I can't go to sleep after I come in from a run. For instance, the other day a chap got into the train out of a little country town, intending to go to another little town twenty miles away without change of cars. He had $2 cash and a guitar when he got on the train, but I had both when he got off. He wasn't mad at all; he just didn't understand it. For that reason I'll see him again one of these days, and he will buck the game harder than he did the first time. The trouble is he wants to vindicate himself; he's one of these smart alecs that you couldn't down with a crowbar—he don't think!

Country Town "Sport" Easiest Mark.

"Just give me the dead-game sport as he comes from the country and the country town. He's as good as I want. It's a sort of charity to take his money away from him before he gets into real trouble with it. One of them thought he had me the other day when I tried to sell him a pair of my famous $4 glasses with the gold rims. His had silver, only, but he told me mine wouldn't show a full moon after dark.

"I asked him to let me see his specs and he handed them over. I had a bit of wax out of my ear on the tip of my little finger. I touched each of the glasses with the wax, smearing them a little with it. That fixed his glasses for good, and don't forget it. You can't get ear wax off a pair of spectacles with anything yet invented; it's got a sort of acid that eats into the glass and won't ever clear up again. The fellow got hot about it, but I didn't know anything, of course, and finally sold him a pair of my $1.80 a dozen glasses for $1.50 cash, net.

"O, some people are almost too easy—I get ashamed of my calling!"

Women Victims of Old Coupon Scheme.

There is another moss-grown swindle, which, like hope, seems to "spring perennial" in the greater cities.

This is the old-time coupon swindle. A suave young man appears at the door, inserts his foot in the crack, if you try to slam it in his face, and rapidly begins to explain that he has something to offer you for nothing. The housewife sighs with resignation, and admits the suave young man, thinking that she might as well get it over. But let the housewife herself talk. Here is the story of a good woman who was caught by one of these pettifogging grafters:

"Since my husband died I have partly earned my living by renting furnished rooms. This seems to be the first thing a woman thinks of doing when she is left unprovided for, but it isn't a business of large profits, and few of us ever cut 'melons.' My furniture, of course, represented my 'plant,' and it was growing shabby.

"That is, perhaps, why the glib agent got a hearing from me. He had a lovely proposition. Opening a catalogue he showed me pictures of beautiful pieces of furniture, made from expensive materials, just the kind that would make my rooms attractive and easy to rent.

"'Now,' said he, 'I am soliciting subscriptions for a weekly paper. This paper will cost you 10 cents a number, and with each number you get a coupon. When you have accumulated sixty-eight coupons you can bring them to our wareroom and select any one of these elegant pieces of furniture.'

"'Why,' said I, 'if these articles are as represented, I couldn't buy them at any store in town for three times what sixty-eight coupons would cost me—$6.80.'

The Old "Wareroom" Tale.

"'Call at our wareroom, lady, before you sign the contract, and you will see they are just as described.'

"Well, I saw the articles, and they were all they were said to be. They explained that they were practically giving them away in order to build up the circulation of the paper. Everything appeared to be all right, and I signed a contract. So did my widowed sister; so did some of my neighbors.

"The paper was worthless, but I didn't care. Sometimes I would buy several copies of one issue so as to make haste toward getting my sixty-eight coupons. The time came when I went around to select my furniture. I selected it, all right—a handsome chiffonier.

"'This chiffonier calls for 360 coupons,' said the man.

"'Why, your agent told me I could have any of these pieces when I had accumulated sixty-eight coupons,' said I, dismayed.

"'He couldn't have told you that,' said the man. 'Read your contract. You will see it says that when you have sixty-eight coupons you may select any one of these articles, but that means we will then hold the article for you until you have paid the rest. Why, we have goods here that call for 600 and 700 coupons.'

"I saw how I had been swindled, and was furious. I told him what I thought of him and his business, and he offered to tear up my contract (which, it turned out, bound me to more than I had dreamed of), if I would pay him an additional $2.50. I refused. He said he would sue me if I didn't. I told him to go ahead.

"Shortly afterward a constable served a summons on me to appear at a justice court at the other end of creation. I didn't go; and I don't know whether the concern got a judgment against me or not.

"But I do know I haven't anything to show for the money I paid for those coupons."

BOOK LOVERS EASY PREY OF FRAUDS.

Bogus Art Works Fine Graft.

Some of our citizens are paying a high price for education in art and book swindles. People, generally, are becoming experts in detecting small frauds and attacks upon their pocketbooks, and are becoming wise to pious dodges that run into spiritualism, clairvoyance and fortune telling, but when a large, smooth scheme is broached, they get caught. It may be that we have concentrated our minds upon so many trifling schemes to part us from our money, that we have laid ourselves bare to big operators in big frauds like that perpetrated upon the Patten family of Evanston. The clever fakir reached for $40,000 in an "old book" game and came very near gathering in the pot. He did get $2,600, which was a very neat job.

It appears that there is a wide-spread system under the operations of which Chicago book lovers, and others all over the country, have been bilked out of a sum estimated at hundreds of thousands of dollars. The same system is applied to paintings by the "old masters," for which some Chicago men have paid fabulous sums, only to find them imitations. The expert frauds are geniuses in their peculiar calling, and would deceive the elect if listened to. A bright, smart, well groomed man with letters of introduction from high quarters, often forged, perhaps with a title, breaks into society and bides his time to make a big haul. The vanity and foibles of the high-steppers and nobility worshipers are pandered to with masterly skill, and then a mere suggestion of untold values in books or paintings is breathed in secret. Do the big fish bite? Some of them swallow the bait and it has to be cut out of them before they will give it up. It is becoming so easy to gull some people, that the crime should consist in the betrayal of innocence rather than in the successful fraud. While guillible people continue to parade their guillibility to the world, there will always be frauds to take advantage of them. If anybody doubts the fact that people can be easily defrauded, let him visit any old book store, antique furniture dealer, oriental rug concern, even junk shops. He will find an amazing army of faddists, who are willing to pay any exorbitant price for some cheap fraud because a gentlemanly man, or an opium-smoking Chinaman, tells him it is the real thing. When business is dull at the shops, agents visit front doors, back doors, or invade society with some bogus job of "art" works and realize enormous sums.

Miserable Little Short Measure Thieves.

In the Municipal Court in South Chicago three extremely mean swindlers have been fined $25 and costs. It is unfortunate that they could not have been sent to the Bridewell without the alternative of paying the fine.

For these swindlers were coal dealers who robbed the poor that bought coal by the basket. They STOLE money from their customers, just as the short-measure milk trust conspirators robbed their patrons. We repeat that they ought to be in the Bridewell.

Giving short measure is the dirtiest, smallest, most cowardly form of commercial rascality. The hold-up man who takes his life in his hand and robs on the public highway is a model of decency and courage as compared with the pitiful rascal who steals the pennies of the poor by selling coal or milk or any other necessity of life by short weight.

Short weight is larceny. It ought to be treated as larceny by law.

Crime a Fine Art.

Living by one's wits has become a fine art, and it is a profession that is more liberally patronized than any other by the present generation. One of America's leading detectives remarked that there were about seventy-five thousand people in a city the size of Chicago that would bear watching. There isn't a bank, insurance office, dry goods store, restaurant or hotel that does not employ men to watch their customers, and there is hardly a business house in the country that has not some system of watching its employes. Everybody at this day seems to be afraid of everybody else.

Professional criminals pride themselves quite as much upon their ability as men engaged in legitimate occupations. A thief, for instance, is as vain of his superiority over other thieves as a lawyer, politician, or clergyman might be whose talents had elevated him to a commanding position in the eyes of the people. And the talented thief is as much courted and sought after as the successful man in the honest walks of life. The other thieves will say: "He is a good man to know; I must make his acquaintance." But the thief who has earned a reputation is particular about the company he keeps, and is scornful in his demeanor toward another thief whom he does not consider his professional equal. Caste exists among criminals as well as among other classes.

Men and women who are not living merely for today must be deeply interested in the efforts which practical philanthropists are making to discover the causes of crime and to remedy the mischievous conditions which now prevail to such an alarming extent. Hidden away to a considerable degree in the great mass of figures which came into being through the operations of the census bureau, are facts that should shock every good citizen. With all the warmth of eulogy the story of wonderful progress has been told again and again, but only a few references have been made to the abnormal growth of what may be termed by the criminal class. Forty years ago there was but one criminal to 3,500 good or reasonably good citizens. According to the last census the proportion was one in 786.5, an increase of 445 per cent in a period during which the population increased but 170 per cent. Never in the nation's history has educational work of all descriptions been nearly so active as at present, yet the increase in the number of those who were confined in penitentiaries and jails and reformatory institutions is almost twice as rapid as the growth of population.

Cities Breeding Spots of Crime.

The true explanation of this unsatisfactory state of things is not far to seek. It is almost entirely to be attributed to the growing tendency of the community to become concentrated in large cities. A highly concentrated population fosters lawless and immoral instincts in such a multitude of ways that it is only an expression of literal exactitude to call the great cities of today the nurseries of modern crime. Statistics of all kinds show this, but it can easily be ascertained without the aid of any figures. The aggregation of large multitudes within a very limited area must increase the chances of conflict, and consequently multiply the occasions for crime.

A population in this crowded condition has also to be restrained and regulated at every turn by a huge network of laws, and as every new law forbids something which was permitted before, a multiplication of laws is inevitably followed by an increase of crime.

The prevention of crime should be the great object with the philanthropist. The obvious remedy is, if possible, to aid the individual in overcoming the temptation to evil or to crime. The remedy must be general, gradual, and constant. It consists in religious, moral, intellectual, and industrial education of the children, especially of the poor and unfortunate and the weakling classes. The most certain preventive is the early incarnation of good habits in children, which, becoming part and parcel of their nervous organization, are an unconscious force when passion, perplexity, or temptation tend to make them lose self-control. Little can be expected from palliative remedies for social diseases so long as this educational remedy is not thoroughly carried out.

America's Educated Criminal Class.

The great mass of the American people, aside from those who have had experience in hunting and shadowing criminals, labor under the popular delusion that the most daring criminals of today are a lot of tough, ignorant men, with little or no education at all, who would do almost anything else than work honestly for a living. If people would but stop to consider the subject a moment they would readily discover their error. There are, it is true, a large number of swindlers, thieves, pickpockets, thugs and criminals of a like class who have but a scant knowledge of books, or literature, but they are only to be found among the lower class of criminals. The most notorious criminals the world has ever produced have been men and women of high culture and refinement, well educated and thoroughly posted on all that is transpiring. It is this class of people who make the most successful, and at the same time most dangerous, criminals. It requires men of education to swindle, crack a safe, rob a bank, jewelry store or forge a paper. To be a successful confidence operator requires the man to be well educated in matters of all kinds, to be a fluent talker, a person of refinement and polite address, and a good judge of character.

Refined Criminals Most Dangerous.

Criminal history shows that the most successful jobs are always planned and executed by men of education; the details of some of the great forgeries that have taken place, of the numerous bank robberies and burglar's exploits, all go to show the direction of a brain of no ordinary person, being proof positive that the persons planning the work possessed both education and talent. First class criminals are exceedingly hard to cope with, and are the most dangerous to handle by the officers. They do not generally do things in a rush or by halves. Great care is given to all the minor details of their work, and it often takes weeks and months before they are ready to put their plans into operation. They study all the possibilities of the job; the chances of success, and the way of escape in case of failure; how they can cover all traces of the work and throw the guilt or suspicion upon the more unfortunate of their class who have had reputations and who are likely to be brought up and possibly convicted on suspicion of being the guilty parties. Educated crooks are always to be feared, not only by the public against whom they are constantly devising ways and means to relieve of their valuables, but by detectives of a lesser grade. This class of crooks do not hesitate to sacrifice the detective if their desired ends can be successfully accomplished, while the detective finds it a task of no little moment to gain even the faintest clue to their operations.

Prison Poor Cure for Crime.

Locking a man up for committing a crime does not always cure him. It is now proven that affixed penalties to certain crimes accomplishes practically nothing, for it is based on a wrong principle. The length of confinement ought, confessedly, to be adjusted to the needs of the prisoner. He should not be discharged from his moral hospital until there is reasonable assurance that he is cured. He certainly should not be turned loose on society, on the mere expiration of a formal sentence, when it is known he will begin anew on his old life. Protection to society, as well as the reformation of the criminal, call for the retention of the latter until he can be trusted with his liberty, and affords proof that he is fitted to take his place in the world as a useful, law-abiding citizen. This system alone permits the fullest scope to reformatory methods, and leaves to the court the right of sentencing indefinitely, and to the tribunal which has to do with the prisoner's release, to say when there is reasonable ground for faith that if discharged he will not prove either a burden or menace to society. Where conduct and character afford no such grounds he should be incarcerated for life, just as we would retain hopeless lunatics in asylums.

Maconochie's Experiment.

This form of sentence was first put into operation in a modified form by Maconochie, at Norfolk Island, in 1836, with a success in the way of reformatory results from the start which was unequalled. Now the best authorities in penology in all countries not only commend it, but the opinion is fast becoming general that it is a necessary feature in every reformatory system of prison discipline. Of course it implies in prison management the highest wisdom and integrity, and especially the banishment of partisan politics therefrom. It makes the dominant idea of prison administration manhood-making, and not money-making.

Faces Portray Character.

Every one knows that men's passions, propensities, and peculiarities, as well as their calling, are reflected in their faces.

It is as impossible to disguise a face as a handwriting. When the expert comes the disguise is torn off and the face tells the true story of the spirit inside the body. One only needs to visit the penitentiary to realize how undeniably vice writes its sign manual on the features. It is not the drunkard only whose red nose, flabby cheeks and rheumy eyes betray him; it is the senualist whose vice is read in his lips, the knave whose propensity is revealed in the shape of his mouth; the man of violence is surrendered by his eyes. An experienced detective policeman, or a trained jailer seldom needs to ask the crime of which the prisoner was guilty. He can tell it by his face.

It is quite evident that in the future the study of physiognomy is going to be pursued more vigorously than it has been. As a means of preventing crime it may prove invaluable. How constantly do we hear of men "falling from grace," as the phrase goes. Yet these men must have carried their crime in their faces for a long time. If any one had been able to read their features the mischief might have been averted. It is well known that every man's face is more or less stamped by the pursuit he follows. An experienced observer can generally detect a lawyer, or a doctor, or a merchant, or a clerk, or a mechanic, or a clergyman, by merely studying his face.

The instinctive criminal is a social parasite. The conclusion is irresistible that he is organically morbid. He will proceed to any extreme, and life and property, separating him from the accomplishment of his wishes, are but barriers to be overcome. The occasional criminal is largely a negative creature, who yields himself when temptation and the stimulus of opportunity exceed his resistive power. The habitual and professional criminal represents degree rather than kind. Criminality is to him a profession, a fine art, and susceptible of division into specialties.

Criminal Heads Not Extraordinary.

The average heads of criminals and those of ordinary people probably do not vary much in size. A large brain does not necessarily indicate great intelligence any more than a small one mental deficiencies, this being true, as little importance can be attached to the weight of brains of criminals. The weight of Oliver Cromwell's brain was 82.29 ounces; Lord Byron's, 79 ounces; Cuvier's, 64 ounces; Ruloff's (a thief and murderer), 59 ounces; adult idiot's, 54.95 ounces; Daniel Webster's, 53.50 ounces, and Gambetta's, that of the size of a microcephalic idiot.

A face may either attract or repel; its lines indicate firmness and decision, or weakness and sensuousness. In physiognomy may be traced fineness or brutality, surfeit or privation, gentleness or irascibility; yet from a consideration of the face it is assuming too much to predicate the form of criminal tendencies, if any, on the subject. Criminal physiognomy is not yet an exact science. The practical criminologist regards criminality as bred in the bone and born in the flesh, and the ethology of crime to be looked for chiefly is in heredity and environment, using the word environment in its most liberal sense, ante and post-natal, and whatever cause, in whatever way, that exerts a deleterious influence upon nutrition and the functions of organic life, voluntary and involuntary.

Little is being done in this country in criminal anthropology that can compare with the studies and researches that are being carried on in Italy, France, and Germany. The student unacquainted with the language of these countries pursues his studies at a disadvantage, owing to the paucity of literature in English upon the subject.

The tide of crime is steadily rising. The level of criminality, it is well known, is rising, and has been rising during the whole of the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries, throughout the civilized world. Its prevention and cure is a perplexing study, and is engaging the thoughts and energies of the best intellects of the world.

DETECTIVE CLIFTON R. WOOLDRIDGE'S
"Never-Fail" System

THE ONLY SURE WAY TO BEAT:

• TURF FRAUDS.
• WILD CAT INSURANCE.
• BOGUS SECURITIES, CONFIDENCE GAMES.
• CITY-LOT SWINDLES.
• HOME-BUYING SWINDLES.
• DISHONEST DEBENTURE BOND COMPANIES.
• FRAUDULENT PROMOTERS.
• "SALTED" MINING AND OIL WELLS COMPANIES.
• BUCKET SHOPS.
• BLIND POOLS IN GRAIN AND STOCKS.
• PANEL HOUSES.
• BOGUS MAIL ORDER HOUSES.
• POKER, FARO AND OTHER GAMBLING GAMES.
• MATRIMONIAL BUREAUS.
• COUNTERFEIT UNDERWRITERS.
• FRAUDULENT BOOK CONCERNS.
• DISHONEST COLLECTION AGENCIES.
• ADULTERATED MEDICINE DEALERS.
• WIRE TAPPERS.
• FAKE BROKERS.
• BOGUS CHARITIES.
• SPURIOUS EMPLOYMENT AGENCIES.
• SWINDLE PROMOTERS.
• MUSHROOM BANKS.
• CLAIRVOYANTS.
• FORTUNE TELLERS.
• PALMISTS.

$1,000 REWARD WILL BE PAID TO ANYONE WHO USES DETECTIVE CLIFTON R. WOOLDRIDGE'S NEVER-FAIL SYSTEM AND FAILS TO BEAT THE ABOVE SWINDLES.

DO NOT RISK YOUR MONEY WITHOUT HAVING FIRST CAREFULLY INVESTIGATED THE CHARACTER OF THE ENTERPRISE IN WHICH YOU ARE INVITED TO BECOME FINANCIALLY INTERESTED.

BE CONVINCED BEYOND ALL REASONABLE DOUBT THAT THE MEN CONNECTED WITH THE ENTERPRISE ARE ABOVE SUSPICION.

IF THEIR PROBITY, INTEGRITY OR RELIABILITY CAN NOT BE ESTABLISHED BY PAST TRANSACTIONS IT IS CERTAIN THEIR HONESTY WILL NOT BE DISCLOSED BY FUTURE DEALINGS.

DO NOT INVEST IN ANY COMPANY, CORPORATION, OR PRIVATE CONCERN UNTIL THE MANAGEMENT HAS FURNISHED INDISPUTABLE PROOF OF ITS ABILITY TO FULFILL EVERY PROMISE.

LEAVE SPECULATION TO THOSE WHO CAN AFFORD TO LOSE.

LARGE GAINS ON SMALL INVESTMENTS USUALLY EXIST ONLY IN THE IMAGINATION OF GULLIBLE INVESTORS AND UNSCRUPULOUS PROMOTERS.

LARGE RISKS INCUR LARGE LOSSES.

NO MAN WILL "LET YOU INTO A GOOD THING;" HE WILL KEEP IT FOR HIMSELF AND HIS FRIENDS.

PROMOTERS ARE NOT IN BUSINESS TO MAKE MONEY FOR YOU, BUT "OUT OF YOU."

CONTENT YOURSELF WITH LEGITIMATE INVESTMENTS AND SMALL BUT SAFE RETURNS.

RATHER THAN SEEK GREAT PROFITS WITHOUT TOIL STRIVE FOR THE DESERVED FRUITS OF INDUSTRY.

NO MAN WILL GIVE YOU A DOLLAR FOR FIFTY CENTS—UNLESS THE DOLLAR IS COUNTERFEIT.

DO NOT PAY OUT YOUR OWN GOOD MONEY FOR ANOTHER MAN'S BOGUS DOLLARS.

IF THE PROMOTER COULD DO ONE-HALF OF WHAT HE CLAIMS, HE WOULD NOT NEED YOUR MONEY, BUT SOON WOULD BE RICH BEYOND THE DREAMS OF AVARICE.

DO NOT INVEST YOUR HARD-WON SAVINGS IN VANISHING AIR CASTLES.

PROMISES WHICH PROCEED FROM A DESIRE TO GET YOUR MONEY ALWAYS MERIT SUSPICION. SUBJECT THEM TO THE MOST CAREFUL AND RIGID EXAMINATION.

ADOPT THE BANKER'S RULE THAT: "ALL MEN SHOULD BE REGARDED AS DISHONEST UNTIL THEIR HONESTY IS PROVED," RATHER THAN THE SUCKER'S THEORY THAT "ALL MEN ARE HONEST."

THE BANKER WILL END LIFE POSSESSED OF WEALTH WHILE THE CREDULOUS OPTIMIST WHOSE FAITH IS UNBOUNDED WILL WIND UP HIS DAYS "A POORER BUT WISER MAN."

WHEN IN DOUBT DO NOTHING.

IF A PROMOTER CAN NOT DISPEL YOUR DOUBTS HE IS NOT WORTHY OF YOUR CONFIDENCE.

DO NOT FOLLOW SIREN CHANCE. SHE WILL LEAD YOU INTO THE ABYSS OF DESPAIR.

BEWARE OF THE DICE; THERE IS BUT ONE GOOD THROW WITH THEM—THROW THEM AWAY. THEY WERE USED TO CAST LOTS FOR THE BLOOD-STAINED GARMENTS OF JESUS CHRIST; THEY ARE USED TO GAMBLE AWAY THE HONOR OF MEN.

PLAY NOTHING, INVEST IN NOTHING, BUY NOTHING, TRUST NO MAN OR WOMAN UNTIL YOU HAVE REASON TO BELIEVE THE ENTERPRISE IS LEGITIMATE BEYOND QUESTION.

AVOID THE MISTAKE OF THAT GREATEST FOOL OF ALL FOOLS, THE MAN WHO THINKS HE IS TOO SMART TO BE FOOLED.

YOU ARE NOT SHREWD ENOUGH TO BEAT ANY MAN AT HIS OWN GAME; HE HAS STUDIED ITS MANIPULATIONS; YOU ARE A NOVICE.

DON'T LET ANYONE STAMPEDE YOU INTO DOING ANYTHING. THE "RUSH" ACT IS A FAVORITE TRICK OF GRAFTERS, FROM THE CHEAP CADGER WHO BORROWS SMALL CHANGE TO THE INVESTMENT BROKER WHO OFFERS AN OPPORTUNITY TO RISK A FORTUNE IN "THE CHANCE OF A LIFE-TIME" THAT MUST BE SNAPPED UP IMMEDIATELY OR LOST FOREVER.

WHEN A MAN TRIES TO HURRY YOU INTO SPENDING YOUR MONEY PUT IT BACK IN YOUR POCKET AND KEEP YOUR HAND ON IT.

USE CAUTION, REASON AND COMMON SENSE.

DO UNTO OTHERS AS YOU WOULD HAVE THEM DO UNTO YOU. MOST OTHERS WILL "DO" YOU IF YOU GIVE THEM A CHANCE.

IF YOU ARE MARKED AS ONE OF THE GEESE READY FOR PLUCKING BY GET-RICH-QUICK SWINDLERS THEY WILL SEND YOU LITERATURE THROUGH THE MAILS. SAVE EVERY CIRCULAR, LETTER OR OTHER COMMUNICATION TOGETHER WITH THE ENVELOPES AND SEND THEM TO THE POSTOFFICE INSPECTOR IN THE TOWN FROM WHICH THEY WERE SENT.

BE SURE TO SEND THE ENVELOPES WITH THE LITERATURE AS THE COMMUNICATIONS CANNOT BE ADMITTED AS EVIDENCE UNLESS THE ORIGINAL WRAPPERS OR ENVELOPES IN WHICH THEY WERE MAILED ARE OFFERED WITH THEM. THE POSTMASTER WILL INSTRUCT HOW TO FORWARD THE COMPLAINT.

PROSECUTION OF THE SWINDLERS WILL SURELY FOLLOW.

IF YOU ARE IN DOUBT ABOUT THE CHARACTER OF THE CONCERN WHICH INVITES YOU TO INVEST YOUR MONEY, CONSULT A LAWYER, BANKER OR REPUTABLE COMMERCIAL AGENCY.

Intending investors should remember that:

"SURE TIPS" are sure bait for sure fools.

When you hear stocks have gone up and men who bought them cheap have sold them at high prices and gained fortunes suspect your informant. If he seeks to induce you to invest be assured he is a GET-RICH-QUICK grafter.

Many swindlers wear the garb of respectability; they even cloak their rascality with piety. Many men accepted by the world as honorable members of society spend their lives living on the credulity of the ignorant, and when they die go to the grave followed by hordes of dupes who mourn their end.

These swindlers await you at every turn; on the race-track; in the saloon; with the poker deck and the ivory dice; with watered stock and fraudulent bonds; with prayers on their lips and designs in their minds to defraud you.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS AN HONEST GAMBLER.

Every gambling game is a dishonest scheme. You seek to get the other man's money without giving him anything in return.

You are not entitled to one penny unless you give value in return. If you are in business you know that every promissory note, to be valid, must bear on its face two words, "value received."

INDUSTRY, ENERGY, THRIFT! These are the dice that win. The lesson is hard to learn for the young.

He has anxious days and feverish nights who risks at chance what should be devoted to the nobler ends of life; who "makes throws" on the green cloth; who watches the snake-like tape squirm out of the ticker; or gazes at a bunch of horses running around a ring.

