A year ago in Chicago there was witnessed a spectacle which, for utter brutality and blindness of heart, I hope never to see duplicated.  Chicago had for some time been in the midst of a vigorous crusade against organized vice.  Too long neglected by the authorities and the public, the so-called levee districts of the city had fallen into the hands of grafting police officials, who, working with the lowest of degraded of men, had created an open and most brazen vice syndicate.  Without going into details, it is enough to say that conditions finally became so scandalous that all Chicago rose in horror and rebellion.  The police department was thoroughly overhauled, and a new chief appointed who undertook in all earnestness to suppress the worst features of the system.  He had no new weapons it is true, and he probably had no notion that he could make any impression on the evil of prostitution.  But he might have restored external decency and order, and he might possibly have prepared the way for some scientific examination of the problem.  But a thing happened:  one of those shocking blunders we too often let happen.  The efforts of the chief of police were set back, because of that blunder, no one can tell how far.  A new hysteria of vice and disorder dates from the hour the blunder was made.

In October of 1909 “Gypsy” Smith, a noted evangelical preacher of the itinerant order, was holding revival meetings in an armory on the South Side of Chicago.  With mistaken zeal this man announced that he was going down into the South Side Levee and with one effort would reclaim every one of the wretched inhabitants.  He invited his immense congregation to follow him there, and assist in the greatest crusade against vice the world had ever seen.

In Chicago, as in other cities, no procession or parade is allowed to march without permission from police headquarters.  To the sorrow of all those who believed that reform had really begun, Chief of Police Steward issued a permit to “Gypsy” Smith.  It is probable that the chief feared the effect of a refusal.  To lift up the fallen has ever been one of the functions of religious bodies.  Before issuing the permit, it is said that he used all his powers of persuasion against the parade.

By orders from headquarters every house in the district was closed, shuttered, and pitch dark on the night of the parade.  Every door was locked, and the most complete silence reigned within.  It was into a city of silence that the procession of nearly five thousand men, women, and young people of both sexes marched on that October midnight.  In the glare of red fire and flaming torches, to the confused blare of many Salvation Army brass bands, the quavering of hymn tunes, including the classic, “Where Is My Wandering Boy To-night,” and the constant explosion of photographers’ flashlights, the long procession stumbled and jostled its way through streets that gave back for answer darkness and silence.