ng to expect from the concrete proposals that were
made. The millennial goal was one thing; the immediate method quite
another. For ideals, a pious phrase; in practice, the police.

Are we not told that "if the citizens cannot depend upon the men
appointed to protect their property, and to maintain order, then chaos
and disorganization resulting in vice and crime must follow?" Yet of all
the reeds that civilization leans upon, surely the police is the
frailest. Anyone who has had the smallest experience of municipal
politics knows that the corruption of the police is directly
proportionate to the severity of the taboos it is asked to enforce. Tom
Johnson saw this as Mayor of Cleveland; he knew that strict law
enforcement against saloons, brothels, and gambling houses would not stop
vice, but would corrupt the police. I recommend the recent spectacle in
New York where the most sensational raider of gambling houses has turned
out to be in crooked alliance with the gamblers. And I suggest as a hint
that the Commission's recommendations enforced for one year will lay the
foundation of an organized system of blackmail and "protection," secrecy
and underground chicanery, the like of which Chicago has not yet seen.
But the Commission need only have read its own report, have studied its
own cases. There is an illuminating chapter on "The Social Evil and the
Police." In the summary, the Commission says that "officers on the beat
are bold and open in their neglect of duty, drinking in saloons while in
uniform, ignoring the solicitations by prostitutes in rear rooms and on
the streets, selling tickets at dances frequented by professional and
semi-professional prostitutes; protecting 'cadets,' prostitutes and
saloon-keepers of disorderly places."

Some suspicion that the police could not carry the burden of suppressing
the social evil must have dawned on the Commission.

It felt the need of re-enforcement. Hence the special morals police
squad; hence the investigation of the police of one district by the
police from another; and hence, in type as black as that of the ideal
itself and directly beneath it, the call for "the appointment of a morals
commission" and "the establishment of a morals court." Now this
commission consists of the Health Officer, a physician and three citizens
who serve without pay. It is appointed by the Mayor and approved by the
City Council. Its business is to prosecute vice and to help enforce the
law.