GIVE IT ALL UP AND ADOPT HONEST MEANS OF PROCURING WEALTH!

The Best Rules for Health, Happiness and Success.

THEY ARE WORTH THE ATTENTION AND THOUGHT OF ALL READERS.

• 1. Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today.
• 2. Never trouble another for what you can do yourself.
• 3. Never spend your money before you have earned it.
• 4. Never buy what you don't want because it is cheap.
• 5. Pride costs more than hunger, thirst and cold.
• 6. We seldom repent of eating too little.
• 7. Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly.
• 8. How much pain the evils have cost us that have never happened.
• 9. Take things always by the smooth handle.
• 10. When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, count a hundred.
• 11. Watch the small things.
• 12. Laziness is a vice—fight it.
• 13. Do your honest best—it pays.
• 14. Without self-respect you cannot gain respect.
• 15. Trickery's triumph is fleeting.
• 16. Remember that opportunity waits only on worth.
• 17. Cultivate love, loyalty and respect for work—especially your own work.
• 18. It is not enough to be honest and lazy.
• 19. Try to keep your mind clean—evil and success will not mix.
• 20. If responsibility confronts you, seize it. Do not throw it aside—responsibility represents opportunity.

Some of these sayings will strike you as very old and lacking in novelty. But, old as these rules are, human beings have not yet learned to follow them. And they won't learn for many a long year.

We shall not moralize about them all today, only one or two we want to emphasize.

"Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly."

If you work willingly, if you make yourself realize that willing effort is easy, AND THE ONLY KIND THAT MAKES YOU GROW AND SUCCEED, you will solve one of your big working problems.

Did you ever see a small boy walking ahead of a band, with the music playing?

And did you ever see the same small boy walking half the distance to get a newspaper for his father? Walking with the band rests him; it doesn't tire him at all, BECAUSE HE DOES IT WILLINGLY. And the other kind of walking takes the very heart out of him and makes him almost too tired to eat his dinner.

It is exactly that way with all the work we do in this world. When you do things willingly, with the heart and the nerves and the brain acting with one another cheerfully, work is easy AND SUCCESS FOLLOWS.

A willing FOOL may lag behind an unwilling man of intelligence. But even a willing fool is happier in the end than an unwilling one, and, all things being even, the employe working WILLINGLY will cease being an employe and have others working for him sooner than the other man.

PRIDE COSTS MORE THAN HUNGER, THIRST AND COLD.

This applies to all kinds of foolish vanity. It applies to the young man who never does anything, BECAUSE HE IS TOO PROUD TO DO WHAT HE HAS THE CHANCE TO DO.

It applies to men and women who squander on dress and show the money that they need for more serious purposes.

It applies to those that in old age have no money saved up, BECAUSE PRIDE SPENT THEIR MONEY AS FAST AS THEY GOT IT.

The pride that keeps men honest, the pride that makes men truthful, never kept a man back or hurt him.

The bad kind of pride is the pride which can be described as "the coward's pride." Men are foolishly and cowardly proud BECAUSE THEY ARE AFRAID OF WHAT OTHER MEN WILL THINK. Money that they cannot afford they spend helping other men to drink too much, BECAUSE THEY ARE ASHAMED TO BE THOUGHT STINGY OR MEAN.

Men squander in keeping up appearances money that should be saved for another day, for a good business opportunity, because they are too cowardly to be guided by their own judgment, and ignore what others may THINK about them.

Self-respect is one thing; foolish pride, vanity, moral cowardice, are very different. Get rid of them.

All the advice from these 20 rules is good advice. The man who can keep his temper while he thinks—whether he count ten or a million—is a lucky man.

A man in a rage is a man whose BRAIN IS NO LONGER WORKING. And the man whose brain isn't working is at the mercy of the man whose brain IS working.

Worry about the FUTURE troubles is a curse with many men. It prevents their working well TODAY.

Overeating, and especially eating at the wrong time, is a great evil in this country. If men would learn to eat heartily only when their day's work is done, WHEN THEIR MINDS MUST NO LONGER BE CONCENTRATED, THEY WILL SAVE THEIR STOMACHS AND ACCOMPLISH TWICE THE AMOUNT OF WORK IN THEIR LIVES.

Read these rules over, and moralize on them for yourselves and for your children.

COINING CUPID'S WILES.

How Matrimonial Agencies Prey on the Public—Their Degeneration Into the Worst Forms of Crime.

$1,000,000 Secured by These Get-Rich-Quick Schemers Discovered by Detective Clifton R. Wooldridge, Chicago's Famous Police Detective.

• 125 matrimonial agencies in Chicago raided and closed in the last five years.
• 4,500,000 matrimonial letters seized and destroyed.
• 1,500,000 matrimonial agencies' stock letters seized and destroyed.
• 1,400,000 matrimonial stock photographs seized and destroyed.
• 500,000 photographs sent to the matrimonial agencies by men and women who were seeking their affinities seized and destroyed.
• 40 wagon loads of matrimonial literature seized and destroyed.

One of the most insidious forms of crime is the Matrimonial Agency. Seemingly harmless, or at most merely foolish, is the Matrimonial Agency at its inception.

But step by step within the past few years we have seen the Matrimonial Agency turned into a volcano belching forth fraud, swindling, bigamy, desertion, and finally ghastly wholesale murder.

We have seen the Matrimonial Agency sweep the whole range of the world of crime from the petty thieving of a Carson to the almost unbelievable horrors of the Gunness Farm.

THE SORROWS OF CUPID

"He Does Not See All the Rocks Ahead When He Brings Two Young People Together"—Beatrice Fairfax.

And this monster is hydra-headed. Stamp it out in one place and it immediately reappears in another. Send a "manager" to prison once, twice, ten times, and the minute the prison doors are open he is back at the old stand doing business.

Something of the tremendous efforts being put forth to stamp out this evil may be gained from the headlines of this story, where the strenuous work of Detective Wooldridge of Chicago is summarized.

Chicago has been and is today infested by a formidable community of matrimonial agencies who invade all ranks of life. They promote many specious schemes to lure the elusive dollar from the pockets of unwary victims. These operatives are sharp, smooth and unscrupulous—the most dangerous of criminal perverts.

Were the census enumerators of the United States to compile a list of the "sucker" public the gullible ones would aggregate tens of millions. There is not a township in this great nation that does not contain its portion of confiding persons who are ready to believe anything, from the rankest catch-penny advertisement to a fallacy in theological dogma.

They are willing to open up their hearts to unknown matrimonially inclined correspondents; to accept as gospel the incredible statements of impostors and to pay out money gained by hard toil for something which the reason of a child should tell them it is beyond the power of man to provide.

They are easy prey alike to religious and political impostors and unscrupulous adventurers. Investigations for years past into the innermost secrets of swindlers, and the observations incidental to official experience disclosing how victims are drawn into the net of the grafter, impel the belief that the faith of many persons passes beyond the bounds of credulity into the domain of imbecility.

Men and women who are engaged in promoting matrimonial agencies are guilty of crime. It is opposed to the fundamental principles of society. Such a practice should under no circumstances be tolerated. It is inconsistent with the highest ideals of what should constitute the proper marriage relations.

Human Derelicts Are Dupes.

Human derelicts of a low mental caliber are the dupes of these matrimonial agencies. Few people know that such schemes as these are carried out. Few know that advertisements by men of wealth, women of culture and pretty widows who seek matrimonial alliances are merely means by which scoundrels get a revenue.

Matrimonial Agents' Methods.

To describe adequately the technicalities of the marriage agencies and bureau swindlers' methods would be impossible without presenting actual copies of documents necessary to the system. Early in the investigations the discovery was made that the scores of matrimonial agencies, "introduction bureaux" and "marriage clubs" were using practically the same literature. Few departed from the stereotyped plan for "pulling the suckers on." For the most part the prospectuses and "follow-up" letters were identical.

As often happened, however, when a victim was "landed right" and ventured to Chicago from his distant rural retreat prepared to carry out in earnest the game that had been worked upon him in a spirit of mercenary recklessness, the methods of handling him were varied in respect to both finesse and effectiveness.

Any person familiar with the uses of the typewriter easily could have discovered that the "personal" letters received from time to time were nothing more than circulars printed by the thousands. So vast was the number of the gullible that seldom, if ever, was an actual, bona fide letter sent in reply to those from the victims.

Space was left at the top of the stock letters for the insertion of the name of the person to whom it was sent. In their haste the swindlers often begrudged the time necessary to change the "Dear Sir" to "Dear Miss" or "Dear Madam" when a woman was addressed on stationery intended for male clients.

Notice! She's engaged but engagements have been broken so hurry before the wedding bells have rung.... Going! Going! Third and Last Call!

No Trust Here.

The general uniformity of the literature was at first thought by me to indicate that the matrimonial agencies were banded together in a gigantic trust. But later I learned that as they increased in number the newcomers exhibited conscienceless audacity in copying the forms used by their predecessors. It was also found in some cases several matrimonial agencies were operated from one address and one or two men, or a man and his wife would represent half a dozen concerns by changing names and locations every thirty or sixty days. Because of these facts and the added fact that whoever compiled the original forms from which the others copied, realized, he was in an illegitimate business, the plagiarists were never prosecuted. Thus the buncombe administered to the suckers became uniform in phraseology.

If a person desired to make assurance doubly sure for gaining wealth and marital bliss and he applied to several agencies at the same time, the same mail would bring him letters from each matrimonial agency with which he communicated, worded identically. They would be mimeograph copies, and the only difference in their appearance would be in the printed heading indicating the name of the agency. The name of the recipient would often be written at the top in ink different in color from the body of the letter.

Working the Double Cross.

The usual beginning is a small subscription fee paid for a "matrimonial" paper. This paper contains alleged descriptions of men and women, principally the latter, who are claimed by the publisher to be seeking wives or husbands through the matrimonial agency. The subscriber who becomes interested in any of the descriptions is made to pay a fee for more detailed information and alleged record of the financial circumstances of the person. There is sometimes an additional fee for a photograph. This picture may or may not be one of the person described, but that matters little. Almost any old photograph will serve the purpose. In all the raids made on matrimonial agencies collections of photographs have been found.

That tens of thousands of otherwise intelligent men and women should either entrust pictures of themselves to an agency by which it is to be sent out to unknown persons, or should even begin such negotiations as those carried on through the matrimonial agency, is incomprehensible.

The money derived in the aggregate from subscriptions to the matrimonial paper, the fees for particulars and those for photographs and miscellaneous "services" amount to large sums. With many of the agencies the services stop at this point, but many others undertake personal introductions of lonesome maids and widows to the invariably "honest and affectionate" bachelors and widowers, and when this is done there are other fees, depending altogether on how much the victims appear to be willing to stand.

A large number have been found and suppressed in which there was but one lonesome maid or widow and one honest and affectionate bachelor or widower, the former being the woman accomplice of the manager of the agency and the latter the manager himself. They answer love-lorn correspondents of both sexes and select for victims those believed to have the most money. If the assistant to the manager is posing as the possible bride in the case the wife hunter must make satisfactory settlements with the manager for conducting the negotiations, and this amount, with that which the accomplice is able to secure from the victim, amounts often to a considerable sum. After the victim is separated from his money something happens to prevent the happy conclusion of the marriage negotiations.

Two Well-Defined Forms.

There are two well-defined forms of the "matrimonial agent." The one is the man who openly runs an agency, who advertises "golden-haired young ladies, worth half a million dollars," "blue-eyed widows of languishing temperaments" and "wealthy farmers." It is through this class of "bureau" that the great crimes of the matrimonial business have been engineered. Hoch, Mrs. Gunness, Holmes and other arch-criminals made good use of this type.

The other type is just the plain swindler. The man who works along the secondary lines, as they may be called, would scorn to be a matrimonial agent. He is either a reverend gentleman of the cloth, a minister to whom some languishing widow is looking for spiritual direction, and he thinks that she "needs she should get married," to quote the East Side phraseology; or he is a lawyer who has a wealthy client, who, not being a business woman, is incapable of running her own affairs, and he again thinks of marriage as a solution; or, again, he is "an employment agency." This secondary type is generally a cheap sort, grafting on the gullible for five or ten dollars, or even as high as $100.

CONCRETE EXAMPLES.

Type No. 1.

September 8, 1905, John H. Harris, 168 Hamlin avenue, editor and publisher of The Pilot, a marriage agency paper, and manager of a cheap mail order house, was raided and arrested by Detective Wooldridge.

Among the letters seized were complaints from his patrons. They received no returns for money paid him, and averred his paper was being used to blackmail men and women. Complaints were also made that many of the names which appeared in the paper were not authorized, and other names attached to the order were forgeries.

The following is the copy of a letter dated September 1, 1906, and is only one among hundreds of others sent out by the thousands by Harris. Many more thousands were sent through the mail to his sub-agents, who worked on a commission. This agent employed other agents, who started an endless chain by copying the letter and having the friends do likewise.

Chicago. Ill., Sept. 1, 1905.

Dear Sir:

We have a very recent application from a brown-eyed widow of 41, medium size, musical, has no children. She informs us that she has recently come into possession of a fortune of over FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS, and that she wishes to marry an honest, affectionate gentleman. We also have a recent application from a pretty, blue-eyed lady of 20, who estimates her present means at FORTY THOUSAND DOLLARS, and her inheritance at twenty thousand dollars. Her form is graceful, her education good, her disposition gentle and she desires a steady, honest husband. We believe she would start her husband in business. And to accommodate those ladies and quickly find a husband for them we make the following SPECIAL OFFER:

Fill out the coupon at the bottom, and send it to us with one dollar (and six postage stamps) and enclose a sealed and stamped letter to either or both of the ladies referred to above. We will immediately mail your letter to the lady or ladies, and place your name on our books, and send you a certificate of membership for six months, and send you the full names and addresses of the handsome widow of means, and the handsome blue-eyed maiden of means, and also send you a list of names and addresses of other ladies of means and otherwise. And until you are married, or until the end of six months, we will, on or about the first of each month, mail you a list of descriptions, names and addresses of ladies of means and otherwise, without application from you or any expense to you. We have good reason to believe that either of the ladies mentioned above would make you a good wife, but if they do not meet your approval you can select one who will from the stream of ladies of means and otherwise who are constantly requesting us to secure husbands for them, which enables us to introduce you to those whom you would be pleased to meet with a view to marriage.

Faithfully yours,
John H. Harris.
Pub. of The Pilot.

John H. Harris,
Chicago, Ill.

Dear Sir:

I herewith enclose $1.12 as full payment on the above offer.

Name ———— Postoffice ————

Street, or Box No ———— State ————

United States Inspector of Mails at Chicago Postoffice R. W. McAfee compelled John H. Harris to furnish him with the names and addresses of the two women heiresses who were worth $40,000 and $500,000, respectively, who were just dying for the want of a good, kind husband to spend their money for them, and were seeking marriage through his paper and matrimonial agency.

(Interest in Science; Marriage)

Harris gave the name of Mrs. H. R. Adams, at Huntington, Md., as the $40,000 woman and Jennie Ziehler, Lawrence, Mass., as the $500,000 woman. Upon investigation it was found that neither of the women was worth a dollar. The $500,000 woman was in the insane asylum.

This letter, together with The Pilot, marriage paper and its printed advertisements, was plainly intended to draw the unwary and deprive the ignorant of their savings.

John H. Harris then appealed to ex-Mayor Edward F. Dunne of Chicago, under the alias of A. Ingird, taxpayer, citizen and reputable business man, to have Detective Wooldridge stopped from further interfering with him or his business. Men who operate these frauds pretend to be honest and high-minded; by constant practice of their wiles upon others they develop self-deception and come to believe in their own honesty to such an extent that when questioned they assume a good counterfeit of honest indignation.

Mayor Dunne upon investigation learned the large mass of evidence gathered, and ordered the investigation to go forward, which, resulted in the arrest and holding over of John H. Harris to the Grand Jury.

Commits Suicide.

These complaints and evidence were turned over to Colonel James Stuart, Chief Inspector of the Mails at the Chicago Postoffice, for further investigation. A fraud order was requested. On August 18, 1907, Mr. Harris committed suicide by blowing out his brains at 168 N. Hamlin avenue, Chicago, Illinois, after the mask had been pulled off and his methods exposed.

One is unable to state whether John H. Harris is opening a mail order house, paper and marriage agency in the other world. When he left he did not leave word where he would make his next stop, but if he went to the other world, we are not informed that wireless telegraph or balloon companies have as yet perfected the lines of transportation or communication.

Harris is a fairly representative and concrete expression of the regulation matrimonial agent. It was through such agencies as his that the great crimes eventually were pulled off.

Secondary Types.

But in the following letters we have an excellent example of the second type, the little grafter who wants anything you can give, from $5 to $100. From the text of the letters it will be observed that this man was operating as a minister, a lawyer and an employment agency at one and the same time, as the letters are all from one source.

In the case of the lawyer this scoundrel was trading upon the name of Edward H. Morris, one of the foremost colored attorneys of the United States, a man universally respected and admired by men in all walks of life. When the fact of this trading on his name was brought to the real attorney's attention he was furious, and he cheerfully gave all the assistance in his power to Detective Wooldridge.

This smooth one was afterward arrested in New Orleans, convicted and sent to prison for a term.

Here follows the text of the letters:

Matrimonial Agencies' Stock Letters Under the Guise of Ministry.

Rev. Joseph Spencer,
80 Madison Street.
Manager of American Book Concern.
Dealer in Religious Books.

Chicago, Ill., July 26, 1905.

Mr. O. W. Zink,
Marshall, Mo.

Dear Sir:

For many years I have been a MINISTER of the GOSPEL and during that time I have not only performed hundreds of marriages, but have arranged many, and there are at the present time among my acquaintances some half dozen wealthy ladies, ranging in age from twenty to forty or fifty years, one of whom is the handsome widow whose photo I enclose herewith.

She is worth, in actual cash and negotiable securities, fully $50,000, inherited from her worthy husband, who departed this life a year ago and, as she is without friends, relatives or children, her physician, a friend of mine, has on account of her utter loneliness advised her to marry, believing that marriage and change of scene will prove for her a blessing in disguise, and naturally she has turned to me, her spiritual adviser, in whom she has the utmost confidence. I have several times talked the matter over with her, and, knowing that she is very much averse to advertising, I have undertaken to introduce to her some gentleman who would make her a good husband, and to arrange a marriage for her.

As her physician thinks it advisable for her to reside elsewhere than Chicago, I have been somewhat perplexed as to how to secure for her a suitable introduction and in my dilemma consulted a matrimonial agency and, after several conferences with them, I have decided to submit for your kind consideration my proposition and manner of procedure. I have studied the matter carefully, have gone thoroughly into your description and instructions as filed with the agency of which you are a member, and in my mind there is not the slightest doubt as to you two proving mutually suitable to each other. Of course, you cannot form the proper idea of her from the small photo enclosed, but in age, appearance, circumstances, etc., she is just what you have been seeking in a wife.

She is in every respect a thoroughly good woman, unusually bright and intelligent, but knows nothing of business, and is in absolute need of a husband to look after her affairs, but, TO BE CANDID WITH YOU, I am getting along in years, and have a large family to support and as I only arrange a few marriages at intervals, I must necessarily have compensation adequate to the service I render.

Now, I can, by recommending you personally, cause her to enter into a correspondence with you that will undoubtedly lead to your marriage, if you are still desirous of such a marriage, as I presume you are, from the fact that you are registered with a matrimonial agency. I will, for the consideration of $100, introduce you to her by letter and after you have exchanged three or four letters, will have you visit her at her expense, as you may mutually agree, if you will follow my simple instructions.

I am not making you this proposition on the spur of the moment, for I have spent much time and thought before deciding to write you, and all I ask is that, AS AN EVIDENCE OF YOUR GOOD FAITH and to cover the immediate expense necessary thereto on my part (such as asking her to dinner with me a few times in order that I may during the good cheer that abounds at such times dwell at length upon the matter without any unnecessary delay), that you enclose me immediately upon receipt of this letter BANK DRAFT, REGISTERED LETTER, or EXPRESS MONEY ORDER, for $10; the balance, $90, you need not pay me until after you have married her and assumed the management of her affairs. Upon receipt of this small amount, $10, I will absolutely guarantee your marriage to her within sixty days and, if before that time you should feel that you do not care to pursue the matter to a conclusion, I will positively refund your money upon my honor as a MINISTER OF THE GOSPEL.

My standing in my profession is such that I could not do otherwise and, as I have stated before, there are several ladies to whom I could introduce you, now that I have really taken the matter up with you, but I consider you two really suited to each other, so will not go into further particulars. Trusting to hear from you AT THE VERY EARLIEST POSSIBLE MOMENT, I am, with assurance of my regards,

Very respectfully,

Wanted a Rich Husband.

Cedar Rapids, Iowa,
July 15, 1905.

Rev. Joseph Spencer,
80 Madison Street,
Chicago, Ill.

Dear Sir:

You asked me in your letter to give you a description of the man that I would like to become acquainted with. I wish him to be as tall as I am, to have dark hair and a very good disposition. I would like him to be rich. His age to be about 45 years, also have a good education. I want him to be a temperate man, and to have a nice appearance, one who is lovely at home, and does not care for society and likes music. I do not care what his occupation is if he is honest.

Hoping to hear from you soon, I remain

Yours truly,
Miss Vernie Adams.

Oshkosh, Wis., July 20, 1905.

Rev. Joseph Spencer,
Chicago, Illinois.

Dear Sir:

You asked me in your letter to give you a description of myself, which I take pleasure in doing: I am a young man 26 years of age, 5 feet 6 inches tall, weigh 140 pounds; blue eyes, red hair; I am strictly temperate, do not gamble; kind disposition, a farm hand; have no means; income $15 per month.

I would be delighted to make the acquaintance of several of your prospective rich women who are seeking a husband. Send me a list of those who are worth from $50,000 to $75,000, also their photographs, whereby I can make a selection, and I will send you your fee of $5. I remain,

Sincerely yours,
Thomas Flinn.

Matrimonial Agency Under the Guise of an Attorney-at-Law.

Edward Morris,
Attorney-at-Law.
82 Madison Street.
Trusts and Estates a Specialty.

Chicago, Ill., Jan. 4, 1905.

Mr. Geo. Ferlin,
Los Angeles, Cal.

Dear Sir:

I have during my professional career arranged many marriages for ladies of means, and at the present time have among my clients some ten or twelve wealthy ladies, ranging in age from twenty-five to fifty years, desirous of marriage, one of whom is the charming widow whose likeness I herewith enclose.

She is worth $60,000 ($25,000 in ready cash, the balance in high-class tangible property inherited from her mother, recently deceased). She is alone and childless and her physician, on account of her bereavement, has recommended a marriage and change of scene, and in her dilemma she has consulted me, her legal adviser, and I, in turn, without her knowledge, appealed to a matrimonial agency with which I have for several years had business relations in a professional way.

Out of the several names submitted to me I have, after much thought and deliberation, selected yours, and I beg that you will consider carefully my proposition and the fact that I am not in business for my health, but for revenue, together with a desire to please my clients and to give them value received.

This lady, while unusually bright and intelligent, knows little of the ways of the world, and nothing of business, and, to be candid with you, needs a husband to manage her estates, and I can, by recommending you personally, cause her, through me as her attorney, to open negotiations with you for a marriage; so if you desire a wealthy wife, as I presume you do from the fact that you are registered with a matrimonial agency, I will, for the consideration of $100 introduce you to her, have you visit her at her expense, as you may mutually agree, and will absolutely guarantee your marriage to her within sixty days, if you will follow my instructions to the letter.

All that I ask is, as an evidence of your good faith and to cover the immediate clerical expenses necessary thereto, you enclose me immediately upon receipt of this letter, BANK DRAFT OR MONEY ORDER for $10, the balance ($90) to be paid after marriage, and when I have caused her to place in your hands, or under your control, a goodly portion of her worldly possessions.

Now, if you wish to accept my proposition, enclose me immediately the small retaining fee ($10) and promise me that you will follow carefully my instructions; otherwise do not write me, as I positively will not enter into further correspondence until you have engaged me as your attorney upon the lines I have laid down.

If before the end of sixty days you feel that you do not care to pursue the matter to a conclusion I will refund your money. My standing as an attorney is ample evidence that I will faithfully carry out my contract. Remember that I have among my clients, as I have stated before, ten or twelve wealthy ladies to my certain knowledge desirous of marriage.

Awaiting your immediate reply, I am

Sincerely and professionally yours,
Edward Morris.

Edward Morris, Attorney-at-Law.

Chicago. Ill., Jan. 11, 1905.

Mr. Geo. Ferlin.
Los Angeles, Cal.

Dear Sir:

Your letter in reply to mine received, and I will say, that as a leading attorney, and a prominent member of the bar, I could not act for you until you have first retained me as your attorney in this matter, and sent me the small retaining fee of $10, as requested.

OH! OH!! OH!!!

AWFUL CONSTERNATION AT PIKES CROSSING! DIRECTORY GOWN IN TOWN. BY JIMMINEDDY!!

Now, my dear sir, if you really mean business and really want to marry the charming and wealthy young widow in question, I see no earthly reason why you should hesitate for a single instant to retain my services in connection with this matter. You may give me good references, and I can give you the same, but that has no bearing on the case whatever. I cannot, as stated, do any business with you until you first enclose me this small retaining fee, as I must be in a position to truthfully state that you are my friend and client.

You may have had unfortunate dealings with matrimonial agencies, but as an attorney in high standing, I am not to be compared with such concerns, and on receipt of your small retaining fee, I will guarantee to do my part and arrange a speedy marriage if you adhere strictly to my instructions.

