Chicago Tribune
HARRISON FAVORS VICE
SEGREGATION
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Mayor Elect Doubts Wisdom of Commission’s Recommendation on This.
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REAL COST IS $60,000,000.
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Dean Sumner Says Report Purposely Dwarfed Chicago’s Annual Outlay.
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Mayor-elect Harrison declared himself last night as being only lukewarm in favor of that part of the report of the vice commission which recommended the abolition of segregated vice districts in Chicago.
"Although I have not had a chance to read and digest the report, and therefore do not care to comment on it at this time," the mayor-elect said, "I do not believe it is a mooted question as to whether the abolition of segregated vice districts results in the repression of the social evil or in scattering it widespread through the respectable residence districts of the city. I would be extremely careful about taking any radical steps which might spread the vicious denizens of the segregated districts among the section of the city now occupied by decent homes.
Commission Cut Figures
While Mayor-Elect Harrison was expressing this advance opinion on the report, Dean Walter T. Sumner of the Cathedral of SS Peter and Paul, chairman of the vice commission, was revealing the fact that the reported $15, 000,000 annual toll of Chicago to vice was in reality $60,000,000.
The discrepancy between the report and the actual figures, Dean Sumner explained, was due to the fact that the commission accepted the police estimate of 1,108 disreputables, while in reality the city harbors more than 4,000.
It was to avoid any possible charge of sensationalism that the members of the commission decided to base their figures on those reported by the police.
Expects National Movement
"It looks to the commission as if a nationwide agitation will be stirred by this report," commented Dean Sumner. "Following the appointment of the Chicago body a similar commission was chosen by mayor of Minneapolis, and Mayor Gaynor of New York was requested to do likewise.
One Chicago businessman was so enthusiastic over the report that he told a commission member that he "would rather have his name signed to it than to the Declaration of Independence."
Rumors that members of the commission were hopelessly divided on the question of segregation vs abolition of resorts was emphatically denied by the chairman.
"By an early agreement no vote was taken on the matter of recommendations until the last week," said he. "When the time came to vote there was only one report submitted, not a word of debate, and it was unanimously adopted."
