Blackfoot news. (Blackfoot, Idaho) 1891-1902, 1900-02-24
THE CHICAGO EVEE"
BLACK PLAGUE SPOT WHERE
CRIMINALS REIGN.
WYstched "Hypos" Who Herd Like swine
in Abandoned Structures, and Beg
the Pittsnes That sustsins ThsM-To
Ne Purified.

fAg sore has been fastened for more
than forty years. 1t has fed upon the
city and has waxed strong. For more
than q generation 1t has been looked |
upon with complacency and liberation |
as . thing which must be, and now |
the officiAl surgeons of Chicago declare
they are about to cut 1t on. root it out |
and destroy it. and loave the spot IT |
has SO long infested strong, healthy
and fair to look upon. This canker,
which feeble efforts extended over
many years have failed to cure or to
restrain in Its development. is the
''levee" 1t Is that black plague spot,
more than mile long and more than
half mile wide. which Chicago has
turned over to the outcast, the scarlet
woman and all the army OF thieves
and satellites which come in her train.
Now II has been placed under the ban.
The demands of commerce are imper-
alive that tho valuable ground occu-
pied BY these dives and bagnios and
tho motley crew OF outcasts, male and
female, who have made the place
stencil in the nostrils OF Chicago must
60 elsewhere.
The 'levee" is almost Is old As Chi
eAgo. Gray-haired men Of today, who
went to Chicago as striplings in eager
/ quest OF fortune in the days before the
| civil war, found the plague spot In the
1 very heart OF the ramshackle wooden
town, which was wiped out by the
great fire of IL. 1t was not where 1t
4 is now, along Clark street and what
was once called Fourth avenue, but
over to the west, on what ia now Fifth
avenue, but was then called Wells
street. south as we'll as north OF the
bridge, they found the resort OF vice,
misery and crime.
Then came the great fire, which
swept the whole outfit away in night
In the ruins of some OF those dens
many a lost soul shrieked In vain Tor
mercy, reused from q drunken slumber
by the rushing flames. Many an out
cast was incinerated on that fateful
night on the ''levee" drunk and hope
less. But the devastation OF the flames
carried away only the dens and broth
els. When the fiery breath had passed
away the denizens who were awake
that night and had ned In terror to
places of safety, crept back to the ruins
of their old haunts and again took pos
session of them. The old red curtains
the old painted faces. the vice and
crime which are as old rs the human
family, came back again.
Probably nowhere else In the worlt
. are so many characters OF divers kinds
Kathered together rs In the foul, Ill
smelling, unclean district OF thu
"levee." There are hundreds OF peo
pie gathered there nightly in out O
the way lofts and dens who make theil
living by their wits in other parts o
the city and flock there under cover
darkness to revel In the cheap delight
) of bad whisky. cocaine or morphine
E BeFxars, confidence men. mendicants
: thieves of every grade from the porel
S climber to the pickpocket spend thei
a leisure hours sitting around tn
"1evee" saloons. When the police o
a the Harrison street station want"
: certain crook they go to the 'levee
: and get him. II he is not there to
!. night. he is up to some crooked worl
+ and will be there tomorrow night Blu
l. they get him.
4 In two barns not far from Harriso
street. dirty, abandoned old structures
which the owners do not waste enoug
I thought on to destroy, live about fort
= "hypos." They are the tremblin
, wretches, male and female. who n
o given over body and soul to the use
cocaine or morphine in hypodermic IL
J. jections. They are so numerous In u
e "levee" that they are regarded rs
l. class In themselves by the police, An
called TYPOS" They live sole
!. for the pleasure of shooting" the DIT
~ into their emaciated bodies. They b