Trusting to hear favorably from you at once, I am,

Yours very truly,
Edward Morris.

P. S. I do not ask for the balance of the $100 until after your marriage, and I have caused the lady to place in your hands or under your control a goodly portion of her worldly possessions.

Edward Morris, Attorney-at-Law.

Chicago, Ill., Jan. 23, 1905.

Mr. Geo. Ferlin,
Los Angeles, Cal.

Dear Sir:

Your favor at hand with enclosure accepting my proposition. Now, I wish to assure you that everything you write to me will be treated in the strictest confidence, and I will say that it will be necessary for you to follow to the letter the instructions which I will from time to time give you.

In order to break the ice, I would suggest that you address a letter to Mrs. Lucy Kline, in my care, briefly setting forth the fact that you are a friend and client of mine, and that as you are matrimonially inclined. I have advised you to open a correspondence with her. You can say to her that I have favored you with her photograph, and that same meets your approval, and that you would very much desire her acquaintance and what it may lead to. I have already taken up the matter with her, and she is expecting a letter from you, and in reply will send you her private address.

I would advise you, after receiving her reply, not to write too often or too long letters. In other words, do not appear to be too anxious, for it must devolve upon me to bring you two together. The correspondence you may have with her is simply a preliminary introduction leading to the establishment of congenial relations and eventually, marriage.

Important business prevents my writing a longer letter to you today, and in order that I may be prepared to take the matter up, I suggest that you write your letter so that it will reach my office in about one week from today.

Yours truly,
Edward Morris.

Matrimonial Agency Under the Guise of Employment Exchange.

Positions for Men and Women. Commercial, Technical, Educational, Professional. Those Hardest to Find and Hardest to Fill.

G. H. Cannon, Manager,
Ohio Block.

Chicago, Ill., Sept. 21, 1905.

Mrs. A. A. Burrows,
San Fran. Cal.

Dear Madam:

I am directed by a client for whom we transact much business, to submit you a proposition, which both he and I sincerely hope you will accept. He is a bachelor of middle age, of fine appearance, and is the owner of a large manufacturing plant, as well as of a magnificent residence, in which he lived until recently with his aged mother, who, greatly to his regret, departed this life some six months ago. Since her death he has felt the need of a woman's guiding hand in the management of his household affairs, and it is to offer you a position as his housekeeper that I am addressing you personally.

I beg to state that attached to the position is a salary of $75 per month, your board, and an allowance of $25 per month for your clothing, and you will have full charge of his household expenses, including the employment and discharge of servants, consisting of a butler, two housemaids, driver, cook, etc.

If you accept the position his carriage will be at your disposal at all times, and you will be the actual head of his household, with no restrains of any kind upon you. As I have stated, this client is a bachelor, and on account of his mother's determined opposition to his marriage during her lifetime, he has gone little in society, but since her death he has never ceased to feel the need of a woman's hand and presence in his home.

His first thought was marriage, but after a lengthy talk with me he very cheerfully acquiesced in the suggestion that has led to the writing of this letter, and now to the point.

I suggested that he allow me to secure for him a housekeeper who might possess the qualities he most desires in a wife, and then I consulted a matrimonial agency with that end in view. Your description seemed to fit so exactly his idea of true womanhood and appealed to him so strongly that his first impulse was to address you directly, but being of a sensitive and retiring disposition, he came to the conclusion that he should become thoroughly acquainted with you, and could not do better than allow me to carry out my original plan to make your acquaintance.

To be candid with you, this position is a very lucrative one, and will undoubtedly lead to your marriage with this gentleman, if you see fit to accept the proposition, and for that reason I trust you will give it the consideration it deserves.

As he secures the help necessary to the running of his large factory through this firm, of which I happen to be the manager, you cannot but understand that I am thoroughly acquainted with him, and am in a position to arrange this matter to your mutual satisfaction.

It is a custom to charge a fee of $5, but in this instance we would make no charge at all, only our client, insists that we require our usual fee simply as an evidence of good faith, and that there may be no misunderstanding. If you accept the proposition I have submitted kindly fill out the enclosed form and return to us with EXPRESS MONEY ORDER or BANK DRAFT for $5, which amount will be returned to you as soon as you have taken charge of his household affairs, as your good faith will have then been proved.

As soon as you can start for Chicago I will send you expense, free railroad transportation, and if, after your arrival here, you do not care to accept the position, a return ticket, etc., will be furnished you so that you will not be out one dollar of expense.

This offer is made to you in the strictest confidence, and I sincerely trust you will so regard it, and not discuss it with any one, at least not until all the details have been arranged.

No matrimonial agency in the world can do this for you, nor do I think such an opportunity will ever occur to you again, so kindly sign the enclosed form and return it to me immediately with the small fee necessary, or do not write me at all. No harm will have been done by having submitted the proposition to you, but if you cannot take immediate advantage of it, I simply will not correspond further in the matter. Trusting that you will see your way clear, and wishing you well, I am,

Very sincerely,
G. H. Cannon.

OPINIONS DIFFER

The above are illustrations of the method. Cannon, Rev. Spencer and Attorney Edwards are all one and the same man. We now turn to a few special examples of differences of procedure among the various bureaux.

A Persistent Offender.

One of the most successful operators who ever invaded Chicago with matrimonial schemes was one John Carson, who, on April 8, 1908, was fined $1,000 and costs for misuse of the United States mails after he had plead guilty to the charge, which was preferred by Inspector Ketcham.

Carson, at one time or another, operated no less than eighteen concerns of this nature. He was first discovered in 1902 in Chicago by Detective Wooldridge, operating no less than five matrimonial and fake concerns simultaneously. These concerns were:

• The Loretta Matrimonial Publishing Co., 98 Ogden Ave.
• The Unida Matrimonial Publishing Co., 408 Ogden Ave.
• Mr. John's Matrimonial Publishing Co., 565 West Madison St.
• Mr. J. C. Hills Matrimonial Agency, 565 West Madison St.
• The Chicago Mutual Securities Co., a Chicago Medicine concern, 567 W. Madison St.

Carson evaded arrest and fled to St. Louis, where he was shortly afterward arrested by the postal authorities and sentenced to eighteen months in the State Penitentiary at Jefferson City, in addition to a fine of $500.

Bobs Up Again.

In 1904 Carson bobbed up again in Chicago. Since that time his record is best given from a report made to Chief of Police John M. Collins by Detective Wooldridge, who repeatedly broke up Carson's games. The report, in part, is as follows:

Feb. 9, J. H. Carson Woods' Advertising Agency, 62 Ada St. Goods confiscated; fined $25.

March 9, 1904, J. H. Carson, Mill's Advertising Agency, 71 W. Lake St. Fined $15.

May 4, 1904, J. H. Carson, alias J. H. Hayes, 408 Ogden Ave., raided. Literature seized and destroyed by order of court.

May 4, 1904, J. H. Carson, alias J. H. Hayes, 255 Madison St., raided. Literature seized and destroyed by order of court.

Nov. 15, 1904, J. H. Carson, alias J. W. Bessie, 480 Ogden Ave., raided. Arrested; released; writ of habeas corpus.

Nov. 15, 1904, J. H. Carson, alias J. W. Bessie, 67 Flournoy St., raided. Arrested; released; writ of habeas corpus.

Jan. 4, 1905, J. H. Carson and Oscar Wells, promoted and run the J. H. Hunter Matrimonial Agency, 164 East Randolph St. Oscar Wells was arrested and fined $50 by Justice John K. Prindiville.

April 19, 1905, J. H. Carson and J. R. Ferguson, conducted the Jesse H. Lee Matrimonial Agency, 84 Washington St. Ferguson was arrested and fined $15 by Caverley. The literature seized and destroyed.

Turns Clairvoyant.

May 27, 1905, J. H. Carson conducted the Clay's American Bureau of Correspondence, 62 Ada St. He was arrested and fined $25 by Justice John K. Prindiville. The literature seized and destroyed.

Aug. 21, 1905, J. H. Carson and J. R. Ferguson conduced the Ferguson Directory, a Matrimonial agency at 171 Washington St. This place was raided and Jesse R. Ferguson was arrested and fined $25 by Justice John K. Prindiville.

May 27, 1905, J. H. Carson conducted the Jesse Lee Matrimonial Agency, 84 Washington St. He was arrested and fined $25 by Justice John K. Prindiville.

Aug. 19, 1905, J. H. Carson was arrested for conducting a Chicago Matrimonial Agency at 171 Washington St. and 95 Fifth Ave., under the name of Prof. John C. Hall, Astrologist, Occult, Scientist, Clairvoyant, Medium, and Lifereader.

With this record behind him this rascal actually had the nerve to bring suit for false arrest against Detective Wooldridge, but quite naturally, he failed to appear when the suit came up for trial.

He has not been heard from since the fine imposed on April 8, 1908, by the Federal authorities.

Agents of the Underworld a Nest of Pole-Cats.

But crime is not the only long suit of the Matrimonial Agency. Some of these miserable frauds have descended into the depths and wallowed in the slime of the ultimate shame.

With unbelievable effrontery they have attempted to trade upon the basest instincts in human nature; they have attempted to coin the most abominable of the brute passions of men.

Nothing can exceed the turpitude, the brazen shamelessness of the Matrimonial Agency, when it decides to go the limit.

Attest the following from the literature of the New Era Advertising Agency and Introduction Bureau, Curtis, Clark & Co., Props., formerly located at 112 Clark street, Chicago. This abomination was raided by Detective Wooldridge and the following sample from one of the circulars seized shows the nature of the concern:

"If you are willing to give your name and protection to one who has fallen and wishes again to enter the ranks of respectability, we have some young women who have led fast lives and accumulated considerable money, and want to marry some respectable man, settle down in a new place and be respected and respectable. THEY ARE HANDSOME, STYLISH, LIVELY AND FULL OF FUN: HAVE MONEY ENOUGH FOR BOTH. They will no doubt make good, loving and true wives for some good-natured fellow who is not particular about their past. Through our efforts several wealthy ladies of the demi-monde have married very poor men in return for their name and protection, given them a life of ease and luxury, and the opportunities are greater today than in the past, considering the fact that the world in general is anxious to lend a helping hand to those who have erred and wish to become respectable again."

This pole-cat literature was being sent broadcast through the United States mails. In some way it evaded the inspectors until the 23rd of September, 1902, when Detective Clifton R. Wooldridge descended upon the nest of pole-cats, seized the literature, chased "Curtis, Clark & Co." out of Chicago, and made further evil-smelling operations impossible.

These abominations are now practically impossible, thanks to the activity of the great police detective. But the above illustrations shows to what depths the marriage bureaus can descend, once they have become started on their infamous careers.

November 26, 1902, Detective Wooldridge raided the Climax Matrimonial Agency, located at 418 LaSalle avenue, which is situated on the North Side, in one of the most fashionable places in Chicago.

It was run not only as a matrimonial agency, but a matrimonial paper and mail order house. Among the literature seized was a circular containing a picture of the manager's wife, and of which he sent out over 300,000. which gave the description of her, which read as follows:

Sheriff Duped—Attempts Role of Lothario.

"I am 23 years of age, 5 feet 2 inches in height, weigh 120 pounds, have a turn-up nose, plain-looking and worth about $147,000. I desire to marry a good, honest, affectionate man. On our wedding day I will give my husband $5,500 in cash, and one year later, if we are still living together, I will make over to him $25,000 more. No milk-and-water man need answer."

"GOT A GOOD HOME ALREADY PAID FOR, AN' MONEY IN DE BANK."

"DES A PLAIN LITTLE ONINTERESTIN' FAMBLY ROW."

One letter from a Mississippi sheriff shows that the officer of the law is willing to forsake bachelorhood for a woman who, though plain, advertises that on her wedding day she will give her husband $5,500. This is the gay Lothario's letter:

Miss Ot—I take pleasure in answering your "ad" in the "Hour at Home." You stated in your "ad" you were worth $147,000, and would give the man that married you $5,500 on his wedding day. You say you are plain.

I am good looking, so the people tell me, and if you correspond with me we may come to an understanding. I am willing to marry you if you give me proof you have the money, and will do all that you say in the "ad."

I will do my best to make your life happy. Awaiting your reply, I remain.

Yours truly,
W. M. M., Sheriff.

BIGAMY AND THE BUREAU.

Where the Professional Bigamists Find Wives.

The matrimonial agencies that have been investigated and suppressed by Detective Wooldridge and the postoffice authorities have disclosed an almost incredible phase of woman's nature.

There are today in the United States no less than 50,000 women who have been married, robbed and deserted by "professional bigamists." This fact represent the most serious phase of the matrimonial agency swindle, for it is the history of nearly all noted bigamists that they secured their victims through the matrimonial agencies. Of the thousands who become subscribers to these agencies, however, comparatively few ever proceed far enough to encounter the tragic features of the swindle. It might be inferred from this that women are much easier to entice into matrimony than men. Probably, however, this is an untenable conclusion. When a woman does start on marrying bent, mere men fall before her like grain before the sickle. Miss Marion Rapp, arrested at Philadelphia, is known to have secured eight husbands in three years, and is suspected of having captured six or eight more. Miss Rapp is still young, and if her career had not been untimely cut off she might have made a record that would have done credit (or discredit) to her sex.

PUTS A SNAFFLE BIT ON THE OLD MAN

The sad experiences of people who have been victimized by gay deceivers, male or female, perhaps contain a lesson to persons who carelessly contemplate matrimony. When a stranger proposes marriage at first sight it may possibly be well to take a look into his or her antecedents. This is not the most romantic way to proceed, but it is a way that may have a great practical advantage. It probably would be endorsed by every one of the 50,000 women in this country who are now looking for professional bigamists who married them and ran away with their cash.

That the matrimonial agency business is not confined to Chicago and dupes of the system are found elsewhere than in rural communities and among the poor and humble is demonstrated by recent revelations in Europe. During one raid I seized a large quantity of literature in the offices of a swindling concern doing business under the name of Mason, Brown & Co. The "firm" advertised itself as the largest of its kind in the world and the only one "indorsed by press and public and patronized by royalty," adding that its "clients and representatives were to be found in every land."

In extra large type the information was conveyed to the victim that he or she need not be ashamed to resort to the agency method in order to secure a life partner, as the royalty of Europe used this means exclusively in contracting marriages, especially in cases where American heiresses were sought as wives for titled but impecunious foreigners.

When it was casually remarked during an examination of a wagon load of Mason, Brown & Company's advertising matter the reference to the titles and heiresses was the only true statement it contained, there were smiles of incredulity. American millionaires were said to be too shrewd and level-headed to enter into deals with marriage brokers when the life happiness of their fair and independent daughters is concerned.

(Divorce Decrees; Spring)

It was but a short time after this conversation, however, that the following cablegram was published:

The Case of Count Larisch.

"Aug. 25th, 1905: The alleged attempt to blackmail Count Franz Joseph Maria Von Larisch Monnich out of 200,000 marks on a pre-nuptial note alleged to have been signed by the count, and the implication of army officers and members of the aristocracy in the marriage brokerage business, has caused more talk in high circles than anything which has happened since the elopement of Crown Princess Louise of Saxony."

It is said the Kaiser had to take a hand in the matter, and insists that this business shall be stopped finally and effectively on the ground it is bringing the army and nobility into disrepute and ridicule.

The harm done by these agencies is almost incalculable. Foolish women having money at their disposal fall easy victims to the many scheming scoundrels who make a practice of subscribing to the matrimonial agencies for the purpose of securing the addresses of prospective victims.

As instances of the harm done by these matrimonial agencies the case of Johann Hoch, who married fifty women, and after securing all their money, either poisoned or deserted them. He was captured in New York City, January 30, 1905, after he had married a woman in Chicago, Mary Schultz, alias Brees, alias Bauman, poisoned her, then made love to her sister, married her, secured what money she had and deserted her. Hoch was brought back to Chicago, tried for murder, convicted and hung February 23 1906. This is a glaring example.

IN CUPID'S WORKSHOP.

ROUTING HER THROUGH

"Ten dollars extra, cabby. If you catch the train with her. She's my mother-in-law."

The case of Fredrick Carlton, indicted on two charges of grand larceny in Brooklyn, New York, July, 1905, is another.

It is stated on what seems to be reliable authority this man made the acquaintance of women in various parts of the country through the medium of matrimonial advertisements, married them and decamped with their money at the first favorable opportunity. Still another:

Dr. George A. Witzhoff, champion bigamist, arrested in Bristol, England, October, 1905, for bigamy and given a long term in prison. He was wanted in many cities in the United States.

Witzhoff confessed to marrying and robbing thirty-two women. Most all of the women he married lived in the United States, and were secured through the matrimonial agencies.

Witzhoff's Confession—Bought Fifteen Wives From One Agent—Takes $4,000 From His First Wife.

"Then, one night, after indulging in plenty of wine, she confessed she had a child in Pittsburg. I left her there, telling her I was going to bring her child, which was nine years old. Instead, I went to New York with her money ($4,000), and paid my friend part of his money, and started a practice as a dentist in Fourteenth street as Dr. A. R. Houser. I went to see a matchmaker. He introduced me to a widow of means. We got married in two weeks at the City Hall, New York.

"She had all her money loaned away, so I was compelled to seek another one, as Sig. Badillo was hard after his balance of $1,000."

"I went, to Philadelphia and got a Jewish matchmaker again on Fifteenth street and Fairmount avenue, and he introduced me to a Miss Jocker as Dr. A. Houser."

"I got $800 from her. I paid Badillo $500 and left for Springfield, Mass., where a woman answered one of my ads. I inserted an 'ad.' as follows:"

"'A professional gentleman of nice appearance, aged thirty-two, desires the acquaintance of a sincere, affectionate lady, with some means; object, matrimony; triflers ignored. Give particulars in first letter. Address Busy Bee, the Journal.'

"I had about twelve answers to this advertisement, and I picked out a boarding house mistress, and ten days after she was Mrs. Westfield, and as she was a vulgar woman, I left her two days after. She had given me $500 before marriage.

"I returned to New York to wife No. 2, and a week after I went to St. Louis and inserted an 'ad.' as previously, and got fifteen answers. There I selected a farmer's daughter and married her as Dr. Doesser. I married and left her all within a week.

"I came to Detroit, and with her money, $350, I started a dental practice as A. Houser. In answer to my advertisements in a German paper, Mrs. Piser came.

"We went to Toledo, O., five days after our first interview, and we got married. I left her six days after.

"I came now to Pittsburg, as Dr. Wolfe, got a furnished room in Allegheny. In answer to an 'ad.' in a German paper a sexton's daughter answered, the ugliest I ever had. Three days after we went to the justice of the peace and got married."

Deserts Wife After the First Day.

"There I slept the first night, and the next morning I was on my way to Cleveland, and started a nice practice with the $150 I had left. I paid the balance to my friend, Badillo, and inserted an 'ad.' in the Plain-Dealer.

"I had two answers to my 'ad.,' and selected a Mrs. Moore, a nurse, and a Mrs. Kreidman. I got from the nurse $100, and was making love to Mrs. Kreidman and Mrs. Moore, when I got a letter from wife No. 3, with whom I corresponded all the time, telling her I traveled for a firm.

"So I left, and forgot that I left in Cleveland a paper under the tablecloth which had my address in Brooklyn. One morning (ten days after I left Cleveland) two detectives came to the house in Brooklyn and arrested me. As there was no bail for my offense (obtaining money under false pretenses), I returned to Cleveland a week later, and there I married a bad woman in jail, Mrs. Kreidman.

"She gave $200 bond, but I left her four days after, as she was a bad woman. I slept one night at her house, and three days after I went to Chicago and went to see a matrimonial agent at 55 Washington street.

Identified in Chicago; Wedding Stopped.

"He introduced me to a nice Jewess, and her father gave me $400. I started an office on Fourteenth street, when a man from Philadelphia recognized me, and told her father, a rag dealer, that I was a married man, named Hausen, just in time to prevent the marriage.

"I left Chicago as Dr. Weston and went to St. Louis, where I started an office in Olive street as Dr. A. Dresser, and there I advertised and selected from a number of letters that of a farmer's daughter that had $1,000, and married her (Katie). Six days after I left her and left America and went to Roumania, and married a girl, a Jewess, in Pitest, and lived in Roumania as Dr. F. A. Shotz.

"Happy six months; I got 3,000 francs, and we left for Germany. There we had a quarrel, and she returned to her parents."

Dr. Witzhoff further states that the number of all the girls and women he merely promised to marry and secured money from would reach over one hundred.

One of the women Witzhoff married lived in Chicago, Ill.

May 13, 1903, John J. Marietta (alias Homer C. Reid, Harold C. Mills, A. S. Anderson, C. H. Huston, C. B. McCoy, H. C. Jones, Harold C. Reed) was arrested through exposure by Laura E. Strickler, a beautiful young girl from Cincinnati, Ohio, who boarded at the Young Women's Association, Chicago. She had been lured to the Newport Hotel, 73 Monroe street, where he proposed marriage and attempted liberties. Miss Strickler became frightened, jumped from the second story window and was badly injured.

Marietta married no less than six women, three of whom, Sophia Headley, Marie Butler and Flora Beals, appeared in court to prosecute him September 28. He was convicted. Judge Brentano's court of bigamy, and given five years in the Joliet penitentiary.

TITLES ARE CONSIDERED GREAT ORNAMENTS

"For as it was in the beginning, the American girl came over and energetically pursued the Lords."

Marietta said he secured most of his wives through the marriage agency. Mills said to Miss Headley, after meeting her the second time: "How anxious are you to marry me? Make me an offer in cash of the sum you are willing to settle on me." "Three thousand dollars," she answered. "All right," he replied, "but you know I am from Missouri, you will have to show me." She gave him the $3,000 and they were married.

At the time of his conviction Marietta had in the bank $25,000, said to have been secured in the above manner.

BREAKING INTO THE NOBILITY.

How Titled Rakes Use the Agencies.

The marriage bureau is not a distinctly American institution. They know the animal in Europe, only there the operators refer to themselves as marriage brokers, and are decidedly more careful than their American prototypes to steer clear of crime.

The idea of marriage broking has thoroughly permeated the effete nobility of Europe. The broken-down "nobles," out at heels and buried under a mountain of debt, look to America for a rich heiress to whom their titles may be sold. For many years they looked to the brokers on their own side of the water to provide them with golden girls; but of late years they have been mixing with the American Matrimonial Agencies, sometimes to their sorrow, as attest the case of Count Larisch.

Woes of Count Larisch.

The story of the attempt on Count Larisch is not an unusual one. Briefly, the count, who is an Austrian, but who has estates in Prussia, was anxious to replenish his treasury by marrying an heiress. A syndicate composed of the men now under indictment, it is said, financed him. He set out to marry the daughter of Faber, the multi-millionaire pencil manufacturer of Nuremberg, giving his notes for $50,000, payable upon his marriage to Fraulein Faber. The venture was a failure, for Fraulein Faber did not care to become Countess Larisch. The noble fortune-hunter then went to America in quest of a bride. Whether it was on his own account, or under the auspices of another marriage syndicate, does not appear, though it is hinted the latter is the case. In any event, he was successful, and married Miss Satterlee, of Titusville, Pa.

On his return the members of the first Faber syndicate demanded payment, and presented a note purporting to have been given by Larisch without the qualification that it was payable only after his marriage to the pencil manufacturer's daughter. Larisch, regarding the Faber affair a closed incident, and declaring the note presented a forgery, refused to pay. The matter got before the public prosecutor and the exposé resulted.

Lord Bertie Cavendish—Champion Matrimonialist.

Oct. 24, 1905, Miss Gladys Simmons, Hot Springs, Ark., married Lord Bertie Cavendish after two days' acquaintance. He represented himself to be of noble birth, son of the late Marquis of Queensbury, and to have immense possessions in South Africa and Mexico, which he was unable to obtain on account of his banishment from England for serving against the British in the Boer war, due to the activity of British army officers against him.

Miss Simmons' mother received information that her son-in-law's name was not Lord Bertie Cavendish, but Douglass. By photographs and further investigation his identity was established as that of an adventurer.

Following is a partial list of his wives, several of whom have asked the court to grant them divorces:

• Miss Louisiana Hobbs, Lambert Point, Va., near Norfolk.
• Mrs. Mabel Duncan, Denver, Colo.
• Mrs. Scott, South Bend, Ind.
• Mrs. Beatrice E. Anderson, Fort Worth, Texas.

Market for American Heiresses.

There has been more than one similar scandal involving members of the high nobility and rich American girls.

It will be remembered last year there was a stir created by The broadcast announcement that Prince Hugo Von Hohenche-Oehringen, Prince Heinrich Von Hanan and Baron Berhard-Muenhausen, accused an Englishman, O'Brien, who was alleged to be the agent of Berlin marriage brokers, of attempted blackmail.

IDLENESS, TITLES, MONEY, UNHAPPINESS, NOTORIETY, DIVORCE

Among the Americans whose names are said to be on the list of this marriage syndicate, without their personal knowledge or consent, are the Misses Angelica and Mabel Gerry, the Misses Nora and Fannie Iselin, the Misses Adeline and Electra Havemeyer, Mrs. Lewis Rutherford Morris, formerly Miss Katherine Clark, daughter of Senator Clark, of Montana; Mrs. Francis Burton Harrison, formerly Miss Mary Crocker, daughter of Mrs. George W. Crocker; Miss Dorothy Whitney, the Misses Beatrice and Gladys Mills, Miss Gwendolyn Burden, and the Misses Florence and Ruth Twombly.

Government Officials Roused to Many Frauds by the Matrimonial Agencies and Bureaux Throughout the Country, "Agencies" to Put Under Ban the Swindling Operations.

Mrs. Jennie Scott, Arrested by Postal Inspectors, Tells Secrets of Her Matrimonial Agency.

