Chicago Tribune
BOARD JOINS WAR TO
SUPPRESS VICE
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Busse Commission, with Dean Sumner at Head, Plans Campaign Soon.
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MORALS CENSORS URGED.
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The Rev. M. P. Boynton Wants Section of Old Report Put Into Operation.
The vice commission originally name by former Mayor Busse and subsequently reorganized as a private enterprise with Dean W. T. Sumner still at the head, will begin an active campaign for the suppression of vice in Chicago as soon as national and local elections are out of the way.
Former District Attorney Edwin W. Sims, a member of the commission, said yesterday the first meeting to outline the proposed campaign will be called this week by Dean Sumner.
Define Campaign Plan Soon.
"The plans have already been discussed," he admitted, "and will be gone into further at the meeting of the committee this week, when it is expected some definite campaign will be mapped out."
Neither Mr. Sims nor other members of the commission would discuss the plans of the commission in detail.
The personnel of the commission is the same as that which made its recommendations to the old city council, then being automatically discharged. It has continued its investigation in a quite way in preparedness for the campaign about to be launched.
Just what form this campaign will take largely is a subject of surmise, but it is known that the commission proposes to make it the most thorough vice crusade in the history of Chicago.
Pastor Urges Morals Board.
Adoption of one feature of the commission’s recommendations — that of the appointment of a morals commission — was strongly urged on the city council by the Rev. M. P. Boynton of the Lexington Avenue Baptist church in an evening sermon at his church on the subject "What Should the City Council Do?"
Quoting the commission’s report on the subject of the morals commission, the Rev. Mr. Boynton said.
"This answers the question of what shall the city do. Let the council pass this ordinance creating a morals commission. Let the mayor appoint upon this morals commission the most competent men of the city and give them full power to suppress all the vice that can be suppressed.
"Certainly it is possible to stop forever the most flagrant form of this social evil. We at once can end the commercialized business. We can stop the police protection vice heretofore has had. We can remove from under the dark suspicion of grafting upon vice the whole police department of this city, thus keeping the criminals on the run."
Preliminary to this answer to the question he himself had asked, the Rev. Mr. Boynton referred to the special committee of nine appointed by the may to decide, "What shall we do with vice in Chicago ?"
Cites Ministers’ Opinion
Dr. Boynton cited his arguments against segregation the count adopted by the Baptist ministers’ conference some time ago, in which, among other things, it was said;
"Let us understand what is meant by the term segregation. If it were socially what it is medically we might have some patience with it. But segregation of vice in this city is not a quarantine of the social evil, but an exploitation of it.
"Segregation is a police policy by executive order for the recognition and control of institutional prostitution.
"Segregation is recognition of a frightful evil in a manner to commend the wrong to the loose moraled and the untutored, thus drawing many more thousands of youth into sin that would be the case under a policy that enforced the law against all such evil businesses."
Clifford G. Roe of the American vigilance committee will appear before the special council vice committee at its session tomorrow morning, and the Rev. Elmer L. Williams, pastor of Grace Methodist church, who made a personal vice investigation on the north side, has accepted an invitation from Mayor Harrison to acquaint him with the result of his investigation, the time of the visit to be set by the mayor.
Calls Segregation Unfair
Dr. A. W. Harris, president of Northwestern university and a member of the vice commission, during the evening declared segregation of the vice districts unfair to the children of the poor people forced to live in those neighborhoods. He spoke at the South Park Methodist Episcopal church, Thirty-third street and South Park boulevard.
"You’ll find little children continually in contact with the inmates of house in those districts," said Dr. Harris, "and as a result they become accustomed to the life. The well to do classes who favor abolition of segregated districts can take no better step than to try to relieve the helpless poor ones from these evil surroundings."
Failure of parents and teachers to warn the children of evils was denounced by Dr. Harris.
Blames Evil Saloons
Dr. Harris asserted saloons and public dance halls were the stepping stones to social evil.
"Many saloons are entrances to bawdy house," he asserted. "Eighty per cent of the the profit in resorts comes from the sale of liquor. You’ll notice, if you investigate, that at the public dance halls the dances are short and the intermissions long. That enables the keepers of the halls to sell liquor, and allows other immoral occurrences.
"Laws prohibiting these evils and segregated districts amount to nothing. The policemen in these parts really make the laws. Policemen become part of the bribery and graft system, because they must accept money or they wouldn’t try to act as the entire government."
Dr. Harris said vice in Chicago was becoming an organized business.
"Men alone are back of these horrible conditions, which we must try to stamp out," he exclaimed. "They are forming an organization that must be abolished."
Dr. Harris lamented that hundreds of girls in Chicago are forced into lives of shame because of the wages they receive.
