The silver messenger. (Challis, Idaho) 1890-1912, 1900-04-24
THE CHICAG0"LEVEE"
BLACK PLAQUE SPOT WHERE
CRIMINALS REIGN.
wretched "Hypos" VINO Herd Like Swine
In Abandoned Structures, and Beg
the Pittance That sustains Them-To
BE Purified.

Upon the heart of Chicago a Tester
than forty years. 1t has fed upon the
city and has waxed strong. For 0
than a generation it has been looked
upon with complacency and federation
as a thing which must be, and 0
the official surgeons of Chicago declare
they are about to cut it on, root it out
and destroy it, and leave the spot 1t
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 it's development, is the
'levee." 1t is that black plague spot,
more than a mile long and more than
half a 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 it has been placed. under the ban.
The demands OF commerce are imper-
alive that the valuable ground occu-
pied by these dives and bagnios and
the motley crew of outcasts, male and
female, who have made the place a
stencil in the nostrils of Chicago must
go elsewhere.
The "leVee" is almost as old as Chi
cago. Gray-haired men Of today, who
went to Chicago as striplings in eager
quest of fortune i n the days before the
civil war, found the plague spot in the
very heart Of the ramshackle wooden
town, which was wiped out by the
great fire of II. 1t was not where IL
is now, along Clark street and what
was once called Fourth avenue, but
over to the west, on what is now Filth
avenue, but was then called Wells
street, south as well 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 a night
In the ruins If some of those dens
many a lost soul shrieked in vain foI
mercy, reused from a drunken slumbeI
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
tl6s NnCn Tic AClJ OlCahA hAA RA
away the denizens who were awake
that night and had fed in terror t.
places of safety, crept back to the ruini
of their old haunts and again took pos
session of them. The old red curtains
the old painted faces, the vice am
crime which are as old as the human
family, came back again.
Probably nowhere else in the worl'
: are SO many characters of divers kind
gathered together as in the foul. i'll
smelling, unclean district of tn
: ~'levee." There are hundreds OF pee
pie gathered there nightly in out Q
, the way lofts and lens who make thei
living by their wits in other parts G
the city and flock there under c
darkness to revel in the cheap delight
5 of bad whisky, cocaine or morphine
e Beggars. confidence men, mendicantl
thieves of every grade from The pore
$ climber to the pickpocket spend thei
n leisure hours sitting around th
y '1eyee'' saloons. When the police {
y the Harrison street station want"
= certain crook they go to the "levee
+ and get him. If he is not there tt
/, night. he is up to some crooked worl
t and will be there tomorrow night. Br
l. they get him.
# In two barns not far from Harriso
street, dirty, abandoned old structure
q which the owners do not waste enoug
: thought on to destroy, live about fort
"hypos." They are the tremblir
? wretches, male and female, who al
given over body and soul to the use
cocaine or morphine in hypodermic il
4 jections. They are SO numerous in Il
e 'levee" that they are regarded as
Il class in themselves by the police. al
called TYPOS" They live sole
~ for the pleasure of shooting" the dr.
~ into their emaciated bodies. They b.