The second blow has been struck against the affinity trust, of Chicago, and the second member of the alleged trust in Chicago, Mrs. Jennie Scott, a woman of many aliases, by Postoffice Inspector James E. Stuart.

This woman was arrested at her home, at 214 Thirty-second street, her "Cupid shop," where she received thousands of letters, descriptions and photographs of affinity seekers from all over the United States and Canada. She received them in the name of "Glinn's International Corresponding Association," to join which from $2 to $5 was drawn from each affinity. Thousands joined.

Same Literature Used as in Marion Grey Case.

Postoffice Inspectors A. E. Germer and Frank Sheron worked up the case against the woman and discovered that the same literature was used by this woman as was used by Marion Grey, convicted for the misuse of the mails in operating an affinity matching business at Elgin.

There were some changes, however, in the method. This is shown in the literature sent out by this woman. Her literature explains to the affinities that the business is absolutely honest and above board, and must be kept so. Under "special reduced rates," she drew in hundreds of women clients, many of whom sent in their pictures.

MRS. JENNIE SCOTT

TYPES OF "AFFINITIES" FOUND BY MARION GRAY, SKETCHED IN COURT WHERE BEAUTY IS ON TRIAL

Mrs. Scott operated also at 2208 Wabash avenue, where she had a room for receiving mail. She was known not only as Mrs. Scott, but as E. L. Glinn, Mrs. Jennie Call, Mrs. A. M. Harvey and Mrs. E. L. Glinn. She lived on Thirty-second street, with her young daughter.

Clients All Wealthy; Take Their Word for It.

Almost every client on the books of this marriage-fostering concern claimed to be worth from $5,000 to £1,000,000 sterling.

Many of them were alleged to have large incomes. Some were said to have children and are not to be divorced, but still seek life partners.

Witnesses Need a Shepherd.

Then, from among the queer little party huddled together on the benches at the rear of the big court room—a helpless, shepherdless flock—Mr. Shirer began to call out his witnesses.

First of the hungering souls who sought life companions through Mrs. Scott came Mrs. Mary Quinn, of Trenton, Ill., a short, dumpy little person of about thirty-five or forty, who was chiefly remarkable for the white hat she wore.

"I saw the ad.," she whispered—it was with the greatest difficulty that Judge Bethea induced her to talk so she could be heard ten feet away—"and I answered it. They sent me back a circular and a photograph of a nice-looking fellow who was said to be rich.

"I sent my $2 and wrote that I would like to get into correspondence with him. They sent me back word that he was corresponding with another lady just then, and didn't want any more names at present, but there was another one just as good.

Nice Letters Lack Rich Tone.

"I corresponded with him until three weeks before I remarried my divorced husband, last December. He wrote very nice letters, but he certainly didn't sound rich."

"You got what you asked for, didn't you?" asked Mr. Murphy.

"Oh, yes, I guess so; I'm not complaining."

The uncomplainingness of the alleged victims is the odd feature of the case.

JAIL FOR CUPID'S AID

Marion Grey, Pretty Love Broker, Who Was Sentenced to a Year in Prison

Dr. Montgomery Porter, a graduate of the University of Arkansas, came all the way from his home in Pine Bluff, to say that he had answered one of Mrs. Scott's advertisements but had not paid the $5 fee, "which she charged the men members."

Porter C. Dyer, a graduate of the Ohio State University, who lives in Austin, O., said that he paid the fee and was disappointed, "because the names sent were not those of refinement and culture, as promised in the circulars."

Mrs. Flora Scott, a restaurant keeper at Middleport, O., tall and not particularly stylish, couldn't recall what any of the circulars said, but she was quite sure she hadn't landed a rich husband yet.

Southern Beauty Sends $2.

The handsomest of the witnesses was Miss Avis Christenberry, a stately brunette from Memphis, who rather liked the looks of the rich young man's photograph used for bait and sent in $2.

"They told me he was corresponding with some one else just then," she testified, "and I corresponded with two substitutes, but they didn't entertain me much."

Wilson Schufelt, a real estate man, said that he had rented the matrimonial headquarters to "Mrs. A. M. Harvey" for a mail order house business. Mrs. Harvey got her mail under the names of Glinn and Hill, and when the postal authorities became interested in her she told Schufelt that her name was Jennie Scott. At her home, 214 East Thirty-second street, she is known as Mrs. Jennie Call.

She was indicted under the name of Glinn. It was testified by E. J. Beach, superintendent of the Twenty-second street sub-postal station, that the matrimonial agency received from 50 to 200 letters every day.

She was arraigned before Judge Bethea and found guilty, on April 25, 1908, and was sentenced to one year in the House of Correction, and was fined $500.

THE HORRIBLE GUNNESS FARM.

The Ripened Fruit of the Matrimonial Agency.

But the giant blossom of this plant of hell is not bigamy, not swindling, not desertion; it is murder, wholesale, ghastly murder. For it is the matrimonial agency, nothing else, which is directly responsible for the unbelievable horrors of the Gunness Murder Farm, at Laporte, Ind., the revelation of the existence of which shocked the entire civilized world as it has not been shocked since the time of the Borgias.

This wholesale murderess invariably lured her victims to their fate through advertisements in a "matrimonial paper," or through an agency. She would insert the usual stereotyped "ad." of the wealthy widow lady who desired a mate, but always a mate with money.

Always being able to produce proof that she was well-to-do, it was an easy matter for her to persuade her victims to visit her at the Laporte farm. She invariably stipulated that they should bring a substantial sum with them.

Arriving at the Gunness farm, the prospective suitors were invariably impressed with the evidences of wealth and luxury. After a stay of a few days, during which time the cunning murderess would find out how much money her victim had, and whether he could immediately procure more in the form of cash, the victim would be invited to supper and his food drugged.

He would then be escorted to his room, where he would soon become unconscious. Chloroform was then administered, the body hurled through a chute to the basement, where it would be dismembered and placed in a gunnysack.

The sack would then be taken out and buried in a convenient spot on the farm. It was an inquiry from the brother of one of the victims, Andrew Helgelein, which revealed the whole horrible affair.

THE DEATH HARVESTER.

A Crop on the Gunness Farm.

It is estimated that this woman, through the aid of the matrimonial agencies, murdered more people than any other human being that ever lived. She exceeded the records of the Benders, Holmes, and even those arch-assassins of the middle ages, the Borgias.

Lombroso Discusses Monster.

Dr. Cesare Lombroso, of the University of Milan, the world's greatest criminologist, in discussing this woman, said:

"In general the moral physiognomy of the born female criminal approximates strongly to that of the male. The female criminal is exceedingly weak in maternal feeling, inclined to dissipation, astute and audacious, and dominates weaker beings sometimes by suggestion, and at other times by muscular force; while her love of violent exercise, her vices and even her dress, increase her resemblance to the stronger sex.

"Added to these virile characteristics are often the worst qualities of women; namely, an excessive desire for revenge, cunning cruelty, love of dress and untruthfulness, forming a combination of evil tendencies which often results in a type of extraordinary wickedness. Needless to say these different characteristics are not found in the same proportion in everybody. One criminal will be deficient in intelligence, but possessed of great strength, while another, who is weak physically, triumphs over this obstacle by the ability with which she lays her plans.

"But when, by an unfortunate chance, muscular strength and intellectual force meet in the same individual, we have a female delinquent of a terrible type, indeed.

"In short, we may assume that if female-born criminals are fewer in number than the males; they are usually much more ferocious.

"What is the explanation? We observe that the normal woman is naturally less sensitive to pain than a man, and compassion is the offspring of sensitiveness. If the one be wanting, so will the other be.

"We also find that women have many traits in common with children; that their moral sense is deficient; that they are revengeful, jealous, inclined to vengeances of a refined cruelty.

"In ordinary cases these defects are neutralized by piety, maternity, want of passion, by weakness and an undeveloped intelligence. But when a morbid activity of the psychical centres intensifies the bad qualities of women, and induces them to seek relief in evil deeds; when piety and maternal sentiments are wanting, and in their place are strong passions, much muscular strength and a superior intelligence for the conception and execution of evil, it is clear that the innocuous semi-criminal present in the normal woman must be transformed into the born criminal more terrible than any man.

"What terrific criminals would children be if they had strong passions, muscular strength and sufficient intelligence; and if, moreover, their evil tendencies were exasperated by a morbid intellectual activity! And women are big children; their evil tendencies are much more numerous and more varied than men's, but generally remain latent. When they are awakened and excited they produce results proportionately greater."

List of the Victims.

Below is given a partial list of the victims of this inhuman monster, as it appeared in the Chicago American, Sunday, April 26, 1908:

Partial Catalogue of Mrs. Gunness' 180 Victims.

• 1. Max Sorenson, Mrs. Gunness' first husband—whom she poisoned.
• 2. Peter S. Gunness, second husband, whom she killed with a meat axe.
• 3. Her infant child, whom she strangled to death.
• 4. Miss Justina Loeffler, of Elkhart, Ind., believed to have been married to Johann Hoch and sent by him to Mrs. Gunness to be murdered and buried.
• 5. Olaf Limbo, Norwegian farm hand.
• 6. Ole Budsberg, a hired man, from Iola, Wis.
• 7-9. Three well-known men of Fort Wayne, Ind., who have disappeared in the last two years.
• 10. A horse trader from Montana.
• 11. Jennie Olsen, eighteen years old, adopted daughter of Mrs. Gunness.
• 12. Henry Gurholt, left Scandinavia, Wis., on March 12, 1906, saying he was going to marry Mrs. Gunness.
• 13. George Bradley, forty years old, of Tuscola, Ill., went to La Porte, Ind., October 20 of last year.
• 14. Olaf Lindboe, farm laborer, of Chicago, employed by Mrs. Gunness.
• 15. Lee Porter, of Bartonville, Okla., quarreled with his wife and answered one of Mrs. Gunness' matrimonial "ads."
• 17. Crippled man from Medina, N. D.
• 18-20. Three children of Mrs. Gunness killed or burned in house—Myrtle, aged 11; Lucy, 9; Philip, 5.
• 21. Body of unidentified woman found in ruins of burned house.
• 22. Strange baby left last fall by man and woman, as told by Ray Lamphere, arrested as accomplice of Mrs. Gunness.
• 23. John O. Moe went to La Porte from Elbow Lake, Minn., day before Christmas, 1906, with $1,000.
• 24. Armat Hartoonan, wealthy Armenian rug merchant of Binghamton, N. Y., who went to La Porte in 1906 in answer to a matrimonial "ad."
• 25. Charles Neuberg, of Philadelphia, took $500 and went to visit Mrs. Gunness in June, 1906.
• 26. George Berry, of Tuscola, Ill., went to work for Mrs. Gunness July, 1905. He took $1,500, expecting to marry the widow.
• 27. John A. Lefgren, aged forty-eight, disappeared from the Chicago Club, and is believed to have gone to Mrs. Gunness' farm.
• 28. E. J. Tiefland, retired railroad man, of Minneapolis.
• 29-30. A Los Angeles college professor and wife—names not yet ascertained.
• 31. Andrew K. Helgelein, Aberdeen, S. D., ranchman, the last victim, whose fate led to the discovery of Mrs. Gunness' crimes.
• 32. Charles Edman, farm laborer, from New Carlisle, Ind. Took $3,000 in savings to Mrs. Gunness' home.
• 33. Frank Riedinger, young German farmer, of Delafield, Wis., went to La Porte in February, 1907.
• 34. Babe seen by a neighbor, Mrs. William Diesslen, which afterward disappeared.
• 35. Unknown young woman visitor, seen to go to Gunness house; never accounted for afterward.
• 36. Unknown man, a widower, and his young son, went to Mrs. Gunness' house a year ago—never seen again. One of the bodies found on farm was that of a small boy.
• 37-57. Twenty-one babies entrusted to Mrs. Gunness' care while she was running a "baby farm" on the outskirts of Chicago all disappeared mysteriously.
• 57-180. Other unknown men, women and babies, who went to Chicago and La Porte homes of Mrs. Gunness, and were never seen again, are estimated to bring the grand total of victims up to 180.

This, then, is the crowning work of the matrimonial agency; this horrid burying ground of dismembered bodies, this ghastly charnel pit on an Indiana hillside. By their fruits ye shall know them. In the dread Gunness Farm behold the ripened fruit of the matrimonial agency.

RIDES OUT OF THE CLUTCHES OF MATRIMONY

She Steers Him Straight for the Lily Pond.

IN LIGHTER VEIN.

The Funny Side of the Matrimonial Business.

There is necessarily the amusing side in all this miserable trading upon the affections of fools. Some of the letters sent in to the matrimonial agencies are little less than "screams."

Imagine, if you can, a big, husky farmer, a collarless, coatless son of the Utah deserts, gushing forth that he "could live and die on love." Think of a staid and sober trained nurse who has arrived at the ripe age of forty pouring into the ears of the matrimonial agent that she "wants a man who is a flower," and also saying confidingly that she believes that she requires a few more years in which to prepare for the "solemn step."

One who is 39 and dark, blushingly admits that she is a "young girl" of loving disposition, and, since love is the destiny of us all, prays for a husband of fifty or thereabouts.

One who describes herself as "lively and frolicsome" frankly admits that she is out for the money and can get along without the love end of it at all. It is needless to say that this letter comes from the Pennsylvania Dutch regions.

Here are a few of the gems:

Could Live and Die on Love.

Huntsville. Utah,
Dec. 27. 1902.

Mrs. Ellen Marion.
Grant Works, Ill.

My Dear Lady:

I wish to beg your pardon if I appear rude in trying to personally introduce myself, but allow me to assure you that I am sincere in my quest for a kind friend, and it is nothing but the purest and holiest motives of the human heart that prompts the intrusion.

I saw your advertisement in the Valley Farmer, and in it I seem to behold the image of an ideal lady, who is well worthy of the highest esteem and admiration from a true gentleman, and how happy and thankful should the man be who is so fortunate as to captivate the love and heart of so noble a prize. Among many others your advertisement to me seemed to be the most suitable and impressive. While it would not be within good taste to express a great love for you at present, yet I believe that I could come as near living and dying on love as the next one. My object in writing you is to find if there should be a chord within our natures that could be touched mutually to harmonize with the word love.

I have been married and know of the joy and happiness of a kind and loving companion. Two years ago death robbed me of my greatest prize in life. Since then I have been baching it. I am tired of roughing it alone, and if there were only some one to meet me with a kind smile of approval I could work much harder and be a better man for it, and I do most earnestly and sincerely solicit your correspondence with a view to closer ties should our natures prove congenial.

Should you feel inclined to favor me I would certainly feel highly flattered.

Not a Flirt.

Please do not rank me with the ordinary flirts and adventurers, for I assure you that I am honest in my intentions and would not mislead or advise anyone wrongfully. My age is thirty-seven, height five feet nine inches, weight 175 pounds, have a good moral character in every respect, honest and industrious, without any bad habits, total abstainer from liquor and tobacco, move in the best society, am of a quiet, kind and loving disposition. Home is the dearest place to me on earth and I know how to make it happy. I can appreciate and know the real value of a kind and loving wife, and the dear lady that becomes my wife will find in me a true and honest husband, a kind and loving companion, one whose greatest aim and object will be to make his home and loved ones happy.

To you the above may have a smattering of self-praise and flattery, but the facts are wholly true, which I hope in due time will be fully demonstrated. Should you wish to hear further from me I shall be quite pleased to furnish any information desired.

Anxiously awaiting your acquaintance, I am,

Yours sincerely,
Jens Winter.

With best wishes and compliments of the season.

AROUND THE CLOCK WITH A "HOME HUSBAND"

LOVELORN WAILS.

I want a man who is a flower, with love and affection oozing from all its petals. Maybe, however, I need a few more years' preparation for the most solemn of steps—matrimony. I admire a man of good physique, kind, gallant, conscientious, of good morals as can be expected nowadays, home-loving, and fond of children.—Application for a husband from Catherine M. Barnes, trained nurse, aged 40, Indianapolis.

Love is the destiny of us all. At times it seems it is going to side-track and pass us. Therefore, I ask you to help me to find a handsome man of 50 or over who has some money and can make more.

I am a young girl of loving disposition; do not powder, except on special occasions; can cook, and know how to dress on nothing or little. I want love and fidelity. Do not send me the name of any traveling men.

I am 39 and dark.—Miss Ella Miller, 837 Spring Garden street, Philadelphia.

Introduce me to a widow with money who wants a good entertainer and honest man. I have no funds, but don't tell her that. I play, sing and recite well.—Adam Werker, Glen Ellyn, Ill.

Her Ideal Husband.

"My ideal must be tall," suggests Miss Mary Hester, from Wayland, N. Y., "and a gentleman in every sense of the word. He must be of good standing socially and morally. He must be of temperate habits, kind, generous, affectionate, devoted—a man of ability, who would be a companion socially, intellectually and morally to a true, pure, devoted wife."

She says she would ask for no more.

"READ US 'BOUT WHUT DE FOLKS IN PITTSBURG AN' NEWPORT IS UP TO."

"I'D RUTHER BE MARRIED TO A WOMAN WHO WAS REFORMIN' THINGS OUTSIDE DE HOUSE DAN IN HIT."

This One Is Real Frank.

Here is another letter from Reading, Pa:

Dear Sir: I notice by Sunday's paper that you are looking for a wife. Now, strange to relate, I am looking for a husband. I don't know what your requirements are, but I do know mine, and the chief ones of them are money, a good home, less work and worry, and happiness. If love comes, too, I shall not object, although I have lived long enough to realize that there can be a sort of lukewarm happiness without love.

Be that as it may, I judge my capacity is sufficiently large to satisfy the sort of a man I judge you to be. Now, for the next item of importance—myself. I am tall and slender, five feet six inches high, and quite "figuresque," as one of my girl friends tells me. I am of the Irish-American type; hair medium in shade and profuse as to quantity; deep-set, very bright gray eyes; good carriage, on account of which strangers often consider me haughty—an entirely erroneous idea.

Am of a lively, frolicsome nature. I am full of fun, and no matter how black things are I always find something to laugh at. I am twenty-three years old, and decidedly domestic, that being, in fact, my only accomplishment. I am artistic only along some lines; have no musical talent and am not an artist, but I love both devotedly. Am very practical, in fact, and a good housekeeper. There is lots more I might tell you, but we will call this enough for the present. Should like to know something about you, and hope you will be as truthful and frank as I have been.

Sincerely yours,
Mary Anderson.

ONE OF THE LUCKY ONES.

A Matrimonial Agent Captures a Rich Husband and Retires from Business.

Mamie Marie Schultz, a matrimonial agent, outwits the police and postal authorities after being raided and broken up, moves to other quarters, continues business, finds a rich man seeking a wife among her patrons and marries him.

September 11, the German-American Agency, run by Mamie Marie Schultz, 3150 Calumet avenue, was raided by Detective Wooldridge, the literature seized and destroyed. Mamie Marie Schultz was fined $25 by Justice Hurley. The evidence obtained was submitted to the postal authorities for action.

Mamie Marie Schultz fled to Oak Park, where she continued her matrimonial agency. After she moved to Oak Park she was notified "by order of the town board" to vacate, but she laughed at the order and enjoyed the newspaper notoriety she attained, for it only increased her business. It is said she made thousands of dollars out of her matrimonial agency.

With a stealth that is characteristic of his art, Cupid has accomplished what Oak Park officials had been trying to do for two years. He has closed out the Oak Park matrimonial agency by making a victim of his promoter in that vicinity, Marie Schultz, manager of the matchmakers' concern.

The postmaster, United States marshal and several of the town officers yesterday received letters signed "Mrs. J. D. Edwards," announcing that Marie Schultz "had been caught in her own net" and had deserted the village for a "palatial" home in Seattle, Wash., where her new husband, J. D. Edwards, is a wealthy lumber dealer.

Swift Courtship by Edwards.

Edwards, it is said, arrived in Oak Park on Tuesday, and after a whirlwind courtship this "Lochinvar who came out of the West" had won the whole matrimonial agency.

"Marie," the name in which all her extensive advertising was done, has defeated the officials of Chicago, Oak Park, and even the United States postoffice inspector, in every effort they made to suppress her enterprise.

To Postmaster Hutchinson she wrote requesting that all letters addressed to the agency be returned to the writers, as she didn't "want any more of their money." The postoffice force was burdened with the task of mailing back to some 500 lovelorn men and maidens the letters which had accumulated in "Marie's" postoffice box.

But the bleatings of the overgrown calf from Utah, and the wails of the maiden lady who desires a "flower" for a mate are both eclipsed by the mushy outpourings of a Chicago business man.

This fellow evidently possesses the artistic temperament. Not only is he moved to write prose poetry, "to bay the moon of love," but he insists on inserting illustrative sketches of an ardent wooing.

He has forged the white heat of his passion, which evidently puts Ella Wheeler Wilcox at her fiercest to shame, into pictures. Here we behold him, hand in hand with his beloved, under the kindly stars. There, more prosaic, it is true, but still quite passionate, is the drawing room scene, with the lady seated on his knee. Behold the works of genius when love impels.

The Festive Farm Hand Frivols.

Among the hundreds of applications for a wife Detective Wooldridge found one from Jacob C. Miller, of Martinsville. Pa. Miller filled out the application blank as follows:

• Q. Where born? A. Lancaster, Pa.
• Q. What language do you speak? A. English.
• Q. Nationality? A. White.
• Q. Weight? A. 130.
• Q. Color of eyes? A. Greenish blue.
• Q. Color of hair? A. Brown on a little patch.
• Q. Complexion? A. Fair.
• Q. Circumference of chest? A. 36 inches.
• Q. Circumference of waist? A. 36 inches.
• Q. Circumference of head (just above ears)? A. 13 inches.
• Q. Circumference of neck? A. Wear 15-1/2 collar.
• Q. Profession? A. Farm hand.
• Q. Income per year? A. Nothing.
• Q. Extent of education: common, high school or university? A. Common.
• Q. Do you use tobacco or liquor? A. I use a little tobacco, but no liquor.
• Q. How much real estate do you own? A. Nothing.
• Q. Do any of the pictures we have submitted to you suit, and will you marry? A. Yes, the one with the turned-up nose.
• Q. If we secured you a wife worth $250,000 would you be willing to pay us a small commission for our trouble? A. Yes.

THE FAKER AND THE PRESS.

Some Newspapers Are Buncoed, While Others Willingly Assist Rascals.

Strangely enough, the abomination known as the "matrimonial agency," bureau or what-not, has succeeded in hoodwinking the great American press to a certain extent.

Advertisements appear in leading journals all over the country. Without this the great fraud could not exist ten minutes. There are numberless instances, we are quite sure, where the publishers have no suspicion that they are furthering the cause of scoundrels. In others, we regret to say, the motive for accepting these advertisements is traceable to nothing more or less than just the plain greed of the publisher.

It is impossible for a private citizen to prophesy whether the entire power of the government of the United States can purify the columns of some of our greedy newspapers.

HOW TO TRAIN A HUSBAND

These matrimonial agencies are frauds. The newspaper man knows this and takes their money for the advertisements, and becomes a messenger of a crime for a paltry sum, and if I were the District Attorney I would get busy and call the attention of the Postmaster General to these alleged newspapers for the purpose of shutting off their distribution through the mails.

Here are a few samples of the ads appearing in the reputable daily press of the country:

MATRIMONIAL AGENCIES' ADVERTISEMENTS FOR RICH WIVES AND HUSBANDS.

They Appear in All the Leading Newspapers Throughout the Country.

This is a very select list of ten ladies picked at random from our books by one of the leading newspaper reporters of this city, February 1, 1904:

• Minnesota Maiden—30 yrs., 5 ft. 2 in., weight 128 lbs.; brown hair, blue eyes; has $10,500.
• Missouri Maiden—28 yrs., 5 ft. 7 in., weight 150 lbs.; blonde, blue eyes, German; has $4,800.
• Pennsylvania Maiden—20 yrs., 5 ft. 4 in., weight 132 lbs.; light hair, blue eyes; will inherit $30,000, provided she is married on her 21st birthday.

Can a Man or Woman Know Each Other Before Marriage?

BEFORE.

"When he was wooing her, Romeo devoted his time to thinking of delicate little attentions that he could pay Juliet, and of things he could do to make her happy."

AFTER.

On Christmas he is liable to shove a dollar or two at his wife, remarking: "Get yourself something. I don't know what you want, and I haven't time to fool with it."

"ONE HOUR OF IT IS WORTH LIVIN' FOR AN' DYIN' FOR."

"AN' DAT WOMEN'S CLUBS IS DE CAUSE OF ALL DE PO' LITTLE NEGLECTED CHILLEN."

• Wisconsin Widow—49 yrs., 5 ft. 3 in., weight 130 lbs.; black hair, black eyes; no children; worth $15,000. Will marry elderly man.
• Indiana Maiden—29 yrs., 5 ft. 4 in., weight 122 lbs.; brown hair, blue eyes; pretty and worth $7,000. Would marry farmer.
• Illinois Maiden—21 yrs., 5 ft. 8 in., weight 140 lbs.; chestnut hair, blue eyes; worth $40,000; is a cripple. Will marry kind man who will overlook her misfortune.
• New Jersey Widow—28 yrs., 4 ft. 11 in., weight 150 lbs.; brown hair, blue eyes, one child; worth $35,000. Will marry and assist husband financially.
• Ohio Farmers Daughter—Orphan, 25 yrs., 5 ft. 7 in.; brown hair, gray eyes; has large farm. Alone, will marry immediately, farmer preferred.
• Montana Maiden—Half-breed Indian, age 25, 5 ft. 4 in., 130 lbs.; black hair, black eyes; has large ranch. Will marry honest white man.
• Illinois Bachelor Girl—Age 35, 5 ft. 7 in., 160 lbs.; black hair, brown eyes; owns fine estate, valued at thousands. Would marry gentleman of equal wealth.

