The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1901-10-13
ONE CURSE OF GOLD
OPIUM JOINTS SEEM TO THRIVE
IN THE TRAIL OF GOLD
DISCOVERY
SEATTLE A DoPER's REFUGE
Wrecks Upon Humanity's Ocean,
Disappointed in Alaska, Drift =
Back to Seattle to Dream a.
in Dens.


gold in Klondike. Seattle has become
one of the greatest opium consuming
cities of the United States, says the Gin
clnnati Enquirer. 1t has been made the
mobilized center for host of checkered
lives. From the opening of navigation
in March until its close in the fall there
is a constant stream of humanity whose
previous record is marked with disap-
pointment and failure and has now
assumed a degree of desperation in the
erdeavOr to amass fortune in the hap
hazardous fashion. Seattle, being the
nearest point of departure to the gold
fields and the first landing place on the
return, receives the swollen tide of adj
venture and wreckage coming and go
ing.
The early boom days of any Western
town are always sure to attract horde
of characters who come eager to throw
a winning card in the game of fortune.
From friends and relatives is secured
coin barely sufficient for the venture.
and upon arrival at the western coast
ports their funds are very low, and IN
many case insufficient to carry the gold
seekers to the fields. They cannot go
further west in tramp life and they
cannot return without help from home.
During these Klondike rushes hundreds
of this unfortunate class reach Seattle,
where they remain to enlist in the
army of unfortunates now grown alarms
ingly large. Their ranks are further
increased as the months roll on by re-
cruits from the Yukon gold fields, VINO
land dead broke on Uncle Sans soil,
Here some remain permanently, others
until they can secure transportation te
their homes.
Without money, friends or opportunir
ties for employment these stranded seeks
ers of fortune naturally turn to gang
bling dens and other haunts of vice
Those who have become adept, or have
been long adept, in the consultations OF
rum, drink deeper with their few ref
naming dollars, and gamble recklessly
in the vain hope that a turn of luck may
may come their way. Losses at the
gambling table yet add to wretchedness
and opium is resorted to, which trans-
ports the victim into Elysian fields Of
happiness and makes them forget their
troubles
1t so happens that in the matter OF
topography and loose laws Seattle offers
an easy go-as-you-pleas paradise to the
opium eater. Here he can secure every-
thing that adds to his squalor and degraT
dation No such restrictions are placed
on the sale of narcotics here as in the
Eastern cities. Any slave to morphine
or opium, shivering in his rags, can obs
tain the drugs if he can beg or borrow
the price, from any drug store at any
time of the day or night. The traffic
too, is further aided by extensive smugs
Cling of opium between Victoria and
Vancouver, at the English mouth of the
sound, and the American cities. Uncle
Sam puts a high duty on opium. buE
John Bull admits it free to his Pacific
coast towns. So there are smugglers of
high and low degree, Americans and
Cinnamon, men and women.
Scores Of methods adn OIL in 4IIA
smuggling process. Women conceal the
profitable contraband in their corsets and
belts and frequently in the scooped-out
heels of high French shoes Many haiR-
breadth escapes are made from the
clutches of the law. Much freemasonTy
is practiced among opium dealers, WHO
manage to keep their narcotics in circlt-
1ation. Feeble attempts to curb the sale
or prohibit it altogether have been MAIDS
from time to time with no effect.
This condition of things, with the Klon-r
dixie boom, has endowed Seattle with a
monster colony of opium and morphine
wrecks. The dope fend, as he is styled,
is dead to all responsibility and no filth
can frighten him away. The money he
can manage to scrape together by hook
or crook is too precious to be squandered7
in meals, room rent and on laundries. All
is invested in the darling drug. The only
real need is a haunt to hide or a hole to-
burrow in out of the rain and damp while
the sleep of stupefaction is on. The dirt
and rags, the listless eye, the sunken,
cheeks, the palid lip and restless, trem-l
bling. furtive gait speak for themselves.
A large part of the shore front of
Southern and Eastern Seattle is marked
by an assortment of abandoned novels
and subterranean dens in which opium
eaters sleep off their stupors. These are
the only homes they know, and here they
congregate like wharf rats. Men and
women lost to all self-respect colonize
these homes in groups of four to ten,
according to the size of the accommoda-
tons. Upon the floors are strewn beds of
straw, and when daylight fails candle
in a bottle casts a sickly glow over the
dreamers. Very often the candle is want
ing and the flash of match steers an
occupant to his proper bunk
This part of Seattle originally went up
in a hurry. Any cheap covering an
sWered the pioneers. AS the respectable
element moved up town rows upon rows
of cheap shacks were discarded They
are weatherbeaten now, dirty and dilapi-
dated long since condemned and closed
as human habitations by order of the
board OF health. Yet every one of them
is occupied by one of these dope fiend'
groups. At all hours of the night they
gathered in for their narcotic slumbers,
irrespective of sex. The catacombS are
of different architecture from these over
head novels. Acres of this part of Sc
attic extend on pilings over the waters
of the sound, and the whole region is
known as the Tide Flats Beneath this
wooden boarding parts of the land lie
beyond the reach of the high tide under
the SuperStructure of wooden pavements
where the carts and trolIeys rumble by,
are the reservations of the opium fiendS
Exposed on all SIDES but protected over
head, here every night can be seen stray
glers of the catacomb colony doing on
heaps of straw.
These abodes can be reached by rick
ETY. stairs leading down from the wooden
streets to the cellars of saloons in this
tcrderioin of the town.
The little wooden shacks in the early
days Were traps of every conceivable
crime, and many of them are no better
today. Beneath them, at a distance of
| twenty to forty feet, lie the deep waters
of Puget sound, that play about the pill
ings with the ebb and flow of the tides
Many a poor miner or Seafaring man.
indiscreet enough to display his money,
has been drugged in these vile dens, a
trapdoor lifted and a splash was the
last heard of him.
AS to how many human persons COM
prise this howell and catacomb colony III
Seattle is very difficult to give an accu-
rate figure, but hundreds exist month
after month, in these depths of degrada-
ton, and their numbers are constantly
Klondike tide. More expensive are the
catacombs of the dope fiends in San
francisco, largely owing to a much sim
liar ccnhguration Of the land, full of c ev-
ices, sharp bluffs and ravines, where
burrowing holes have been followed out
I outcasts who have no other place to lay
their heads. In proportion to it's size
Seattle is more than holding it's own
against its California rival in the num-