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Originally published as:

Chicago Tribune.  "Here’s Invitation To Jail." Chicago Tribune 8 October 1911: 3.

Chicago Tribune

HERE’S INVITATION TO JAIL
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"The Living Church" Asks for Martyrs to Vice Report.
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IT DEFIES U.S. OFFICIALS
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Episcopal Organ Wants Volunteers to "Call Bluff."
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Martyrs who are willing to risk imprisonment in a federal penitentiary in the cause of the Chicago vice report are called for in this week’s issues of the Living Church, a Chicago publication of the Episcopal church.

The paper published a synopsis of the report and challenges the district attorney to indict it.

"All that is needed now is a few martyrs," says the publication. "We earnestly hope that these men and women of Chicago will demand that the district attorney proceed against them for criminal violations of the federal statutes, as alleged by the postal authorities; that every one of them will refuse to pay a fine and compel the federal authorities to send them to prison. So will the issue be met.

Postal Authorities Defied

"Every copy of the vice report that has already been sent through the mails has involved the senders in a penitentiary offense — maximum penalty: five years. The editor of the Living Church hereby avows that he has received a copy, and will testify to that effect upon the witness stand.

"Probably at least a thousand have been mailed: penalty 5,000 years of penal servitude for each of the commission. Let the postal authorities now show the courage of their convictions. Let them send all the members of the vice commission to jail for their offense.

"And then we shall ask that every decent paper and every decent magazine in the United States, secular and religious, will publish a synopsis of that report on Chicago vice. Let every editor demand that he be prosecuted and refuse to pay a fine.

Plan Not Very Popular

"Let us all, who demand the right to fight against the corruption and vice of our cities, go to jail together, if these Chicago men and women have violated the law."

Members of the vice commission when interviewed last night did not appear to receive the paper’s suggestion with enthusiasm.

"We have other plans under way at present," said one. "If they fail, it is possible that we will try the extreme challenge — we’ll call the postoffice department’s bluff."

 

 

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