Pennsylvania.

Beautiful maiden lady, refined and well educated; American; blonde, age 37 years, height 5 ft. 4 in., weight 106 pounds; worth $30,000.

Nebraska.

Stylish young brunette, fond of society; American; age 28 years, height 5 ft. 3 in., weight 135 pounds; Baptist, and worth $25,000; income $3,000 a year.

Ohio.

Stately widow, age 49 years, handsome and remarkably well preserved; height 5 ft. 6 in., weight 160 lbs.; no children; worth $5,000; wants elderly husband.

Kentucky.

Beautiful blonde Southern girl, educated and refined; age 21, height 5 ft. 2 in., weight 115 lbs.; American, and worth $10,000; wants nice-looking husband.

Pretty little girl, age 19 years, height 5 ft. 3 in., weight 112 lbs.; American; worth $10,000. Says she is very anxious to marry.

Boston, Mass.

Fine-looking lady, age 37 years, height 5 ft. 3 in., weight 140 lbs.; American, Protestant, and worth $20,000.

Young lady, blonde, age 25 years, weight 128 lbs., height 5 ft.; American, Methodist; income $720 a year; worth $25,000.

Chicago, Ill.

Maiden, age 26 years, height 5 ft. 4 in., weight 140 lbs.; Scotch, Protestant, Methodist; income $1,200 per year; worth $75,000.

Monroe Co., Pa.

Young lady, age 23 years, very pretty, height 5 ft. 5 in., weight 150 lbs.; German, Methodist; worth $12,000.

Dover, N. H.

Stylish, brown-eyed lady, age 24 years, height 5 ft. 6 in., weight 135 pounds; American, Methodist; worth $50,000.

New York City.

Young widow, age 32 years, height 5 ft. 5 in., weight 140 lbs.; Irish Catholic; worth $40,000.

Utah.

Maiden lady, age not mentioned, height 5 ft., weight 120 lbs.; worth $35,000.

And all this, ridiculous, murderous and otherwise, is all outside the pale of the law. The matrimonial agency is a crime per se. It is a criminal institution. It has been pronounced to be such by the best and foremost judges of the United States, Germany and Great Britain.

Judge Klerbach, sitting in the case of a marriage broker at Goettingen, Germany, in 1903, declared that the marriage broker was a criminal in intent, from the very nature of his business.

In the celebrated case of Alan Murray vs. Jeanie McDonald at Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1898, Justice Grahame pronounced from the judicial seat one of the most scathing arraignments of the marriage bureau ever delivered. "Leeches upon the body social, blood-suckers, destroyers of womanhood, abominations of the bottomless pit," were some of the phrases used by Justice Grahame in denouncing Murray.

In the petty sessions at Tinahely, Ireland, Justice O'Gorman in May, 1905, is reported in the Wicklow People, a newspaper which has a wide circulation in the South of Ireland, as fiercely denouncing the marriage broker business. The Justice declared that the marriage broker was a wolf, "preying upon the weaknesses of humanity, a pander to the lowest instincts"; that he had no right to demand the interference of the law in his behalf, but rather that the law should always be exercised for the suppression of his nefarious traffic.

Same Thing Nearer Home.

To get nearer home. In the Chicago American, February 12, 1903, Judge Neely, in the case of the State vs. Hattie Howard, declared from the bench that to "sell men and women in marriage is the height of crime." Judge Neely further said:

"Men and women who engage in this business of promoting matrimony for money are guilty of crime. It is opposed to the fundamental principles of society. Such a practice should under no circumstances be tolerated. This practice should be stopped. The trade should be killed. The courts should make it their business to discourage this thing in a way that may be easily understood."

Judge Kohlsaat, of Chicago, has inveighed against the practice in equally vehement terms. Judge Kohlsaat declares that "the Police Department of Chicago is entitled to great credit for what it has done in discouraging this business. I hope it will continue its vigilance until every promoter of marriages of this character has been compelled to leave the city. They should make such criminals give the city a wide berth."

There, then, is the law. The business is a crime in its very nature. It leads to bigamy and wholesale murder. It is made the instrument of the thief, the swindler and the murderer. How much longer will the American people look with calmness upon these practices, upon these abominations, which make a stench of the very air of the great and free country in which we live? The answer is up to you.

THE GREAT MISTAKE.
OUR PENAL SYSTEM IS A RELIC OF EARLY SAVAGERY.

Our whole penal system needs changing. It is a relic of barbarism, and stands a monument to the early savagery of the human race.

How is it possible for a man or woman to lead an upright, useful life after they once come under the ban of the law? Society combines to hound them down. They are forbidden to place themselves on an equality with others by narrow, human prejudice—the "holier than thou" attitude of that portion of the public which has not yet been "found guilty."

We are Pharisees, all, and sit in judgment on our fellowman, because we do not yet realize the mixture of evil and good that is in every man—none are exempt—only some are caught and punished.

Men have come to us, desperate, despairing men, crying: "For God's sake, what are we to do? If we get a job someone will tell our employers we have 'done time,' and we are fired. If they find us on the street, we're arrested. Where can we go and what can we do?"

A man may commit murder and not be a criminal, and yet a sneakthief is always a criminal and every burglar a potential murderer.

Social conditions produce criminals. As well expect a rose to bloom in a swamp as human nature to flower in the slums.

All our prisons are hotbeds of tuberculosis and most prison physicians hold their positions through political pull.

In our opinion a greater distinction should be made between the penitentiary and house of correction. Petty misdemeanants should not be branded with the prison stigma. We also favor suspended sentence for first offenders.

The crime and its punishment should be separated. At present the personal equation does not enter into the case when a judge imposes sentence. The man's environment, what leads him to break the law, and how best to help this particular man, all are questions that should be carefully considered before sentence is pronounced.

Intelligence in Punishing Crime.

A student of prison affairs once said that the prison population consists of two classes—people who never ought to have been sent to prison and people who never ought to be allowed to leave it. It is unfortunate that students interested in either one of these classes are too often apt to forget the importance of the other.

There are many habitual criminals, weak persons readily giving way to temptation, who should not be classified as professionals. The professionals are only those who deliberately set about supporting themselves by crime. These are the ones who are among all criminals most unlikely to change their ways, and it was for their control that Detective Wooldridge suggested some years ago that after several convictions such criminals should be given a special trial to decide whether they were true professionals or not, and if they were, they should be imprisoned for life.

If more attention were given to professional crime and if harsher methods were used in protecting society from it, the result would be merciful in the end—merciful both to the citizens protected from such crime and to the men who, as conditions now are, graduate every year into such careers.

The "Silent System" is a Crime Against Criminals.

The penitentiary for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, at Philadelphia, in 1907, was the only prison in America conducted on what is known as the "silent system."

In this grim edifice a man sentenced to twenty years imprisonment might pass all of that time buried from sight in his cell, seeing only his keeper, the chaplain, the doctor and the schoolmaster, and for twenty minutes in every six weeks he would be allowed to talk with a near relative.

This man loses his identity the moment he enters the prison gates. A black cap is drawn over his head and he is led to a cell in one of the many corridors that radiate from the central tower like spokes from the hub of a wheel. He is known thereafter by a number.

The cell in which he eats and sleeps and works is a little larger than the average prison cell, and more completely furnished—as it must hold his bed, his lavatory, his dishes and a place for eating, his work, his every possession, and such books as he may secure from the prison library.

His front door opens on a corridor and is kept ajar on a heavy chain so the prison guards may watch him.

His back door opens on a plot of ground about 8×10 feet. It is surrounded and cut off from all communication from every living human being by a brick wall. Only the watchman in the central tower and the birds that wing their way over the prison can see him in his little yard. Robinson Crusoe on his deserted island could not be more utterly lonely.

In this tiny yard is a circular path worn smooth and pressed deep into the soil by the feet of despairing men—his predecessors.

The prisoner is forbidden even the negative pleasure of going out into this God-forsaken walled plot of bare ground except for one hour a day.

In his gloomy cell the prisoner drags out the "task" given him to escape insanity. He fears to be idle without the sound of a human voice in his ear or the sight of a human face to relieve his awful loneliness.

To lengthen these "tasks" the State of Pennsylvania has provided primitive hand-looms, some 100 years old, and other discarded makeshifts of man's industrial infancy.

Not for him has the world progressed beyond the caveman's day. Perhaps he is a skilled mechanic, a man accustomed to the swift play of machinery, the grip of tool on material. He is condemned to manufacture by primitive methods the clothes he wears to keep him from quite going mad.

Extreme Methods Faulty.

As between the abominable "contract" and "lease" systems and this reversion to blind seclusion, is there no human method to be found of apportioning the convict's labor?

Yet No. 99, locked away in his solitary cell in the Philadelphia prison, must toil laboriously, denying his brain and hand their cunning, with a pretense at occupation. He is not sharing in the world's work. He knows this child's play of making something that no one needs on an instrument left over from the twelfth century is futile and foolish.

How shall he meet and battle with the great world of commerce and labor after twenty years of this? In what way is this make-believe fitting him for liberty?

Some few in the Philadelphia prison escape the fate mapped out for them. There are 800 cells, and there are at present about 1,100 prisoners. Naturally, some must "double up." And then the regular domestic work of the institution must be done, tasks at which it would be impossible to keep prisoners separated or wholly silent.

And so the "silent system" is not entirely silent. But, we protest, that is not the fault of the prison management, nor is it that of the good citizens who seventy-eight years ago devised and built this prison, the only one of its kind in America.

Men are unfitted for after-life under the "silent system." They come out of prison at the end of their terms with shuffling gait and incoherent speech and unskilled hands.

Cut off from all obligation to family or friends, the prisoner's whole spiritual nature is bound to deteriorate. Will he be a better citizen, a more loving father or husband or son, when he is released?

The prison at Philadelphia is a model of cleanliness, management, discipline and sanitation. The warden, Charles C. Church, is humane and intelligent; the guards above the average in character.

And yet Pennsylvania's crime against her criminal population is appalling. All she does for her unfortunate offender is to guard him securely, shelter him in cleanliness, feed and clothe him—and hold him against the day of his release.

These are necessary things, but it is more necessary that the state turn back the criminal at least no worse than she found him when committed to her care.

She could turn him out a better man morally, better equipped to gain a livelihood, in fair physical health, and certainly without mental taint or bias due to his imprisonment.

Jails Make 50,000 Criminals a Year.

If the jails and lockups in our country—4,000 or 5,000 in number—are in truth, as they have been often aptly termed, in most cases compulsory schools of crime, maintained at the public expense, we shall have from this quarter alone an accession to the criminal classes in each decade of perhaps 50,000 trained experts in crime. Surely, almost any change in dealing with the young, with the beginners in lawbreaking, would be an improvement on the prevailing system. Jails and prisons, so constructed and managed as to keep separate their inmates, would afford an adequate remedy for the evil. Until this can be done it would be far better to cut down largely the number of arrests and committals of the young.

United States Penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas; the best and most modern Penitentiary in the United States if not in the world.

"It is absurd to argue that life in the penitentiary is conducive to moral betterment, for all the conditions are against this cheerful theory. In jail a man meets criminals. The whole system makes for greater criminality on the release of the prisoner. He has time to plan fresh onslaughts on society. His incarceration further embitters him against the world. He looks with malicious envy on those who have escaped the punishment which he has had to suffer. When he is turned out of prison he is ready for further felonies—only now he has learned more caution, and for this reason he is more dangerous than he was when he entered the institution."

When a man has served two prison sentences without being convinced of the futility of the attempt to live without honest work, it is evident that he has abandoned all idea of being a good citizen and has made up his mind to prey upon society.

"Then," says Mr. Wooldridge, "moderate sentences having produced no good effect upon him, either to deter or reform, why should he not be taken permanently out of society and put where he cannot harm others or wrong himself by committing crime? No objection," he concluded, "can be found to this method."

Crime Based on Suggestion.

The man who has declared war upon the world, as every man has done who is not reformed by two successive prison sentences, should be seized and permanently imprisoned. Modern thought does not sanction the literal translation of this idea, but that does not interfere with the possibility of carrying it out for the benefit of society.

The world spends millions of dollars every year in the business of protecting itself against the criminal and in caring for him. But that is because no serious attempt has ever been made to solve the problem of crime.

Crime is largely a matter of suggestion and therefore if all the habitual criminals in the country were segregated where their influence would no longer be able to exert itself, crime would not propagate itself so fast. The young men would not have presented to them so often or so forcibly the example which causes most of them to take the crooked path. Thus the expense of prevention would be enormously diminished at once.

Suggests Great Prison Farm.

With segregated criminals supporting themselves, as they might be made to do under our plan, the enormous cost of penitentiaries would at one step be done away with. A penal colony such as Mr. Wooldridge proposed would be placed in such a situation that the convicts could be compelled to raise every bit of food they put into their mouths and every bit of clothing they put upon their backs. Out in one of the western states or territories a reservation might be made of several thousand acres of land, around the rim of which the convicts could be made to build a great wall shutting themselves away from the rest of the world. On its surface would be built in the same way habitations for them, and they would live there, tilling the soil and manufacturing their necessities, until death.

The time will come when this plan will be carried out. The law-abiding citizens of the United States will not continue forever to be taxed enormously for the support of a class of persons who are enemies of public order and decency.

Improving the Public Health.

Can a nation be said to be civilized that spends billions of dollars every year in the detection and punishment of crime, and not one cent for the prevention and cure of disease, which kills thousands of persons who might otherwise have retained their health and strength?

Suppose only a billion dollars a year, that now goes to the support of criminals in jails and penitentiaries, were to be saved by the establishment of a national penal colony where criminals would be made to support themselves; and suppose the billion dollars thus saved were to be spent on free hospitals and medical treatment, would the country not be much better off?

Such a use of the money would result in cutting down the death rate in the United States at least one-half. The death rate in England, through the exercise of care and the assistance of the government, has been reduced from one-half to two-thirds in many diseases, and ten to twelve years have been added to the expectation of life between the ages of one year and forty-five years. A similar state of affairs should exist in this country, where the waste of life and health through preventable diseases is incalculable.

Our enormous expense on account of criminals, most of which might be avoided if brains were really brought to bear upon the problem, will not always be endured. The future will force the criminal to support himself, and the money now expended on him will be devoted to the preservation of health and life among honest men, for the time will certainly come when free hospitals and medical service will be provided by the government for every citizen who needs them.

Road Work for Convicts.

Criminology, on its humanitarian side, seeks new methods of employment for criminals. It seeks to regenerate convicted criminals morally, as well as care for their physical well-being.

Indoor prison trades have a deadly monotony. In most cases they are carried on without sunlight, and with too little fresh air. Confinement within walls is alone a heavy punishment, but when allied with conditions that breed disease and possibly death, society exacts more than just retribution.

Modern criminology leans toward both moral and physical care in allotting the daily tasks of criminals. It assumes that the state has no right to make the criminal a worse or a weaker member of society than when he entered the prison walls.

This explains why most experts in criminology are strongly in favor of putting criminals to work at road-making. Here is employment in God's sunlight and air, where criminals can do useful work, and still be under watchful guard. They will be giving the state better highways, and at the same time escape the deadly indoor prison grind.

Criminologists are studying a hundred speculative methods of benefiting the criminal. They all agree on one point—namely, that useful work in the open air is beneficial to the average criminal, morally and physically.

If there can be a large benefit to the state, at the same time that the state is benefiting the criminal, there is a double advance along the lines of rational, humane treatment of criminals.

The sordid idea that criminals should pay the cost of their own incarceration is secondary. And yet, in applying convict labor to the solution of the good roads problem in the United States, the public would get back at least a portion of the enormous drain on public revenues for the support of criminals.

Solves "Good Roads" Problem.

This is the only complete solution of the good roads problem. It is one that all farmers or other rural residents should insist upon. It is the one practical way of gridironing the states, old and new, with good roads. It is especially vital in the newer states, where the absence of good roads is the heaviest tax on industry that individual communities must suffer.

It is far better for the criminals themselves that they should be employed in this useful outdoor labor. The greatest clog on the science of criminology is the aversion to breaking away from traditions. The housing of criminals in penitentiaries, where expensive idleness alternates with desultory forms of industry, has ceased to be a method abreast of the times. There is enormous waste in the orthodox prison systems.

Get all able-bodied convicts into road-making for a single generation, and what would result? The productiveness of agricultural states would be vastly increased. Markets, for the average farmer, would be easier of access. Instead of virtual isolation for three or four months of the year, agricultural life would be more evenly balanced.

The actual financial benefits to farmers would aggregate a vast total.

In European countries, it took several generations to solve the good-roads problem. But they have solved it. The rural roads in the average European state or principality are a national blessing. They are not only a joy to transient travelers, but form the bulwark of agricultural industries. European governments have wisely considered no cost too great for good roads.

As distances are immeasurably greater in America than in thickly settled European states, the good roads problem takes on a different aspect here. American roads are, on the average, worse than in any other civilized country. Therefore, they must be built up, slowly and patiently, perhaps, but with increasing energy as population grows denser.

With European methods it would take a hundred years to give the western states good roads. With the convict labor, the problem would be solved in twenty years or less. This would suffice, at least, for a great national system of highways.

Extend the Parole System.

The fear is expressed that an extension of the parole system as regards adults would open a velvet path for criminals to continue preying upon society. There was a loud hue and cry raised against the idea as administered recently by one of our Municipal Court Judges. Still, there is no denying that there is a great deal of good resultant from this plan. It is a safe, sane and conservative one, especially so when in the hands of judges who can feel for the man who has committed his first offense.

Chicago has some peculiar problems to contend with. It is the stopping off place for all traveling from south to north, and from north to south, and from west to east. Many of these transient visitors live a hand-to-mouth life. Oftentimes they are driven to crime by sheer force of necessity. Again, the father or son may be out of work, and chance may place in his way the opportunity to commit some petty theft, tempting him on to his first crime. If such offenders show signs of desiring to do better and are susceptible of reformation, they ought to be given another chance. On the other hand, those who are unmistakably guilty and evidence no signs of repentance should be punished without any undue delay.

Many families have been driven to disgrace and ruin when their heads were sent to prison. Surely among these there were some who had manifested repentance and shown indications of a desire to be given another opportunity to start anew; surely had they but been shown lenience they might have proved good citizens and worthy of the confidence reposed in them.

Of course, there are a lot of drawbacks to the parole system as it applies to juveniles in Chicago. But free from politics and in the hands of fair-minded, square-leading men it would prove a splendid scheme worthy of the highest praise. In its infancy it might look like a failure, but as time passed it would be perfected, so that in the long run it would prove a godsend to humanity.

When a criminal returns from penitentiary or prison he is shunned by society; he is under the eternal vigilance of our police force—he is walked upon and pushed down. Finally, tired with trying to earn an honest living, he again resorts to crime. Probably had he been paroled he might have turned out a deserving citizen and the father of a happy family.

VAGRANTS; WHO AND WHY.

WHAT WILL WE DO WITH THE VAGRANT AND TRAMP?

Raggles—"Why did yer refuse what she offered yer?"

Weary—"Cause I never heard of it before and de name was too much for me. Why when she said 'chop suey' cold chills run down me back, 'cause dat word chop reminds me too much of de time when I had ter chop three cords of wood looking into de face of two shotguns."

The vagrant is the most elusive man among us. He is always with us, yet we can never locate him. No one wants him, yet we always send him to someone else. We make laws to get rid of him, but succeed only in keeping him a little longer in custody at our own expense. Most of us laugh at him and some of us cry over him by turns. We draw funny pictures of him in our newspapers and in our billboard advertisements, but we are really afraid of him. We blame the police for not keeping him off the streets, or at least out of sight, and yet we feed him at our own doors. We fear to meet him after dark, and nevertheless we give him a nickel or a dime to keep him in town over night. He is an object of charity, or a criminal, just as we happen to feel. He is sometimes the hero of our melodrama at the theater, who gets our tearful applause. At the same time he stands for all that we brand as mean and vile. We spend money lavishly to support him without work by charity, or imprison him in idleness by law.

The problem is to understand vagrancy so well that we can deal with it on a large enough scale both to restore the vagrant to the working world or to keep him in custody, and to prevent the accidental or occasional vagrant from becoming a habitual mendicant. The English and European governments have dealt with their problems of vagrancy more effectively than we have. This is due to the fact that they have investigated the causes and conditions of vagrancy more widely than we, and dealt with it on a larger scale by uniform legislation and by more persistently following up the measures in which the public and private resources combine to treat the evil.

Tramp a Railroad Problem.

Thus the tramp cuts no figure as a railroad problem, much less menace, abroad. But with us it is the fact that railroads representing more than half the total mileage operated in the United States and Canada testify almost without exception to depredation, thieving, injuries, deaths, accidents to passengers or rolling stock, enormous aggregate costs to railroads or society, caused by the habitual illegal use of the railroads by vagrants. The number of "trespassers," from one-half to three-quarters of whom were vagrants, who are killed annually on American railroads exceeds the combined total of passengers and trainmen killed annually. Within four years 23,964 trespassers were killed and 25,236 injured, thus furnishing the enormous total of 49,200 casualties, with all the cost they involve.

Only by the co-operation of the railroads with one another and of towns and cities with the railroads can this waste of life and property and this increasing peril to the safety of the traveling public be prevented. Much more stringent laws will have to be both enacted and enforced to prevent the trespassing, which puts a premium on vagrancy.

One of the best effects of the strict prevention of free riding on railroads would be to keep boys from going "on the road" and becoming tramps. It is simply amazing to find little fellows of from 12 to 17 years of age, who have never been farther away from home than to some outlying freight yards, disappearing for several weeks and returning from Kansas City, or Cleveland, Omaha or New York, having all alone, or with a companion or two, beaten their way and lived by their wits while traveling half way across the continent. Once the excitement of the adventure is enjoyed, the hardship it costs does not seem so hard to them as the monotony of home or shop. The discipline of the United States navy has been the only regulation of this wandering habit which the writer has known to be successful. But the habit is more easily prevented than regulated. Massachusetts has taken the most advanced legislative action of all the states to this end. The Wabash and the New York Central railways suggest fine and imprisonment for trespassing upon railway tracks or rolling stock.

Better Lodgings for Homeless Men.

Far better provision for lodging homeless men must be made by cities in municipal lodging houses of their own, such as Chicago effectively conducts, and by far stricter public regulation and supervision of lodging houses maintained for profit or for charity. The anti-tuberculosis crusade shows that this supervision and regulation should be shared by the health authorities with the police. Within a period of five years 679 consumptives were taken from only a portion of Chicago's lodging house district to the Cook County Hospital, most of them in the most dangerously infectious stages of the disease. An investigator of Chicago's 165 cheap lodging houses and their 19,000 beds declares that "the unfortunate man forced to sojourn in them for a while may enter sound and strong and come out condemned to death."

The New York City Charity Organization Society and the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor have rendered a country-wide public service in furnishing the report on "Vagrancy in the United States" by their joint agent, Orlando F. Lewis. It may well be the basis for better public policy here and everywhere.

Startling figures and facts were presented at the State Conference of Charities and Corrections at Albany by Arthur W. Towne, secretary of the Illinois State Probation Commission, regarding the extent of vagrancy and the habits of tramps in this state.

More than 31,000 persons, mainly vagrants, received free lodgings in New York State, in town and city lockups, during 1906, and the number in 1907 was larger. Seventy-five cities and towns thus provide for their wandering visitors. Half of these towns and cities also feed the wanderers free of charge.

A large number of places give lodgings also to boys, many of them as young as 10 or 12 years, thus encouraging the wandering spirit that makes the later tramp. With only one slight exception, not a single town or city required any work at all from the lodgers in return for the lodging or the food provided, thus giving absolutely no incentive to the wanderer to work for his board or meals.

It is urged that the system of allowing the police authorities to give these free lodgings, as well as the similar practice in some jails and almshouses, be abolished as a most direct encouragement to vagrancy, and that in their stead such free lodgings as are necessary should be furnished by the overseer of the poor, but only when repaid by some form of work, such as chopping wood or breaking stone.

Tramps Like Jail.

Mr. Towne also brought out the fact that tramps like to go to jail in winter. Instead of considering a jail sentence for that part of the year as a form of punishment, they welcome it as a chance to keep warm and loaf at the public expense. Forty-three per cent of the commitment of tramps occurs between November 1 and February 1. In short, the jail or the penitentiary becomes a sort of winter vacation resort for tramps. Many chiefs of police with whom Mr. Towne communicated said that tramps in winter would ask to be sent to jail, and that if this were not done they would sometimes commit offenses for the express purpose of being arrested and sent there.

It is declared to be significant that in the tramp's slang the word "dump" is applied to both lodging houses and jails.

With a cold winter the number of vagrants in penitentiaries and jails increases. In 1906 there were more than 10,000 tramps and vagrants in penitentiaries and jails, while in 1904, which was a very cold winter, there were more than 14,000. On the average, about one-third of the prisoners are tramps and vagrants. This means that the public is annually paying several hundred thousand dollars for the avowed purpose of punishing men for vagrancy, but in reality it amounts only to furnishing a free place of winter rest. Most of the chiefs of police believe that jails and penitentiaries do little good, if any, in their treatment of tramps. Another fact is that the sentences for this class of offenders are too short to accomplish any results. About 85 per cent of the sentences are from only one to sixty days.

THE TRAMP OF FICTION

Tore Purse from the Hobo.

Hobos Classified by Races.

