Sin in the Second City (32 page)

Sarah just
had
to move to Chicago, Mollie urged. The lights, the theater, the White City amusement park with its electric tower and water chutes and dance performances featuring, if Sarah could imagine, a fifteen-foot snake—there was nothing else quite like it. Sarah finally agreed; the big city wouldn’t be so overwhelming with a close friend by her side.

As Mollie had promised, Sarah’s ticket was waiting for her, already paid in full. She boarded the train, coming over the Wabash line. In Chicago, Mollie greeted her at Union Station. The two friends clasped arms and kissed cheeks, and Mollie waved over a hansom. They traveled south for eighteen blocks, and Mollie asked to stop at 21st Street and Armour Avenue.

Sarah had taken care that morning, selected a fine hat and dress, and now she stood on this horrid corner, breathing in the putrid perfume of varnish from a nearby factory, the faint scent of unwashed skin. A large brown building squatted before them, brick along the bottom half and clapboard along the top, with jutting awnings and curtains pulled tight across windows. Several men loitered by the curb, hands thrust inside pockets. It was 8:30 in the morning, and the metal doorknob was still cool inside her palm.

A man sat on a settee in the front room. He was elegant, dressed in a suit and silk top hat. He seemed to be waiting for them.

“I realized that Van Bever’s place was a house of prostitution after I got there,” Sarah said, “but I did not come to Chicago for that purpose…. I had never been in a sporting house before.”

Van Bever had told Mollie what to say in her telegram to Sarah and escorted her down to the Negro housekeeper to make sure it was mailed. He had instructed Mollie’s husband, Mike, to make sure they got “that Jew girl, Sarah Joseph, and bring her back.”

Now, Mollie introduced her friend to her boss.

“You’re a good-looking girl,” Van Bever said to Sarah, “and ought to make a good living.”

“I want to go home,” Sarah said. She begged him for a train ticket.

“You’ll like it,” Van Bever answered, “when you get used to it.”

I
n the midst of giving speeches, trying cases, and lobbying governors, Roe found his office thrown into turmoil. His boss, State’s Attorney John Wayman, indicted Edward McCann, the respected police captain who had called in the Mona Marshall case. McCann was accused of accepting graft in the West Side Levee, ruled by the Frank brothers, Julius and Louis. Several reformers sided with McCann, including Jane Addams.

“I believe Inspector McCann is one of the most honest and efficient police officials that has ever had charge of this district,” she said. “It hardly seems probable to me that a man who has done so much in the fight against the white slave traffic should be guilty of accepting money from these same people.”

All told, Wayman’s graft investigation, from McCann to rank-and-file officers to underworld cretins, had resulted in 105 indictments involving more than three hundred people—the greatest mass of indictments ever returned in one day in Cook County. It was a mess, but at least it was timely.

Roe was getting out.

His friend Adolph Kraus of B’nai B’rith and the Commercial Club of Chicago had contacted him and requested a meeting. Would he, they asked, consider resigning so he could prosecute panders full-time? The former group was more troubled than ever about Jewish involvement in white slavery, especially with the Frank brothers further shaming their race in the McCann debacle. To add one more stab of insult, both men were members of Kalverier synagogue, a prominent congregation in Chicago. “The revelations made at the McCann trial gave the world the wrong impression of the Jews and their morality as a race,” said one of Kraus’s associates. “The world is apt to believe that the Jews condone such things.”

The Commercial Club, for its part, had just commissioned Daniel Burnham’s “Plan of Chicago,” a visionary ideal of the architect’s City Beautiful movement: a permanent ribbon of green space around the city perimeter; a neoclassical museum for the center of Grant Park; a chain of Venetian-style canals and lagoons linking to the site of his 1893 World’s Fair. Chicago should be known for its ambition and indefatigable civic spirit, not as the national hub for the trade in white girls.

Roe tendered his resignation letter to State’s Attorney Wayman on August 21, 1909, and spoke with the press eleven days later, lying about both his reasons for quitting and his future plans.

“There is nothing political or personal about my resignation,” he said. “I simply believe I have served the public long enough, and as I can return to private practice and make a great deal more money, I believe I should do so…. In addition to this, I have recently been selected as dean of the Chicago Business Law School, and that will take some of my time lecturing at night.”

That fib would have to suffice during the final preparations. Roe had an initial pledge of $50,000, a sizable portion of which came from the
Tribune,
to fund his organization. He decided on a slogan: “Protect the Girl!” He hired a private secretary to work with him at home—he could not bring himself to leave the one he’d shared with his mother—and assembled a personal staff of detectives to concentrate exclusively on white slavery.

The detectives soon happened upon their first major break. One of them intercepted a letter written by a girl named Mollie Hart, intended for her husband, Mike, warning him to change his plans because he was being watched:

Well, dear…if you get any girls coming up here you had better leave and send them a few days later or either get off at Hinsdale and put them in a hotel for a few days, or else don’t bother with the girls. Mr. M. Van Bever said so you had better do something and don’t fool too long and get the boss sore at you….

Burn every letter and telegram you receive from here. Leave the girls behind…. The girls will have to wait a few days but you comeback at once alone.

Roe’s detectives knew that Mike Hart would never read this warning, and the boy’s capture would expose Van Bever’s extensive white slavery ring. If girls were being sold and shipped across state lines, then President Taft would want to take immediate action.

DISPATCH
FROM THE U.S.
IMMIGRATION COMMISSION

Roe’s rogues’ gallery of panders.

Doubtless the importers and pimps have a wide acquaintance among themselves, and doubtless in many instances they have rather close business relations with one another; and inasmuch as all are criminals anyone escaping arrest can naturally appeal to another anywhere in the country for protection. Even a pimp whom he has never seen will give him shelter if he comes with a proper introduction. There are two organizations of importance, one French, the other Jewish, although as organizations they do not import. Apparently they hate each other; but their members would naturally join forces against the common enemy.

SO MANY
NICE YOUNG MEN

Gypsy Smith’s parade through the Levee.

We have struck a blow for Jesus.

—E
VANGELIST
G
YPSY
S
MITH

T
he summer of 1909 had been a mixed one for Bell. Edward McCann’s arrest and trial was a devastating blow to the battle against white slavery. He and Dean Sumner had both testified on the police captain’s behalf and were deeply saddened by his conviction. Perhaps Clifford Roe was right when he said that “it is not always the fault of the broom that it does not sweep clean, but sometimes the person who holds the broom is to blame.” How could Captain McCann remain honest within such a broken system?

Mary had fallen ill, too, and was recuperating at Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan. He missed her desperately but insisted that she stay put until she was well enough to travel. Late at night and in between meetings, he scribbled letters to his wife, equal parts update and endearment. “Now rest as long as you choose,” he wrote in his ornate, hurried script, “though we need your head here.” He tried for levity, suggesting he might address his letters to “Bitter Creek.”

His wife’s absence became a roving presence in the other parts of his life, a persistent reminder of visions unfulfilled. He’d left India thirteen years ago, but the knowledge of what he couldn’t accomplish there remained a bruise too fresh to touch. His sermons felt listless and rote, hazy around the edges, words without a message. “Gracious God,” he scrawled on a Midnight Mission pamphlet, “Please put this work on its feet, or please lift me up out of it.”