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.
[Illustration: (Children outside junk shop)]
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.
[Illustration: (DO IT NOW
scenario)]
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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: Chair with open back stuffed with
disguises]
[Illustration: (Drawing of costumes)]
[Illustration:
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.
[Illustration: "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. |
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