In a vague way the veteran hobos, classified by the various nationalities, are fairly representative of the make-up of the whole American nation, in accordance with the number of hobos each nationality turns out. After taking into consideration the fact that certain parts of the United States are dominated by people of one nationality, and the bulk of tramps in that part of the country would necessarily come from that nationality, the following classification was given as doing justice to all:

The Irish and British elements lead in the number of hobos. They are closely followed, however, by the German element. The nations of Eastern Europe, Poles, Bohemians, Hungarians and others, are next in line. Then follow, in smaller numbers, Scandinavians, French, Italians and Jews. The French come mostly from Canada, the Scandinavians from the northwest and the Italians from the largest cities in the country, like New York and Chicago, and also from the southern states. Here and there one finds a stray Servian or Bulgarian who drifted into trampdom and has never been able or has never cared to drift out of it again.

Greeks are seldom found among tramps because they have not yet a "second generation" of Greeks to any extent in the United States. Chinese and Japanese likewise are not found in the hobo class. Of the negro race, many would not be averse to becoming professional tramps were it not for the risk which a negro tramp generally runs. A "stray negro," according to the hobos interviewed, is regarded with apprehension and is apt to be shot on mere suspicion.

New Foreigner Not a Hobo.

You will hardly ever find a foreigner in the first five or ten years of his American life among tramps and hobos. "He may be near tramp, he may be apparently 'down and out,' but he is not a genuine hobo," said one of the men. "You will find plenty of foreigners in the lodging houses, plenty of them who starve and suffer, but they are not hobos. They have had hard luck, and now in their old age they live by doing two or three and some even one day's work a week. But they work more or less. They have not the parasitic philosophy of one who is a full-fledged hobo. They fall more in the class of European vagabonds, such as one finds in Germany or Russia. They work now and then; they have some trade, or know a smattering about a number of trades."

The American hobo falls in an entirely different category from these. Work with him is said to be a disgrace. Neither does he relish crime much if he can get along without it. He will beg from door to door and will commit a crime only as a last resort. The hobo primarily has no will power, or rather, he destroys it.

The majority of hobos became such because of their false conception of freedom and of wrong inter-relations between parents and children. Their parents have been held in many cases in semi-savage conditions by their landlords in the old world. When they come to America they naturally appreciate their freedom. They speak of it to their children. They are lax with them, and this spoils them.

Jew Recruit in Trampdom.

Polish tramps and tramps from other nations of Eastern and Southern Europe were declared to be more apt to turn to petty crimes when pressed to it by want. They are, however, according to statements of tramps, easily found out. They somehow are hasty in their actions, and just as they brandish their knives and pistols thoughtlessly they fall into the hands of the police simply and easily.

The Jewish tramp was a rarity until recently. However, the large number of Jews which poured into this country from oppressed countries in Europe since 1881 have also furnished a "first generation," many of whose members have found their way to the barrel houses and slums of all large cities. The Jewish tramp, however, was declared to be entirely of the class of the petty criminal. Out of the penitentiary for some petty crime committed, or having been a go-between for thieves and the person who buys the goods stolen, the Jewish youth for the time being takes to trampdom.

His commercial instinct, however, together with the wide system of charity which the Jews maintain in every city where they are found, soon enables him to get out of the hobo class. He becomes a trader of some sort and soon leaves the barrel house and his hobo companions behind him.

Talks of the Tramp—Why Dilapidated Gentleman Does Not Give Up Wandering and Settle Down—Likes the Care-Free Life—Mingles Among the People and Gets to Know Them Well—Changes in Community.

"Why don't I give it up and settle down in city or village and become a respectable member of the community?" echoed the dilapidated gentleman as he pocketed his usual fee. "I have been asked that question a thousand times, it seems to me, and my answer has always been the same. I tramp as a profession, and I stand at the head of it. I like it. There's a good living in it. I come in contact with human nature at every turn. I am respectable as it is. The cities and villages are overcrowded, and the man who butts in has little chance of success. I have less to worry about and sleep more soundly than any business man in America. You newspaper fellers think you know it all, but you'd take a drop to yourselves if you were on the tramp for a month. You'd see more human nature with the bark on in that time than you can find on the East Side in New York in five years.

"Say, now," continued the man, "can you name me one single newspaper in the state of New York that felt sure of Roosevelt's election as governor? No, you can't. I hit his majority within 2,000. Why? Because I was among the people and knew how they talked. Plenty of politicians and newspapers said he'd be elected as president when he ran, but no man or no newspaper came within a thousand miles of the popular majority. I don't say that I hit it, but I could have given pointers to a hundred editors.

SHOWING A "MEMBER" GETTING INTO THE FIGHT LAST NIGHT.

Roaming Rowley—"I've just gotter break inter that nice, warm jail fer de winter. Here goes dat old shell I found on de battlefield."

(Bang! Flash! Boom!)

"Yes, Mr. Sheriff, it wus me did it! I'm a desprit dynamiter and jail bird."

Sheriff—"Git out of this township, quick! I won't have you blowin' up my nice, clean jail! Gwan, git!"

Get Out Among the People.

"Before the next national convention of either party meets I'll have tramped over three or four states, and I'll be ready to wager my life ag'in a nickel that I can name the victorious candidate. I'll wager that I can predict it far closer than any newspaper in the land. If you want to know what this country is thinking about, my boy, don't box yourself up in a sanctum and read a few exchanges. Get out and rub elbows with the people. It isn't the few big cities that settle the great political questions. It's the farmer and the villager, and they come pretty near being dead right every time. When I had tramped across seven counties of New York state I shouted for Hughes. A politician in Syracuse who heard me had me thrown out of a meeting and wanted the police to arrest me. I heard that he had a bet of $5,000 on another candidate and was predicting Hughes' defeat by 50,000. But enough of this. I' ll switch off and tell you something that has hurt me for the last three or four years.

Barns Now Locked.

"Do you know that a few men, comparatively, have almost changed the nature of the country and village population? No, you don't, but you'll learn of it some day through some magazine writer who gathers up his points in the way I have. Time was when not one farmer in ten in the land locked his house or barn at night. Now ninety out of a hundred do it. When a stranger came along they welcomed him. When a man talked with them they accepted his statement. What they saw in the newspapers they believed without cavil. Well, they have got over all this. The patent medicine faker, the mine exploiter, the bucketshop man and the hundreds of other swindlers have destroyed the confidence of the farmer and villager in human nature. They have been bitten so often and so hard that they come to doubt if such a thing as honesty exists. They won't take a stranger's word for anything. They have got through believing that there is an honest advertiser. They have even become distrustful of each other. It has become the hardest kind of work to sell a windmill, piano or other articles direct.

Victims of Fakers.

"You can't get out into the country and walk five miles without finding a victim of the fakers. The farmer has invested in bogus mines, bogus oil wells, bogus stock and bogus other things, and not only lost his money, but come to know that he was as good as robbed of it. The villager has been trapped the same way. It has hardened their hearts and given them the worst view of mankind. You can know nothing of this by telling, nor of the ruin wrought until you get among the people.

"Up to a year or so ago it was seldom that a farmer turned me down. If he had nothing for me to do to earn a meal or lodging he would not turn me away. He most always took me on trust and had no fear that I was a rascal in disguise. It's all changed now. This last summer I was paddling the hoof in Connecticut and Massachusetts, making a sort of grand farewell tour, and it was hard work for me to even get a few apples of the farmers. They used to be full of 'chin' and gossip. They used to hold me for an hour in order to hear all the news. I found them last summer sullen and sulky and calling to me from the fields to move on. In other years the village landlord would set me at work in the stables or with a pail of whitewash in some of the rooms, and in that way I'd pay for my stay. I found a change there.

Hardened by Losses in "Prosperity" Times.

"Three years ago, if you had started out for a day's tramp with me along a country road every farmer we met would have had a 'Howdy' for us, and perhaps stopped for a chin. You'd have heard whistling or singing from every man at work, and the farmer's wife would have called to you that she had some fresh buttermilk. Take such a tramp today and you'll find a tremendous change. I can't estimate the sum the farmers and villagers have been robbed of during the past years of prosperity, but it is something appalling for the whole country. As much and more has been taken out of victims in the cities, but the case is different. The man in the city doesn't pin his faith to an advertisement. He speculates on chance. He is where he can use the law, if needs be. If he loses here he goes at it to get even there. With the other class it is a dead loss, and the swindler can give them the laugh. Take almost any highway you will, leading through almost any state, and eight farmers out of ten have been made victims. Even the man who has not lost above $10 has been hardened by it.

His Feelings Hurt.

"I said that this change hurt me, and so it does. You may be surprised to hear that anything can hurt the feelings of a tramp, but that is because you don't know him. He is looked upon as an outlaw in the cities, but ever since he took the road there has been a sort of bond between him and the dwellers outside. He has paid his way or been willing to. He has asked for little and done little harm. The newspapers have made thousands of farmers tell hard stories about the tramp, but it has been in the newspapers alone. The two have worked together harmoniously.

"Have you got any idea of how the professional conducts himself on the road? No? Well, it won't happen once in a week that you will find one without a little money. It has been earned by hard work. When he stops at a farmhouse he offers to work for a meal. If there is no work he pays cash for what he gets. If he has been padding along for three or four days he will stop and work for half a week if the chance is offered him. In his work he keeps up with the hired man. He washes before he eats. He knows what forks are made for. He carries a clean handkerchief oftener than the man he works for. The average tramp can dress a chicken, kill a pig, empty and fill a straw bed, whitewash a kitchen, paint the house or fence, hoe corn, dig potatoes, run a cultivator, drive a team, split fence rails, dig a well, shingle a roof or rebuild a chimney. He is a handy man. He eats what he gets, sleeps where he is told to and brings the farmer a bigger budget of news than any two of his county papers. When his work is finished he slings his hook and is told to stop again. That's the tramp and that's the farmer just as they have been for the last forty years, and that's the reason I bemoan this change in the farmer. He has been victimized by men he thought were honest, he has been robbed where he trusted, and in changing his feelings toward mankind he must include the tramp, who has never wronged him.

Driven to the Cities.

"Take a walk and you will find those same green meadows, those same brooks, those same lambs, but you won't find Uncle Josh and Aunt Mary any more. A city like this seems a hard-hearted and cruel place, and you shiver at the idea of being dead broke. Let me just tell you that tramps are driven into the cities to recuperate. All the clothing I have had for the last five years has been begged in the city. All the money I have had has come from the dwellers therein. The only kind words I have heard have come from the hurly-burly. Makes you open your eyes, doesn't it? You are still clinging to the old-fashioned ideas of the country.

"My friend, let me tell you something. There isn't today a harder man to deal with than the average farmer. There isn't a woman with less sentiment than his wife. There's been a mighty change in the last twenty years. Indeed, it is a change that was forced on the farmer to protect himself. In years gone by, in tramping over the highways, I have met lightning-rod men, windmill men, piano men, hay-fork men, commission men, peddlers, chicken buyers and horse traders. All were after the farmer. Each and every one intended to beat him, and did beat him. He was beaten when he sold his produce and he was beaten when he bought his goods. He was considered fair game all around. It was argued that his peaceful surroundings made him gullible, and I guess they did.

Maud Muller on a summer's day Raked the meadows sweet with hay; This heavy work upon the farm Gave Maud a very strong right arm.

In Chicago just the other day She raked the muck heaps without pay. "Near food" and "curealls" went up in smoke. Maud deserves credit, and that's no joke.

Things Are Changed Now.

"Well, Uncle Josh and Aunt Mary died twenty years ago, and their children took hold. The babbling brook babbles for cash now. The green meadows mean greenbacks. The lambkins frisk, but they frisk for the dough. The watchdog at the gate can size up a swindler as well as a man. The farmer holds on until he gets the highest price, and the merchant who sells him shoddy has got to get up early in the morning. Say, now, but I'd rather start out to beat ten men in a city than one farmer. I'd rather be dead broke here than to have a dollar in my pocket out in the country. If taken ill here I'm sent to a free hospital; if taken sick in the country, the Lord help me.

"I'm not blaming the farmer in the least. For a hundred years he was the prey for swindlers and was taken for a fool. If he's got his eyes opened at last and is taking care of himself, and I assure you that such is the case, then so much the better for him. It is the dilapidated gentleman who suffers most from this change.

"Why is a sailor a sailor? Nineteen times out of twenty it is because he wants to rove the seas. Why is a tramp a tramp? Nineteen times out of twenty it is because he wants to rove the land. It is a nervous, restless feeling that he cannot withstand. He wants to get somewhere, and he is no sooner there than he wants to get somewhere else. The majority of them are sober men. They are as honest as the average. Not one in twenty will refuse to work for a meal or for pay. Not one in twenty commits a crime for which he should be jailed. You can't make statistics talk any other way. The whining, lying, vicious tramp has his home in the city and stays there.

Farmers Down on Tramps.

"It is the press of the country that has got the farmer down on the tramp. You may drive for fifty miles and interview each farmer as you come to him and you won't find five to say that a tramp ever caused them any trouble. In summer the tramp may steal a few apples or turnips. Anyone driving along the highway is free to do that. Should he steal an ax, shovel, plow, sheep, calf or break into the house and steal a watch or clothes, what is he going to do with his plunder? The instant he tries to realize on it he is nabbed. The tramp who entered a house and stole $50 in cash would be worse off than if he hadn't a cent.

"I can walk into that bakery over there and say that I am hungry and the woman will give me a stale loaf. I can tackle most any man passing here for a dime for lodgings and get it. I can wander down most any residence street and raise a hat, a coat or a pair of shoes. How is it out in the country? We'll say I've hoofed it all day, making about fifteen miles. I've stopped to rest now and then and view the scenery. Don't you make any mistake about that scenery feature. If any art company wanted to publish a thousand views it couldn't do better than to ask the tramps where to find the best ones. For lunch I pull two turnips from a field. My drink is from a brook. Along about 6 o'clock I hunger for cooked victuals, and as it looks like rain I would like to get lodgings in a barn. I turn aside to a farmhouse. The farmer is washing his hands at the well to go in to supper. Out of the tail of his eye he sees me approaching, but he pays no heed until I stand before him and say:

"'Mister, I can milk a cow, chop wood, mow weeds or hoe If you will give me supper and lodgings on the haymow I will work an hour at anything you wish.'

"WHEN DID YOU GET OUT OF JAIL?" HE ASKS.

Suspicious of Caller.

"'When did you get out of jail?' he asks.

"'I have never been in jail.'

"'But you look like a durned skunk who stole a pitchfork from me last year.'

"'Last year I was in California.'

"'Want to set my barn afire with your old pipe, do you?'

"'I don't smoke.'

"He stands and thinks a moment and then grudgingly tells me to take a seat on the kitchen doorsteps. The wife brings me out a stingy supper. There's an abundance on the table and part of it will go to the hogs, but she cuts me short, thinking to get ahead of me. I have cleared my plate in ten minutes and then I am set to work and buckle in until too dark to see longer. My bed is on the hay, and twice during the night the farmer comes out to see if I haven't stolen the shingles off the roof. In the morning if I want a meager breakfast I must put in a good hour's work for it. That means an hour and a half, and when I thank the farmer for his generosity and get ready to go on, he says:

"'Goin', eh? Well, that's the way with you durned critters. I've filled you up and lodged you, and now you want to play the sneak on me.'

"My friend, don't look for much sentiment in humanity these days, and don't look for a bit of it out in the country. You won't find it. The farmer can't afford it. He has been beaten by sharpers and squeezed by trusts until he has lost faith in everyone. He has buttermilk, but it's for sale, and before selling it to you he wants a certificate that you have never stolen a haystack or run away with a field of buckwheat."

It was hard to suspect that the clean-cut, energetic and rapid-fire talker was a tramp, but when he produced credentials from one end of the country to the other, and promised and threatened to produce them from Brazil, Hungary, New Zealand and the Klondike regions to prove his statement, it had to be credited.

"I'm A No. 1, the well-known hobo, tramp, author and traveler," he said, in a speed of diction that would have made the late lamented Pete Daily or Junie McCree green with envy. "Everywhere you've seen the marks 'A. No. 1,' on railroad fences, in railroad yards, or anywhere else, and you must have seen them if you've been over this country much; you'll know I've been there."

Hobo Looks Like Business Man.

A No. 1 had uttered this sentence in almost one breath, and was proceeding with such rapidity that it was impossible to follow his flow of ideas. He was a medium-sized but lithe and powerfully built man, attired in a neat tailor-made brown suit, with highly polished shoes, and looking something like a prosperous business man in a small way. Under his arm he carried a pair of blue overalls, and as he laid them on the table he remarked: "My traveling rig."

"Say, Jack, have some more nice hot coffee."

"Gee, Bill, I was jus' thinkin' o' that myself. Talk about great minds—"

"Come on, Jack, be game. Please have some more o' this nice turkey."

"Turkey! Great Scott! When have I heard that word before? Hain't it a country out in Asia some place?"

"No. Jack, turkey is vittles. You get it if you love your teacher. Better let me give you a few nice slivers off the breast."

"Say, Bill, on the dead, you're sure generous, all right, all right. Here you are, sharin' your last turkey."

"Old man, don't you know it's Thanksgivin' day? Don't you hear the bells ringin'? Do you reckon I'd dine alone on a day like this? No, siree, not much. Pass your plate fer some more o' this nice hot turkey, and some nice hot scolloped oysters, an' some o' these nice hot biscuits, an' some nice cranberry sauce, an'—"

"There you go. Bill, robbin' yourself. You won't have any left."

"O, there's plenty here. I like to see a man eat till he's plum foundered.... When I used to go home fer Thanksgivin' mother wasn't happy unless I et enough to stall a hired hand. If I didn't eat four helpin's of everything she thought I didn't like her cookin'. Had to try ever'thing—choc'late cake, turkey, sage dressin', hot gravy, mince pie, an'—"

"Say. Bill, you might gimme a piece o' that mince pie while you're about it. I got a nice, cozy little place fer a piece o' mince pie."

"Sure, Jack. I'll give you a whole quarter section. How do you like this celery? Awful hard to get good celery these days."

"Yep, celery and servants. One's hard to get an' the other's hard to keep."

"Say, Jack."

"What?"

"Shall we have our cigars and coffee here or in th' drawin' room?"

"O, let's have James bring 'em in th' drawin' room."

"Maybe I don't look like a tramp to you," he continued, "but I'm the genuine article, not the tomato-can or barrel-house bum type, but a real, up-to-date, twentieth-century tramp who respects his profession. Why am I a tramp? Because I like it. When did I start? When I was 11 years old. What is my name? None but myself knows it. I call myself A No. 1 because I'm an A. No. 1 tramp."

DID YA SEEN IT HEN?

NAW—WHAT WAS IT?

(HONK!)

He had a most convincing way with him and proceeded to spin off a tale of his adventures which differed somewhat from the ordinary story that the average tramp will tell you; how he had been hounded by the police, or released from jail and couldn't get work, or had bad luck in business, being crushed out by the heartless trusts until he had to tramp or starve, ending up with an appeal for the "price of a bed, mister."

"I've kept a record of the towns I've been in ever since I've been on the road," continued A. No. 1. "and up to date I've traveled 445,405 miles, and it's cost me just $7.61. Out of that distance there's been 92,000 miles of it by water. In 1906 I traveled 19,335 miles for 26 cents, and in the year 1907 I traveled between Stamford and West Haven, Conn. I jumped a street car and the conductor made me pay my fare. Oh, I always have a little money, and I'm honest, too, and that's saying a good deal for a tramp. Of course, once in a while I go hungry, but that's when I can't get a potato."

"Dese awnings is handy t'ings.

"Wot's de matter wit' fixin' one up on meself?

"It would be a good umbreller——

"An' if a cop bothered yer——

"Youse could let de water off de top.

"It makes a bully tent, or——

"A screen for yer fire.

"But when it's windy——

"Yer wanter look out cause——

"Yer might go sailin'!"

"Is that your staple article of diet?"

"No, I don't eat them except in restaurants," said A. No. 1, seriously. "Here is what I do with them." He pulled a good-sized tuber from his pocket, opened a large clasp knife and speedily had it peeled. Then he proceeded to cut and carve, and in about three minutes had fashioned a grotesque human face on the potato, the lines coarse, to be sure, but nevertheless well outlined.

Tramp An Artist.

"I make these and can carve anyone's face, and I can sell them anywhere from 25 cents to $2," said the tramp. "I'm the only man in this country who can do such work, and there's a demand for it everywhere I stop long enough to do it. I only stop to do it when I have to, so that I can get a little money for a meal and pay little expenses, although my living doesn't cost me much. Then, again, I never drink or smoke, so that item is cut off. They don't know so much about me in Chicago as in other places, because I never stopped here long enough to get acquainted; but they know me back East, all right, and out in the West."

Then A. No. 1 paused long enough to draw his breath and showed a medal certifying that in 1894 he had hoboed his way across the continent in eleven days and six hours in company with the representative of an Eastern paper and had been given $1,000 for doing it.

"That's how I first became famous," he said, "but I took good care of the money. I went and bought myself a lot in a graveyard at Cambridge Springs, Pa., so I could be buried respectably when I die, and I paid part of the premium on a sick benefit so that I can be taken care of in case I fall sick suddenly. I'm a member of the Chamber of Commerce of that town, too. I believe in looking out for A. No. 1, and that's why I've been so prosperous in the tramping way."

Then A. No. 1 launched into a long and picturesque description of the ways of tramps in general and himself in particular.

"I've always been particular about some things," said he, "and one is to keep clean. I find that in asking for a handout the man who looks up-to-date is the man who gets it. I always wear a suit of overalls when I'm tramping, for I find that it prevents me from being annoyed by watchmen in railroad yards. I am generally taken for an engineer. While I was down in a yard here in Chicago one man came and asked if I had a car lock, thinking I was a railroad man. I told him I did not have one and walked off. I have prevented a number of train wrecks, tramping about, probably at least one every year. The last one, as you see by this letter, was a few months ago. I saw a freight running along with a broken truck dragging. I jumped aboard and gave the warning, as you can see by this clipping. I have also been in a number of wrecks myself, and have never been injured. I always carry a little bottle of cyanide of potassium in my pocket so that in case I am ever fatally injured and in great agony I can take it and end all my trouble in about 20 seconds."

COLONIES FOR TRAMPS.

Teaching Vagrants a Trade.

The vagrancy problem, growing so great in every part of the country, has caused the authorities of Massachusetts to make a trial of the German plan of farm colonies for quasi-criminals. Vagrants are sent to such farms under indeterminate sentences, forced to support themselves by honest labor and made to stay there until they give evidence that upon release they will become useful and self-respecting citizens.

This is a modification of the penal colony idea, which is to send confirmed criminals to such a place for life. It is a great advance upon the plan in use in Chicago, which is to send vagrants to the Bridewell for a stipulated time and let them out again. While they are confined they are an expense to honest citizens, they acquire more extensive knowledge of crime, and when released they are less likely than they were beforehand to go to work and support themselves.

The Massachusetts scheme promises well, so far as it goes. The trouble with it is that in this climate a farm provides work for only a small part of the year. From November to March other work would have to be found for inmates, and up to this time society has failed to agree upon any that would be satisfactory.

Persons interested in charities and prison reforms are indorsing a plan for "tramp colonies," "forced colonies" and "free colonies." Into the one put criminals, or incurable tramps who are unwilling to work. The other would contain tramps who are unable to find work, neuropaths, cripples and those who are judged to be curable. Both kinds of colonies would be strictly agricultural, and their products would pay all expenses of operation and relieve the country of the enormous sums now required to be spent.

But why confine this plan, admirable and satisfactory as it is, to tramps? Why not extend it so as to include criminals? Criminals cost honest taxpayers millions of dollars every year. Why not reorganize a system of confinement in such a way as to compel criminals to support themselves?

But financial relief is not the only advantage. If habitual criminals—that is to say, criminals who have served two terms in the penitentiary, and then have committed another crime—were placed in a penal colony, remote from society and kept there for life, the moral tone of the country would at once be raised. The bad example of such men, which leads youths into crime, would be removed. The knowledge that there was no escape, that return was impossible, once an offender was sent to the penal colony, would deter many would-be criminals. The possibility that hardened criminals might propagate themselves would end.

The penal colony is the one rational solution of the crime problem, which becomes more difficult and menacing each year. It will be adopted, sooner or later.

THE YOUNG CRIMINAL
HOW HE IS BRED IN CHICAGO.

Chicago Raises Its Own Criminals.

There is material in this subject for earnest thought. Men under twenty-five are responsible for 75 per cent of crimes committed in Chicago, and 50 per cent of robberies and burglaries are done by boys under nineteen.

If that is true, then the idea many people have had that crimes in this city are mostly committed by a roving army of criminals, alien to Chicago and attracted hither by one cause or another, must be abandoned. If it is true, then Chicago itself is responsible for most crimes committed here. The men who are guilty have grown up in this environment, which has given them the evil impetus under which they act.

The thought that Chicago boys are the criminals who terrorize the city, rob houses and flats, hold up citizens on the streets and assault women is distressing. It was much pleasanter to attribute these crimes to desperate men from elsewhere, descending upon Chicago like raiders and leaving the city again as soon as possible. But that is a misconception. We ourselves have reared most of our criminals. They are a Chicago product. They have received their notions of right and wrong here among us. We are responsible for them.

What is the matter with Chicago? What are the elements in its life that breed criminals? What causes thousands of young boys to take up a criminal life? What must we do to change conditions?

These are questions that should engage every good citizen in anxious endeavor to find answers to them. If we are to reform criminals and lessen crime, we must first learn how to reform our own city.

Preventing Crime Better Than Cure.

Instead of attempting to prevent crime, we wait until after the crime is committed, then burden ourselves with the expense of apprehending, trying, convicting and imprisoning the criminal.

Our first duty is to adopt those measures that will prevent the further commission of crime.

