It is estimated that the liquor sold by such girls nets a profit to the trade of two hundred and fifty per cent. over and above the girl’s own commission.  Chicago made at least one honest effort to divorce the sale of liquor from prostitution, when the superintendent of police last year ruled that no liquor should be sold in any disreputable house.  The difficulty of enforcing such an order is greatly increased because such houses, as well as the questionable dance halls, commonly obtain a special permit to sell liquor under a federal license, which is not only cheaper than the saloon license obtained from the city, but has the added advantage to the holder that he can sell after one o’clock in the morning, at which time the city closes all saloons.

The aggregate annual profit of the two hundred and thirty-six disorderly saloons recently investigated in Chicago by the Vice Commission was $4,307,000.  This profit on the sale of liquor can be traced all along the line in connection with the white slave traffic and is no less disastrous from the point of view of young men than of the girls.  Even a slight exhilaration from alcohol relaxes the moral sense and throws a sentimental or adventurous glamor over an aspect of life from which a decent young man would ordinarily recoil, and its continued use stimulates the senses at the very moment when the intellectual and moral inhibitions are lessened.  May we not conclude that both chastity and self-restraint are more firmly established in the modern city than we realize, when the white slave traders find it necessary both forcibly to detain their victims and to ply young men with alcohol that they may profit thereby?  General Bingham, who as Police Commissioner of New York certainly knew whereof he spoke, says:  “There is not enough depravity in human nature to keep alive this very large business.  The immorality of women and the brutishness of men have to be persuaded, coaxed and constantly stimulated in order to keep the social evil in its present state of business prosperity.”

We may soberly hope that some of the experiments made by governmental and municipal authorities to control and regulate the sale of liquor will at last meet with such a measure of success that the existence of public prostitution, deprived of its artificial stimulus of alcohol, will in the end be imperilled.  The Chicago Vice Commission has made a series of valuable suggestions for the regulation of saloons and for the separation of the sale of liquor from dance halls and from all other places known as recruiting grounds for the white slave traffic.  There is still need for a much wider and more thorough education of the public in regard to the historic connection between commercialized vice and alcoholism, of the close relation between politics and the liquor interests, behind which the social evil so often entrenches itself.