The Pensacola journal., 1920-04-05
WAVE IS
GREATEST EVER
Assistant District Attorney
SAYS Half Million Dollars
Is Spent Nightly.
SMALL SHOPS ARE DENS
Sudden Increase in Number of
Pastry" Houses Laid to
Spread of Vice Evil.
BY n. p. BURTON.

New York, April New York city
is awakening to the astounding fact
that the greatest orgy of vice in the
entire history of the civilized world
has been developing here since the
ending of the war.
The vast increase in individual
wealth is held to be largely respon-
sible. High1y-placed police officials
are involved. it is charged.
Thousands of young men and
women from good homes and visitors
from other American cities are vicrsms.
Recent revelations are stirring to
action newly organized private COM
mittees of citizens, as we'll as the dis
trict attorneys office, and it is likely
that the findings, soon to be made
public, will amaze the whole country
These, we'll informed persons told
me today, will show that vice condi-
tions that prevailed in ancient Rome
and medieval capitals of decadence,
will not compare with conditions in
the New York of today, either as to
extent or kind.
James f. Smith. assistant district
attorney of New York, now in charge
of the official probe to be made OF
Manhattan's underworld, publicly an
nounces that there are engaged for i'm
moral ends here at least 5000 call
flats" over a hundred dance halls,
several hundred new and attractive
French pastry restaurants and coffee
houses, and hundreds of taxicabs.
From 100000 upward is spent
nightly, Smith says, in these call flats.
Other trimmings of a single might
out" such as taxi, food and show bills
estimate.
Not one of the vice resorts is in
any way officially recognized as being
openly engaged in vice traffic, and SO
has first to be discovered by secret
agents before being proceeded against.
Vice, in other words sums up
Smith, has with the coming of pro-
hibition, left the disreputable places
where it was easily apprehended and
so controlled and has put in it's ap-
pearance, covertly, in respectable
haunts.
In this way it suddenly becomes
far harder to discover, and, at a bound,
also tremendously increases the area
it infects, because it now garners in
countless persons of both sexes, who
would have never come in contact with
vice had it remained where it origin
ated.'
There has been a tremendous and
mysterious increase in the number of
coffe houses and small flashily-
equipped restaurants specializing in
"snacks' of French pastry and hot
drinks in the last three months
These shops, in the most expensive
section of Manhattan. have sprung up
like mushrooms over night and are
all doing a rushing business. At many
tables one can always see girls sitting
alone and the walters often volunteer.
She is all right
Taxicabs make it a business of
acquainted with the women who fire.
quent the shops. They viii drive their
fares through untraveled streets for
a special tip.
So great has been the increase of
the taxicab vice since the new year
that section ss7 of the criminal code
has just been revised to places of
vice
1t is the 5000 .tcaII-fIats. however.
that are going to prove the hardest
places TO get" say the officials
These form the backbone of the new
immense tenderloin that has suddenly
spread out over half of Manhattan.
Wire tapping is the device being used
by the detectives TO locate these
In overhearing telephone .conversa-