Among the problems of Chicago there is no one, perhaps, that is more baffling than that of the vicious boy.

His years protect him from the rigors of the law, and it is a difficult matter to know just what to do with him.

There are all sorts of organizations formed for his aid and his reformation. There is the Juvenile Court, for instance, and there are innumerable homes and shelters, and still the problem is not solved. The boy looms large in the public eye these days, when he is sent to prison for life for murder and spends long years in durance for burglary and other serious crimes.

The story of the car-barn bandits and their tragic end is too recent to need more than a passing reference.

The car-barn bandits met an ignominious death on the gallows. Rudolph Gamof will spend the remainder of his years behind prison bars and it is quite likely Alfred Lafferty will know what hard work means in Pontiac or some other such institution before he is once more at liberty.

The End of the Gamin.

It will be remembered that little Gavroche, the gamin in "Les Miserables," came to his death on a barricade in the streets of Paris. It was during the fatal insurrection of 1830. The lad allied himself with the insurrectionists and found he was in his element. He did prodigies of valor and was robbing the dead bodies of the enemy of cartridges when he was shot. Even after he had been shot once and had fallen to the earth he raised himself to a sitting posture and began to sing a revolutionary song.

"He did not finish," says Hugo. "A second bullet from the same marksman stopped him short. This time he fell face downward on the pavement and moved no more. This grand little soul had taken flight."

Thus it is to be seen that Hugo has made a hero of this lad. But what of the little gamins that throng Chicago's streets? Will they find any such glorious end? It is not likely.

Jacob Leib is but 17 years old, and Alfred Lafferty, accused of twenty-three burglaries, is only 16. The John Worthy School is full of boys who have been gathered in by the police; the Junior Business Club, another reform organization, has a big membership, and the Juvenile Protective League is hard at work trying to do something to arrest the boy in his mad race to the reform school, prison and the penitentiary.

In looking about for the causes of crime among boys I found that poverty, liquor, divorce, yellow newspapers, cigarettes and bad company played important parts. Certain streets of Chicago are schools of crime, where boys are taught the rudiments of larceny and soon become adepts.

Hardened criminals use the more agile youths they find idle to do work they are unable to do. Certain sections of the city swarm with boys who are steeped in vice and crime and are in embryo the murderers, the burglars and the forgers of tomorrow.

Chicago Has Her Children.

Turning again to the pages of "Les Miserables," the story of Gavroche, the gamin of Paris, may easily be found, and the tale of this youth is not far different from that of the "kid" of Chicago. Here is what Victor Hugo says of Gavroche in that section of his great novel called "Marius": "This child was muffled up in a pair of man's trousers, but he did not get them from his father, and a woman's chemise, but he did not get it from his mother.

"Some people or other had clothed him in rags out of charity. Still he had a father and a mother. But his father did not think of him and his mother did not love him.

"He was one of those children most deserving of pity, among all; one of those who have father and mother and who are orphans nevertheless.

"This child never felt so well as when he was in the street. The pavements were less hard to him than his mother's heart.

"His parents had dispatched him into life with a kick. He simply took flight.

"He was a boisterous, pallid, nimble, wideawake, jeering lad, with a vicious but sickly air. He went and came, sang, played, scraped the gutters, stole a little, but like cats and sparrows. He had no shelter, no bread, no fire, no love. When these poor creatures grow to be men the millstones of the social order meet them and crush them, but so long as they are children they escape because of their smallness."

This is a true picture of the urchin of Chicago. These tiny atoms of humanity are sponges that absorb all the filth, the vice, the sin and the crime of the streets. They pick up all that is evil and nothing that is good. They are nurtured at the breast of poverty and viciousness, and are reared on a diet of depravity and degradation. There is nothing they do not know of crime and of wickedness. They are thoroughly saturated with everything that is evil, unprincipled and debased.

Is it any wonder, then, that the city brings forth an appalling annual crop of criminals? There may be heroes among the gamins in Chicago, but most of them are only heroes so long as they remain uncaught.

When they fall into the hands of the police and are taken to jail they are sorry-looking heroes.

And in the meantime the problem of the boy is still unsolved.

Graduate of the Streets.

This, then, is a good specimen of the kind of boy the schools of the street graduate. From these petty classes of crime they go to the high school, the prison, where they are further grounded in the knowledge of wickedness, and as like as not return to Chicago once more, full-fledged criminals, ready for anything. But this is only one of hundreds of such cases that are brought to the attention of the police and the public every year.

Most of the boys who come here are either orphans or half orphans. Drink has wrecked their homes, perhaps, and they are thrown out on the world to shift for themselves. If they get into bad company they soon make their appearance in the Juvenile Court or in jail.

10,000 Boys Worse Than Homeless.

A charitable worker who has come in touch with the young of the poorer districts, whence comes the tough lad, estimates that there are over 10,000 boys in Chicago who are worse than homeless. In other words, they are in direct line of becoming criminals or public charges, under the teaching of the trained criminal who makes the city his refuge.

Anderson, the stickup youth who operated extensively on the north side, choosing women for his victims, is but 23 years old. The men who relieved Alderman C. M. Foell at the point of a gun are less than 20, and thus it goes down the line.

They laugh at the efforts of the police to catch them. For the most part they live at home or with relatives, and in the neighborhoods are known as dissipated and tough boys, but not as hold-up men. With companions they sally out at night to isolated sections of the city where they know the police protection to be inadequate. They choose secluded spots offering the protection of darkness and lay in wait.

Then, with plenty of time deliberately to stop the victim and take from him valuables, they operate until it is time for the policeman to be in the vicinity, or until the profits of the expedition are sufficient to satisfy their spirit of revelry and riot.

Schools for Pickpockets.

There are numerous places in Chicago where boys are taught to become pickpockets. Poolrooms are gathering places for such young criminals and certain saloons of a low order harbor others. There is one saloon in West Madison street, for instance, not far from Canal street, where a lot of pickpockets are in the habit of congregating. They are young fellows for the most part and adepts in their particular field.

They find a sort of home in this saloon, where they can get a big glass of beer and a generous free lunch for 5 cents. They are in and out of this place day and night and manage to keep out of the clutches of the law through their sleekness and cleverness. There is one young man in there at least who has made a good living by forging orders for goods. So far he has escaped detection.

His method is to forge an order on some big business house and get certain goods. One day he got a lot of belting from a well-known firm on a forged order. He sold this later and realized $4.50 on the deal. This he spent freely in the saloon mentioned and made no bones of how he got the money. Others run out, snatch a pocketbook and make for cover. Later on they look up their cronies at the saloon and spend the money for beer and cheap whisky, and eat free lunch provided by the management.

There are numerous other such places, more especially on South Clark near Van Buren street. Some of the saloons in that section are alive with young fellows who prey upon the public for a living. They do not always beg their way, either, for they often take a run out and stick up somebody, filch a purse or break into a store. When one of them has been up to some devilment his companions can usually detect it, for he will come back and be very flush for a few hours, or a few days, all depending, of course, upon how much he was able to steal.

Modern Boys Are Gamblers.

But it is not only in the slums that the tendencies of the modern boy may be studied. In the more respectable parts of town, in the vicinity of schools and in the neighborhood of churches may be seen evidences of what the youth of today think play.

Time was when boys were content to play marbles. Some of them, of course, had the temerity to play for keeps. Others were taught it was wicked, and even at the risk of being called "sissy" refrained from disobeying their mothers. But now marbles are a thing of the past. As soon as spring comes boys want to shoot "craps." They want to play for money. They want to gamble.

A visit to almost any school playground during recess or the noon hour will convince any person that the modern boy is a very wise youth. His conversation is not a well of English pure and undefiled by any manner of means. In the first place, his profanity is something shocking, and, in the next place, his knowledge of the world and its wickedness is thorough.

There is nothing the modern schoolboy does not know. He is conversant with all sorts of vice and crime, even if he does not take an actual part in it. If this sort of thing obtains among schoolboys and youths of that class it is little wonder, then, that the boys of the slums are what they are. And the pictures is not overdrawn. The conversation of boys of ten and a dozen years will bring the blush of shame even to a grown man.

Just how to cure all this is a question that is bothering a good many people. Societies are being organized right and left. Homes for boys are being established, schools are being started and other efforts are being made to reclaim the delinquents. It has been found that good playgrounds in the tenement districts have been beneficial. The boy is exuberant. He must let out some of his animal spirits. If he has a good place in which to play he will not be half as apt to get into mischief.

Remedies Suggested by Some.

There are some who insist that moral suasion should be used at all times in an attempt to reform the juvenile. But this has been found to fall short in many instances in Chicago. Even the Juvenile Court, with all its benefits, is found to come somewhat short of doing everything for the vicious lad. It is found that boys who are herded together in penal institutions are inclined to leave such places much worse than when they entered. The bad boys dominate. The evil spreads and the good is suppressed. One bad boy is able to do much, while the influence of one good boy amounts to almost nothing.

Those who have made a study of the matter aver that the only true solution of the boy problem is individual work. The lad's characteristics must be studied, the conditions under which he has been living must be scrutinized and all the influences that have been brought to bear upon his particular case must be looked into. Under these circumstances it would take a reformer for every dozen boys, and so far the money has not been forthcoming to support so many reformers, for even a reformer must live. A good many of the delinquent youths of Chicago have been reared in squalid surroundings and have been nurtured in filth and unloveliness. They have been surrounded from babyhood by poverty, drunkenness and depravity. These boys take to crime as naturally as a duck does to water.

In order to reach boys and try to help them individually a movement is now on foot to form juvenile protective leagues in all parts of the city. One organization is now working in the vicinity of Halsted and Twenty-second streets to put a stop to race wars between school children. It is thought by some that this new movement will fill a long-needed want. It is admitted by those who have given the matter close study that something must be done.

The records of the Juvenile Court and the books of the John Worthy School emphatically bear out this contention.

Failure to Rule Children Makes Criminals.

What are you doing with your child's sense of right and wrong? Are you certain that you are not training a criminal, beginning with him at two years old? What is your boy at six years of age? Is he liar, thief—perhaps of insane ego as he was when he first toddled from his mother's arms? Inferentially President Roosevelt may have complimented you on the acquisition of a large family, but rather than this, has it occurred to you that the father and mother of one child, brought up in the light of wisdom, may be deliverers of mankind against the numerical inroads of the other type of parent?

Insanity is the mental condition out of which it is impossible for the person of any age to recognize the rights of others in any form. This insanity may be due wholly to the overdevelopment of the primary ego in the child. At one year old the infant may be a potential criminal of the worst type. It lies to the mother by screaming as if in pain in order that she may be brought to its bedside. If the adult should steal personal property as this babe steals food wilfully, the penitentiary would be his end. Angered, this same babe might attempt murder in babyhood, the spirit fostered by the same selfish intolerance that is filling jails and crowding gallows traps.

Respect Rights of Others.

Ego in the community life is the basis of all ill or all good, even to the dream of Utopia. The basis of all ill is the primary ego which is inseparable from the child until teaching has eliminated it. The basis of all good is that secondary ego which recognizes the rights of others.

Morality—good—virtue—all that is considered desirable in the best type of citizenship develop out of the community life. Even in the lower orders of animals a greater intelligence marks the creatures that live community existences than is to be seen in the isolated creatures. And this is from the development of the secondary ego which exacts rights for others.

The child has no knowledge of this secondary virtue save as it is taught it. The mother who, by responding out of a mistaken affection to every wail of the infant, encouraging all, no longer is susceptible to home influences in teaching the lesson. If this youth shall become entangled in the toils of the law and the mistaken parents intercede for him, gaining their ends in saving him from all punishment for his misdeeds, the boy receives through it only another selfish impetus toward more and greater offenses against society.

Reformatory After First Crime.

Here in this first offense of magnitude sufficient to call for the intervention of the law the parents have their opportunity, if only they would see. The place for such a youth at this period is a reformatory in which are sufficient educational facilities and the strictest discipline, which in justice visits the full penalty of community transgressions upon the head of the offender. In this reformatory environment the offending one finds none of the intercessions that may have been made for him in his home. In sterner fashion than he ever dreamed before he discovers that as he transgresses the community laws he receives a full penalty for the offense. Young enough, he may be led to discover that his transgressions are not worth while. Too old for these teachings, he becomes the persistent lawbreaker, or, on the other hand, degenerates to the asylum for the insane.

How intimately some of the fundamentals of training are associated with everyday lives in the home, and yet not recognized, is shown in the college life of the country. "Sophomore" is a class term in schools which needs interpreting. As a word, it is from the Greek, meaning "wise fool." Its application in the higher education is to the second-year "men"—to those students who are in that period of mental and physical stress after the age of fifteen is reached. In school parlance the word associates itself with the flamboyant youth who prates, and preaches, and struts, and lays down the law of all things as he sees it. Until twenty-five years old, indeed, the "Sophomoric" period is not fully passed.

Broadly stated for all men, it may be reiterated that in the parents' failure to enforce the subjection of the selfish first nature in the child lies the seed of his destruction. Encouraging the infant to wail again when nothing ails it is already catering to this criminal ego. Later, when a parent humors its every whim, he is stunting its growth toward good citizenship. And later still, in that crisis in physical life, between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five years, such a parent may awaken suddenly to a realization of the criminal which he has made.

Ego in the child mind prompts it to take instantly anything which it desires and which it can take. Unchecked by training, this primary ego grows with that upon which it feeds. At two years old the child should have had its lessons in the rights of others administered in any way in which it can be reached, but always in all justice. Justice in this lesson should be the first consideration. At six years of age these lessons are of special significance. It is an age in the development of the child when they may be taught with especial emphasis, with lasting results.

Guide Child of Fifteen Carefully.

At fifteen years old a new condition arises in the life of the child. At this time the race condition and the individual condition are at war. It is at the beginning of this period that an unbridled, untrained youth may take his first step toward crime, simply because the primary ego in him has not been set toward the background by the lessons of his duty toward the rights of others. Here it is that the heedless, ignorant parents may come to the first realization of what his own sins of omission have been.

If for any of the reasons suggested a youth's parents have not given him this necessary training in recognition of the rights of others, the age brings with it a condition making it impossible in ordinary cases for the parental conscience and home environment to avail.

For example, the fact that the boy becomes a thief, or burglar, indicates in any or many things that disregard for the rights of others which is destructive to all law and order. Properly handled in the home he would have been amenable to all of these conditions.

Raise the child like a plant, care for it as you do for the rarest specimen of vegetation, bring it up in an atmosphere of love. Child raising and plant development are akin.

If the child has but the smallest trace of some characteristic you desire to develop, take hold of it, care for it, surround it with proper conditions and it will change more certainly and readily than any plant quality.

Child Like a Plant.

The child in nature and processes of growth is essentially the same as the plant, only the child has a thousand strings instead of but a few, as has the plant.

Where one can produce one change for the betterment of the plant one can produce a thousand changes for the betterment of the child.

Surround the child with the proper environment to bring out certain qualities and the result is inevitable.

Working in the same way as one does with the plant, the development of the individual is practically unlimited.

Take the common daisy and train it and cultivate it by proper selection and environment until it has been increased in size, beauty and productiveness at least four hundred fold.

Do our educational methods do as much for our children? If not, where is the weakness?

Rear Child in Love.

Have the child reared for the first ten years of its life in the open, in close touch with nature, a barefoot boy with all that implies for physical stamina, but have him reared in love.

Take the little yellow California poppy and by selecting over and over again the qualities you wish to develop you have brought forth an orange poppy, a crimson poppy, a blue poppy. Cannot the same results be accomplished with the human being? Is not the child as responsive?

The Greatest Reform Movement of the Day Is the Chicago Juvenile Court.

The statistics show conclusively that the operation of the Juvenile Court is an advance step in the treatment of the young and helpless. It shows that not only are the dependents helpless, but that the delinquents are helpless to extricate themselves from a life of idleness and crime, for most criminals are made, not born, and the sooner time is devoted to changing the environments of the young, the sooner will be solved the problem of criminology.

Illinois in the Lead.

Various claims have been put forth from time to time as to the State which was the first to inaugurate the Juvenile Court idea.

The Juvenile Court Law went into effect July 1, 1899, and immediately the Juvenile Court was established. The Judges of the Circuit Court assigned one of their members to preside in the Juvenile Court.

The law gave the court jurisdiction of all dependent and delinquent children who are under seventeen and eighteen years of age, and defines dependents and delinquents. The word "dependent" shall mean any child who for any reason is destitute or homeless or abandoned, or dependent upon the public for support, or has not proper parental care or guardianship, or who habitually begs or receives alms, or who is found living in any house of ill-fame or with any vicious or disreputable persons, or whose home, by reason of neglect, cruelty or depravity on the part of its parents, guardian or other persons whose care it may be, is an unfit place for said child, and any child under the age of ten years who is found begging, peddling or selling any article, or singing or playing any musical instrument upon the street, or giving any public entertainment, or who accompanies or is used in aid of any person so doing.

The word "delinquent" shall mean any boy under seventeen or any girl under eighteen years of age who violates any law of this State or any city or village ordinance, or who is incorrigible, or who knowingly associates with thieves, vicious or immoral persons, or who is growing up in idleness or crime, or who knowingly frequents a house of ill-fame, or who knowingly patronizes any policy shop or place where any gaming device is or shall be operated.

A boy of seventeen is at a period of life where he is neither a boy nor a man. In many cases he has the mind of the boy and the impulses of the savage; his ideals are force, and his ambitions that of the wild, erratic western rover. Why the wise head and steady hand of the court and probation officer should be withdrawn at this period is not explainable on any reasonable theory.

It may be contended that a boy of seventeen years is too advanced in the knowledge of crime, but it can also be contended that the boy of fifteen years is too old in crime. Just what standard can be used to find the responsibility of a boy when measured by his age and physical proportions I am unable to discover. The only just standard is mental capacity. The Judge and probation officers, who are familiar with the boy, know his parents or guardians and his environments, should be allowed to exercise their judgment as to the moral responsibility of the boy, for there are many boys at fifteen who are more responsible for their acts than others at eighteen.

In many cases where children were committed to an institution the parents were placed under the care of a probation officer and the number of failures to reform the parent are few.

In cases where the parents are responsible for the dependency of existence those parents mean well, but they are unfitted for the duties they have assumed. The father thinks he has fulfilled his whole duty to his family when he provides food, shelter and clothing; the mother thinks she has fulfilled her whole duty when she does her house work and attends to the mending and washing. The children are masters of both parents before the parents take cognizance of the actual mental state of the child.

What should be done when the boy's home is the case of his delinquency is to provide for him a place where every home impulse would be developed and where industry and economy would be practiced. He should live in this home under the jurisdiction of the court until he has reached his eighteenth year.

What is said of the boys is equally true of the girls, and, in many cases, more important. Where the father is directly responsible for the downfall of the girl, the girl should not be allowed to return to her parental home.

WILES OF FORTUNE TELLING.

FORTUNE TELLERS HAVE EXISTED SINCE RECORDS OF EVENTS BEGAN TO BE KEPT.

Some of Their Methods—Charlatans Have a Great Hold on the Poorer Classes of Big Cities, Much Alike—Schools of Crime Run Full Blast—Silly and Ignorant People Undone by Vicious and Wide-Open Fraud.

War against the swindlers, impostors and blackmailers who operate in Chicago under the guise of clairvoyants, trance mediums, astro-psychics, palmists, magicians and fortune tellers, of whom there are about 1,500 in Chicago, should be driven out of the city and never allowed to return.

There exist in Chicago a horde of these brazen frauds, who ply their trade in the most open and unblushing manner. Few of them are other than organized schools for the propagation of crime, injustice and indecencies that would make an unjailed denizen of the red light district blush to even mention. We particularly refer to the army of fortune tellers, clairvoyants, Hindoo fakers, mediums, palmists, hypnotists and other skillful artists, whose sole occupation is to rob and mislead the superstitious, foolish and ignorant. The business is a paying industry, realizing, it is said, an enormous sum of money every month in Chicago, all of which is obtained by false pretenses.

Here is a very large field for police investigation. The practices of these people are of the most demoralizing tendency. Can there be anything worse than holding out love potions to married women to compel other women's husbands to love them? Those dens of iniquity offer their services and even actually aid in the procuring of abortions, and in showing how and where a good haul can be made by robbery or burglary. They bring together the depraved of both sexes. Many of them are purveyors to our brothels and stews.

They flaunt their profession, their "spiritual mysteries," brazenly in public in our busy thoroughfares, even invading some of our hotels. They are the hotbeds of vice and crime, from the robbing of orphans to the deflowering of innocent girls. They fall into "trances" and call up spirits from the vaults of heaven, or elsewhere, to testify to their truth, and in the turn-up of an ace of spades they see a "dark lady" or a "dark gentleman" who is pining for you, and furnish the address of either.

Famous Artist's Explanation of Scientific Ghost

Upper Row (left) Real Ghost. (right) Marx's Imitation.

Lower Row (left) Fake Ghost & drawings by von Marx Showing Make up

Panderers to Depravity.

Why these panderers to depravity in all its most hideous forms are permitted to continue their depredations among every rank of society without attracting the attention of "reformers" or the grand jury is something beyond the ken of human knowledge. And as a block is a small cityful in some parts of the town, the reading of palms, the casting of horoscopes and the looking into seeds of time through the backs of a greasy pack of thumb-marked, tear-stained cards is a profitable calling. Perhaps it should be explained that the tears are not shed by the prophets of the tenements, but by the patrons who go to the oracle to learn if they are to be dispossessed next month or if their ambitious children will sometime learn a little Yiddish, so that they may talk with their own parents in their own homes, are sources of information for the settlement workers and others who try to learn the hopes and fears and ambitions, the real life of such places. But the fortune tellers are the real custodians of the Ghetto's secrets. In their little back rooms, some of which are cluttered with the trash that suggests the occult to the believer, some as bare as the room of a lodger who has pawned the last stick of furniture, they hear confessions that court interpreters never have a chance to translate, and listen to tales of hard luck that are never told to the rabbis.

Chair with open back stuffed with disguises

Supposed "Medium" Sitting in the Chair.

Prognostications Are Vague.

But they don't use the mails to drum up trade, and they have no barkers at the doorsteps to cajole the credulous to step inside to learn what the future has in store for them. And so, in a legal sense, they are guilty of no fraud. They are not very serious frauds in any sense, for their tricks are harmless and their prognostications are vague as the weather predictions of an almanac and as probable as the sayings of the cart-tail orators who hold forth at the street corners in campaign time.

"About this time, look for cold winds, with some snow," sagely remarks the almanac writer, stringing the ten words of his prediction down the entire column of the month.

"In a few years," says the fortune teller, solemnly, "you will have good friends and more money than you have now."

"If you vote for this man," shrieks the cart-tail orator, "rents will be lower and the street cleaner and you will get jobs. The other ticket stands for graft and greed. Vote for it if you want your children to run in the streets, because there is no room for them in the schools."

Predicts Like a Spellbinder.

Like the spellbinder, the oracle frequently builds on the look-on-this-picture-and-then-on-that plan.

"This is a strong line," mumbles the palmist. "You will meet a man with blue eyes who will help you, but beware of a man with dark hair."

Sometimes the helper has light hair and the man to be avoided black eyes. But invariably the good friend of the future is blond and the devil is brunette. No seer would any more think of changing that color scheme than the writer of a melodrama would dare stage a villain who didn't have hair and mustache as black as night. That prediction is one of the traditions of the art, and no future has ever been complete without the dark and the light men or the dark and the light woman, as the case might be.

One of the most famous of fortune tellers, a woman, died suddenly. She had been reading cards in the same house for forty years, and on the day of her funeral her house was crowded with mourners, whose future she had foreseen with so much shrewdness that not one of the 200 or more men and women who filed by the coffin, to view the body had any fault to find with the services she had rendered. On the contrary, they compared notes, each trying to pay the best tribute to the dead by telling the most wonderful story of her predictions.

Warned of the Enemy.

"I was sitting right in this room at that table where the flowers are today," said one mourner, "and she said to me: 'You have an enemy. It is here on this card where you can see it plainly. But here is a friend, a tall, light man, who will come between you and your enemy. Put your trust in the tall, light man, but keep away from a dark man. There is a dark-haired woman who pretends to be your friend, but lies about you.'"

Compare that prediction of the oracle with this forecast of Daniel Defoe's famous deaf and dumb predictor, Duncan Campbell.

"To Mme. S——h W——d; I see but one misfortune after the year of 1725. A black man, pretty tall and fat, seems to wish you no good. Never tell your secrets to any such persons, and their malice cannot hurt you."

And that warning wasn't original when Mme. S——h W——d called at Duncan Campbell's lodging in London to learn what was what. No doubt it could be traced beyond Delphi. That's almost as safe a guess as to assume that Mme. S——h W——d was a Sarah Wood. She might have been a Wedd or a Weld, but that is doubtful.

Predictions Change Little.

So, although the seer of Randolph street and all the rest probably never heard of Duncan Campbell or Nostradamus, or of their predecessors at Delphi, they have kept the profession of forecasting remarkably free of innovations.

"This art of prediction," reads Defoe's Life and Adventures of Duncan Campbell, "is not attainable any otherwise than by these three ways. 1. It is done by the company of familiar spirits and genii, which are of two sorts (some good and some bad), who tell the gifted person the things, of which he informs other people. 2. It is performed by the second sight, which is very various and differs in most of the possessors, it being only a very little in some, very extensive and constant in others; beginning with some in their infancy and leaving them before they come to years, happening to others in a middle age, to others again in an old age that never had it before, and lasting only for a term of years, and now and then for a very short period of time; and in some intermitting, like fits, as it were, of vision that leave them for a time, and then return to be strong in them as ever; and it being in a manner hereditary in some families, whose children have it from their infancy (without intermission) to a great old age, and even to the time of their death, which they even foretell before it comes to pass, to a day—nay, even to an hour. 3. It is attained by the diligent study of the lawful part of the art of magic."

Make Enough to Retire.

Nowadays the prophets see to it that their miraculous power does not depart from them for any cause whatsoever until their own palms have been crossed with enough silver to enable them to retire in comfort. A certain Fatima who told fortunes on Madison street for years removed her card from the front window and disappeared altogether. She had bought a farm up the state, where she is now living and raising fancy breeds of poultry. There is no mortgage on the farm, and the hens have grain three times a day.

Just which one of Duncan Campbell's three methods a certain practitioner uses is not apparent, but he was one of the most noted and successful fortune tellers, and his men patrons set more store by what he said than in the promises of the district leaders.

Answers Questions for a Dollar.

He has reduced his business to a fine system, and all the questions that anybody could possibly think of are set down in a book with numbers opposite them. And these books, printed in Yiddish, English and German, anticipate all the hopes and fears of the tenements. The questions, all of a strong local flavor, are all answered by the fortune teller off-hand for $1, notwithstanding the fact that they present some of the toughest problems that the philanthropists who support the Educational Alliance and the settlement houses have been trying for years to solve. To illustrate, take this group of questions under the general classifications "Home and Children":

• "Can I learn English?"
• "Can I make my son or daughter learn Yiddish?"
• "Shall my children play with Christians?"

The book printed in Yiddish shows the most wear. It is divided under these heads: "Travel and Letters," "Love and Marriage," "Home and Children," "Business," "Work," "Luck and Losses."

Some of the questions make interesting reading and supplementary to the reports and papers of the various Hebrew charity organizations. One of the more recent of these reports gave statistics of desertions of wives, and "other women" was put down as the cause in a large number of cases.

Married Two Wives; What Will Happen?

The first question in the fortune tellers book under "Travel and Letters" is, "Where did my husband elope to?" The identity of the other woman in the case seems to be secondary in importance to the whereabouts of the deserter.

Under "Love and Marriage" are these questions, among many others:

• "Is my bride's dowry as big as she says it is?"
• "I have married two wives; what will happen?"
• "Shall I be married in court?"

Those who are in doubt about work have many questions to select from, the list starting off like this:

• "Shall I be a letter carrier?"
• "Shall I be a conductor?"
• "Shall I be a street cleaner?"
• "Shall I be an actor?"
• "Shall I be a lady-figure?"

A lady-figure is undoubtedly a cloak model.

Under "Business" some of the questions are:

• "Shall I remain a peddler or keep a store?"
• "Shall I sue my partner?"
• "Will my partner sue me?"
• "Shall I take my wife into the store as a partner?"
• "Shall I take my husband into the store as a partner?"
• "Shall I buy the goods?"
• "Will the bank fail?"

Under "Luck and Losses" are:

• "Was I robbed by friends or strangers?"
• "Does anybody look in my pockets nights?"
• "Will the landlord put me out?"

Roomful of Patrons.

The deviser of these books keeps his office in a rear tenement open from early morning till late at night, and there is generally a roomful of anxious patrons awaiting their turns.

At a single sitting, price $1, the man or woman who wants to know may select three questions. She puts the number corresponding to the questions on a slip of paper. The numbers do not run in regular order through the book or through any section of it.

The slip of paper is kept concealed by the questioner, and later on, when she is in the actual presence of the oracle, she writes those numbers again on another slip of paper, hidden from the fortune teller by a book cover. She also writes her name on two pieces of paper, which she places in two Bibles, opened at random by the fortune teller after she has named any three words she happens to see on the page.

Gets Pointers from Customer.

Then the books are closed, the soothsayer tells his customer what her name is (he is not often absolutely accurate in that part of the game), and then he begins to talk about the past and future in such a rambling, comprehensive way that he is almost sure to hit upon, directly or indirectly, the questions she has in mind. If he is too far off the trail he asks the woman from time to time if she understands him, and from her replies and questions gets a further clew as to just which three questions she had selected from the lists. Then the rest is simple.

SPOOKS RAIDED.
DETECTIVES WOOLDRIDGE AND BARRY DESCEND ON A WEST SIDE MEDIUM'S PLACE.

Lively Fight Before the Officers Succeed in Making Arrests—One of the Number Set Upon and Severely Beaten Before Aided—Spectators at the Seance Take Part and the Row Becomes General—Search of the Premises Reveals a Systematic Plan to Deceive—Anger of the Dupes Turns to Chagrin at the Revelations Made by the Police.

September 2, 1906, Catherine Nichols, Sarah Nichols and Jennie Nichols, 186 Sebor street, fake exponents of materialization of spirits and general "spook" grafters, were arrested, the seances raided and the game closed, by Detectives Wooldridge and Barry.

The scene of the raid was a brick building at 184 Sebor street, which is just east of Halsted and a block south of Harrison street.

The medium arrested was Miss Jennie Nichols, who, with her mother, Mrs. Catherine Nichols, and her sister, Sarah, had been gleaning a harvest of dollars from guillible residents, mostly of the West Side of the city, during the last two years. The establishment of the Nichols family occupies parts of two buildings, the mother and her two daughters living at 186 Sebor street, next door to 184. On the second floor of the latter address was located the hall which they used for their public seances.

Plans Are Well Laid.

The raid was made on the authority of a warrant which was applied for by Miss Muriel Miller, a young woman who was induced by the blandishments of other mediums to come to Chicago from her home in Portland, Ore. Miss Miller, who is employed in a barber shop in Clark street, is slightly deaf. She became interested in Spiritualism, and thus came in touch with the Nichols' outfit.

"SPIRIT PICTURES" OF WOMEN HELD AS BOGUS MEDIUMS, AND SCENE SHOWING FIGHT BETWEEN PUGILISTIC SPOOKS AND DETECTIVES.

CATHERINE Nichols, JENNIE Nichols

She had written to another Chicago medium, and received letters in answer signed "Professor Venazo."

It was explained to Miss Miller that the wonderful cures which the medium professed to be able to make were brought about while the patient was in a trance. In a letter which had been turned over to the police, "Professor Venazo," which is the name with which an accomplice of certain Chicago mediums signed such communications, explained that because of stress of business it would be impossible to undertake to cure Miss Miller of her deafness unless she was prepared to put up at least $50 in cash.

The letter stated that if she would send to "Professor Venazo" $100 the medium would undertake to go to her home and cure her there. If she did not wish to pay that much money she could come to Chicago, pay the medium $50, and be cured "while in a trance."

Detectives Barry and David Carroll were detailed to assist Wooldridge in serving the warrants and making the raid.

Detectives Attend Service.

Barry and Carroll planned to effect an entrance to the "seance." Inspector Revere was informed and asked to give a detail of six officers, who, headed by Detective Wooldridge, went to the hall on Sebor street. Barry and Carroll had preceded them and succeeded in convincing Jennie Nichols, who was the master of ceremonies, that they were interested in spiritualism and desired to witness the materializations.

When they went to the hall, Detective Barry walked in and found twenty-eight or thirty others there before him. Jennie Nichols was busy arranging the spectators in seats. She took a great deal of care about placing them. Carroll and Barry entered and signed their names on the register. This was a book in which everyone who is admitted to a seance is requested to place his name and place of residence. Barry signed as "John Woods"; address, 142 Ashland boulevard.

Calling Up the Spirits.

When the seance opened Jennie Nichols conducted those who were in the hall through the main room and the one at the rear, before which the curtain was placed. Everything was all right, so far as Detectives Barry and Carroll could see. The cabinet from which the spirits were to come stood across one corner, and opposite it was a door leading into one of the two rooms in the rear of the hall.

They examined the cabinet and the rooms carefully, but found everything all right. After they had been through everything the doors were locked and they returned to their seats, Miss Nichols making some other changes in the arrangements of the seats, and then the place was darkened.

When the place had been made almost entirely dark, Jennie Nichols, the medium, began pacing back and forth in front of the curtain. She rubbed her hands over her head and eyes a number of times, and began to chant: "Come, O queen, O queen."

When she began to call on the "queen" the spectators began to get excited. Most of them appeared to be thoroughly familiar with the proceedings, and several of them said: "Oh, I hope it's the king."

Then the medium pulled a cord which was attached to a light enclosed in a sheet-iron case, the one small opening of which was covered with several thicknesses of green tissue paper. When she pulled the string the room became darker than ever.

Spirits Begin to Move.

Before she began her incantations the medium had requested everyone present not to cross their feet, and to try to assist her to bring the spirits before them. She said that it would probably not be possible to bring a spirit for everybody, but that if all helped her, the spirits wanted by many in the audience would surely appear.

Then she asked them all to sing "Nearer, My God, to Thee," which they did, and after a few more passes over her temples and in front of her eyes the spirit began to move. The detectives could see it, and they began to think they had been wrong in thinking there was nothing in spiritualism. It certainly appeared real. First one form would glide back and forth in front of the curtain, then an entirely different one would appear. Altogether there were spirits of about ten men and children materialized.

As the apparitions moved slowly in front of the curtain, in the spectral light which made it impossible to detect more than a faint outline of the form, women rushed forward crying out that it was their husband, or their child, that they saw. They stretched out their hands to clasp the forms of their departed, but Jennie Nichols and her male assistant would take them by their hands and tell them they must not touch the spirit or it would fade away. You could get within six inches of the figures, and peer into the faces as they passed to and fro, but everyone was restrained from attempting to touch them. In the ghostly light of the room the closest inspection could not determine that the figures were frauds, so clever were they disguised.

Keys Up the Spectators.

While the detectives were waiting for the materialization, a woman they knew entered the room. Barry put his handkerchief up to his face for fear she would recognize him. They wanted to know what was the matter with him, and Barry said that he guessed he had something in his eye. They wanted to take it out, and he had to put his handkerchief away. He thought he was discovered, but the woman, Mrs. Ella Hoobler, 319 West Madison street, said nothing about him. After they had arrested the Nichols woman, Mrs. Hoobler told Barry she had recognized him when she first entered the room, but she thought he was "bug" in the game, and said nothing.

After about ten materializations of husbands and children had keyed the spectators up to a high pitch, Mrs. Hoobler asked for the spirit of her daughter, Helen. In a few minutes the figure of a young girl, clad in white from head to foot, appeared before the curtain.

"Oh, Helen, my Helen!" Mrs. Hoobler exclaimed, rushing to the apparition. "Oh, mamma!" came the answer in a shrill falsetto voice.

Medium's Paraphernalia Seized by Police in Raid.

Jennie Nichols and the big assistant seized Mrs. Hoobler's hands just as she was about to clasp what she believed to be the spirit of her daughter in her arms.

"You must not touch it," Jennie Nichols told her, "or the spirit will go away."

The poor, almost frantic woman kneeled before the apparition. Barry thought it was time to get busy, and he whispered softly to Carroll: "Watch out, there's going to be a pinch." Then he threw on the flashlight and whistled for the squad outside to come in.

Just as he did this the "spook" in front of him looked so realistic that for the life of him he couldn't decide whether he was going up against a real spirit or not. But he took a chance and grabbed for it. Even when he had hold of it and knew it must be flesh and blood, it seemed so slimy, with the white stuff rubbed over it, that he felt his hair rising.

Just about that time the medium outfit got busy. The big man who had been helping Jennie Nichols hold the hands of the people who were trying to grab the spirits of their dead hit Barry over the head with some sort of a club that knocked him to the floor. Jennie Nichols put out the light entirely, grabbed Barry's flashlight and began pounding him over the head with it. They went to the floor in a rough and tumble scrimmage, the crowd on top of them, yelling and screaming.

In the next room Carroll was busy, too. He got hold of Mrs. Catherine Nichols, the mother, who had been helping with the show, and he was beset by spectators who were incensed because the seance had been broken up.

Wooldridge Takes a Hand.

When Detective Wooldridge and his detail broke down the doors of the hall and made their entrance into the place it was pitch dark, and they had to strike matches before they could separate the combatants.

After a semblance of order had been restored in the place the premises were searched, and a most astounding outfit of disguises discovered. Before this development the spectators, who had been held in the place, were very angry with the officers, saying that they had been attending the seances for the last two years; that they knew Jennie Nichols as a medium had shown them the spirits of their dead. When the officers produced Sarah Nichols, to whom Detective Barry had held when he seized the "spook," they discovered that she had been wearing a pair of sandal slippers with felt five inches thick for soles; a pair of men's black trousers and the white shroud and painted picture face of a young girl.

Attached to a pole in front of her was a paper head, around which was a white shroud four feet in length. Those in attendance believed this image to be the spirit of a believer's dead relative. The "medium" had "spook" images of men, women and children, and could produce them as circumstances demanded. The light was turned up, and the contemptible imposition on credulity was exposed to twenty-six dupes, who had been paying $1 apiece for the privilege of attending meetings of the "spook" grafters for years. It was the greatest exposé of "spooks" that has been made in many years. A wagon load of masks, wigs, false whiskers, tin horns, gowns with safety pins in them, skulls and skeletons with cross-bones to match, were seized.

Women Refuse to Talk.

At the station the women refused to talk. Sarah Nichols, the "spook," had donned a house dress before she was taken to the station. Jennie Nichols, the "medium," was dressed in a neat black gown of rich material. The mother appeared in a black skirt and a white shirtwaist. The latter is a gray-haired woman apparently about 50 years old. She wept copiously. Sarah Nichols also wept. In the scrimmage after the arrest her ear had been injured, and it was bleeding when the trio was booked at the station.

Jennie Nichols was the most composed of all. She held a palm leaf fan in front of her face and above it twinkled a pair of shrewd blue eyes. As she and her relatives were led from the private room at Harrison street she even laughed, although her mother and her sister were in tears, and her victims were denouncing her for having robbed them, through their credulity, of hundreds of dollars, which many of them could ill afford to lose.

Wooldridge Makes Ghost Walk in Police Court.

A "spook" sat on the bench with Justice Prindiville. He made ghosts walk and graveyards yawn.

The "spook" was Detective Clifton R. Wooldridge.

When Miss Sarah Nichols, "the ghost," Miss Jennie Nichols, "the trance medium," and Mrs. Catherine Nichols, mother of the other two known as the "overseer," appeared in court to answer to charges of obtaining money by false pretenses through spiritualistic seances, Detective Wooldridge crowded to the center of the stage.

He bore a great board, on which were tacked white shrouds, grinning skulls and cross-bones, the costume of an Indian, and other instruments of the medium's trade.

"For the benefit of the public at large," he said, addressing the court, "I ask permission to expose the methods of these fake spiritualists."

The permission was given, and "Spook" Wooldridge took the wool sack.

"Spook" Wooldridge Demonstrates.

He lit the punk with which the mediums were wont to light up the skull. He burned incense. He put on a white gown.

"This is Carrie's garment," he said, pointing to where "Ghost" Carrie, twenty-four years old and buxom, stood.

He went through the whole performance, save the grease paint. He started to daub his face with the stuff, which gave a ghostly hue, when the justice interrupted:

"You needn't dirty your face, Friend Spook. You've scored your points already." The "Spook" had, indeed.

Despite the exposures, many women and a few men who had come to hear the cases, expressed their devotion to the persons arrested and to the "cause."

They finally became so demonstrative that Justice Prindiville ordered the court room cleared of the "devotees."

"This is not a matinee, a spiritualists' meeting or a circus," said the Justice. "Let the devotees meet in the outer hall."

Fifty women, of all ages and many conditions of life, stood with mouths wide open and eyes bulging as Wooldridge went through his performance. They were the victims of the Nichols women.

Jennie Nichols and Sarah Nichols were fined $100 each.

Arrest South Side Mediums.

To conclude the record of the day, Detectives Wooldridge and Barry, accompanied by two officers from the Cottage Grove station, visited a seance given by Clarence A. Beverly and Mrs. M. Dixon at Arlington hall, Thirty-first street and Indiana avenue. The officers bought tickets and awaited the performance. After a lecture on psychic problems by "Dr." Beverly and a programme of music rendered by children, "Dr." Dixon took the rostrum and went through a series of clairvoyant discoveries.

Among the things which she professed to predict while in her "trance" was a prognostication which had not a little to do with the developments of the evening. After she had pointed out a number of persons in the audience and told what they had done or should do, she discovered Wooldridge and singled him out.

"I see a man with glasses who has his hands crossed over his knees," she said. "I am governed by the spirit of John Googan, an Irishman. He gives you a message," pointing to Wooldridge, "and says that whatever John orders must be done."

At this Wooldridge, arising from his seat, advanced to the rostrum.

Officer Serves Papers.

"John Collins, chief of police, says, Mrs. Dixon, that I am to put you under arrest under a state warrant charging you with receiving money by a confidence game. I also have a warrant charging the same offense against Clarence A. Beverly. Dr. Beverly, please come forth."

Dr. Beverly presented himself, and both he and Mrs. Dixon were taken to Harrison street, where strenuous efforts on their behalf on the part of "Dr." Harry H. Tobias, spiritual mental healer, with offices at 118 East Thirty-third street, and others, failed to procure them bonds.

The arrest of Beverly and Mrs. Dixon was made on a warrant signed by Miss Miller, who had entered into correspondence with them from her home in Portland, Ore. The fee in Chicago was to have been $50, according to the letters she received from the mediums, as in the preceding instance. She borrowed money to come to Chicago, and had but $25 to pay the "healers." When she received no benefit from their treatment she made complaint and was threatened with violence, she alleges. Thereupon she laid her case before Chief Collins, resulting in the raid and the closing up of this place.

Thus did the sleuth a-sleuthing vanquish the ubiquitous "spook," the "ghost," the "spirit," the re-incarnation, the Mahatma, the "sending," and all the hosts of the immaterial world, whose immaterialism was being converted into good hard material cash by the producers of the evanescent shapes from beyond the veil.

Thus did Clifton R. Wooldridge and his able assistants make "spooking" a dangerous business in Chicago.

WIFE OR GALLOWS?
PREFERS HANGING TO LIVING WITH HIS WIFE.

Hugo Devel prefers being hanged to living with his wife.

Unable to escape her in any other way, lacking the courage or nerve to kill himself, and shuddering at the idea of life imprisonment with the woman he had promised to love and cherish, he confessed to a murder he did not commit, and was ready to go upon the gallows or to penal servitude for life in the stead of the real murderer.

He'd rather be hanged than live with his wife.

Now he is free, and miserable, and in his home at Lubeck, in Germany. He is envying Franz Holz, who is awaiting the gallows.

Devel admits sadly that he had a double purpose in wanting to die on the gallows. First, that he would escape his wife; and, second, that, by being hanged he would make it improbable that any other man should meet his fate—not his fate on the gallows, but his fate in having wedded Frau Devel.

The case, which was cleared up by the Hamburg police, furnished a problem that would have defied the cunning of Sherlock Holmes and all his kindred analysts. Briefly stated, the facts in the case, which is the strangest one ever given to a detective department to solve, are these:

Woman Was Robbed and Murdered.

A few months ago a certain Frau Gimble, of Munich, was cruelly murdered by a man. The evident motive of the deed was robbery, and that the crime was planned and premeditated there was sufficient evidence. Every clew and circumstance pointed to Franz Holz. He was known to have been at or near the scene of the murder shortly before its commission. He knew the woman, and had knowledge that she kept a considerable sum of money in her home. He was known to have been without money for days prior to the murder, and immediately after the deed, and before the body was discovered, he had appeared with a quantity of money, made some purchases, bought drinks for acquaintances, and then disappeared.

The police were on his trail within a short time after the finding of the body of the murdered woman. Holz had fled toward Berlin, and a warning was sent in all directions, containing descriptions of the fugitive.

The awfulness of the deed attracted the more attention because of the locality and the ruthless and cruel manner of its commission. While the police were making a rapid search for the fugitive Holz, Hugo Devel, a well-to-do tradesman in Lubeck, surrendered himself to the police of his home town and confessed that he, and not Holz, had committed the crime. Devel had been in Hamburg at the time the crime was committed. His confession, which destroyed all the evidence and all the theories implicating Holz, staggered the detectives.

Devel Confesses to the Crime.

Although apparently saved from a remarkable network of circumstantial evidence, and no longer wanted for the murder of the Gimble woman, the German police reasoned that Holz, if he had not fled because of that crime, must have fled because of some other crime. So the department, which has a name a couple of feet long, which in English would mean, "the department for finding out everything about everybody," kept on the trail.

Meantime the police of Hamburg got possession of Devel and examined him. From the first they were uneasy. He confessed that he murdered the woman to get her money, and beyond that would not tell anything. It is not customary for the police to insist that a man who confesses that he is guilty of murder shall prove it, but there were facts known to the police which made them wonder how it was possible for Devel to have killed the woman. They used the common police methods, and made the prisoner talk. The more he talked the more apparent it became to the police that he was innocent, although he still claimed vehemently that he, and he alone, killed the Gimble woman.

Police Learn He is Not Guilty.

Some of his statements were ridiculous. For instance, he did not know what quarter of the city the woman lived in. He did not know how she had been murdered. He said he climbed through a window and killed the woman. When pressed, he said the window was the dining-room window. In view of the fact that she was killed while working in a little open, outdoor kitchen when murdered, the police became satisfied that Devel was not the man, and ordered the pursuit of Holz resumed by all departments.

The case even then was a remarkable one, and one which would have defied any theoretical detective. The police proved that it was impossible that Devel should be confessing in order to shield Holz—first, because he never knew Holz; and second, because the police had informed him that the real murderer was in custody, in order to discover a reason for his confession. It was suspected that Devel was partly insane and seeking notoriety. Everything in his life refuted that idea. He was a quiet, orderly citizen, who seldom read newspapers, and who neither was interested in crime or criminals. He owned a small business in Lubeck, attended to it strictly, drank little, and apparently was as sane as any one.

Searching for Motive of Confession.

The case worried the police officials. The absolute lack of reason for Devel's confession stimulated their curiosity. He was held in custody for weeks, and then the police gave up in despair, and, as Holz had been arrested and had confessed to everything, the release of Devel was ordered. The order of release proved the move that revealed the truth. When he was told that he was free to return home, Devel broke down and begged the police to keep him in prison, to hang him, to poison him, but not to send him home.

In his agony he confessed that the only reason he confessed the murder was that he desired to get hanged, and that he preferred hanging to life with his wife.

The hard-hearted police set him free—literally threw him out of the prison, and he returned to his wife in Lubeck. The following day he resumed charge of his business.

An English correspondent visited Devel in his shop and made certain inquiries of him regarding the case. As the hanging editor would say, "the condemned man was nervous." He was afraid his wife would read what he said, but the correspondent finally got him to tell.

"I desired to be hung," said Devel, mournfully. "Life is not worth the living, and with my wife it is worse than death. If I had been hanged no other man would marry my wife, and I would save them from my fate. Many times have I planned to kill myself to escape her. That is sin, and I lack the bravery to kill myself, besides. If they will not hang me I must continue to live with my wife."

Devel states, among other things, that these are the chief grievances against married life in general, and his wife in particular:

• She was slender, and became fat and strong.
• She was beautiful, and became ugly and coarse.
• She was tender, and grew hard.
• She was loving, and grew virulent.
• She grew whiskers on her chin.
• She called him "pig."
• She wore untidy clothes, and her hair was unkempt.
• She refused to give him beer.
• Her breath smelled of onions and of garlic.
• She threw hot soup upon him.
• She continually upbraided him because there were no children.
• She scolded him in the presence of neighbors.
• She refused to permit him to bring his friends home.
• She came into his store and scolded him.
• She accused him of infidelity.
• She disturbed him when he slept in the garden on Sundays.
• She made him cook his own dinners.
• She spilled his beer when he drank quietly with friends.
• She told tales about him among the neighbors, and injured his business.
• She served his sausages and his soup cold, and sometimes did not have his meals for him when he came home.
• She did not make the beds nor clean the house.
• She took cards out of his skat deck.
• She talked continually, and scolded him for everything or nothing.
• She opened the windows when he closed them, and closed them when he opened them.
• She poured water into his shoes while he slept.
• She cut off his dachshund's tail.

These things, he said, made him prefer to be hanged to living with her.

Incidentally Holz, who is awaiting execution, expresses an earnest desire to trade places with Herr Devel.

There is no accounting for tastes.

A CLEVER SHOPLIFTER.
DETECTIVE WOOLDRIDGE FINDS A FAIR CRIMINAL.

While passing through the Fair, one of the largest retail dry goods establishments in Chicago, Detective Wooldridge noticed one of the cleverest shoplifters that ever operated in Chicago, Bertha Lebecke, known as "Fainting Bertha."

She was standing in front of the handkerchief counter, where her actions attracted Wooldridge's attention, and he concluded to watch her. She called the girl's attention to something on the shelf and as she turned to get it Bertha's hand reached out and took a half dozen expensive lace handkerchiefs, which disappeared in the folds of her skirt.

The act was performed so quickly and with such cleverness that it would have gone unnoticed unless one were looking right at her and saw her take the handkerchiefs.

From the handkerchief counter she went to the drug department, where she secured several bottles of perfume. As she was leaving this counter she met a Central detective who had arrested her before for the same offense. He stopped a few yards from her to make some trifling purchases. She, thinking he was watching her, left the store.

From the Fair she went to Siegel-Cooper's, another large dry goods store several blocks away. Detective Wooldridge followed her. She was seen to go from counter to counter, and from each one she succeeded in getting some article.

As she was leaving the store she was placed under arrest by Detective Wooldridge and taken to the Police Station.

When she was arrested she fainted, and a great crowd gathered around her, and many of the women cried and implored Detective Wooldridge not to arrest her, but he would not be moved by any of them to let her go free.