raid; and also it was necessary to have a way of getting
a girl out of reach in case of an emergency. Thousands
of them came to Chicago answering advertisements for
"servants" and "factory hands," and found themselves
trapped by fake employment agencies, and locked up in a
bawdy-house. It was generally enough to take all their
clothes away from them; but sometimes they would have
to be "doped" and kept prisoners for weeks; and mean~
time their parents might be telegraphing the police, and
even coming on to see why nothing was done. Occasion~
ally there was no way of satisfying them but to let them
search the place to which the girl had been traced.

For his help in this little job, the bartender received
twenty out of the hundred and thirty odd dollars that the
pair secured; and naturally this put them on friendly
terms with him, and a few days later he introduced them
to a little "sheeny" named Goldberger, one of the "run~
ners" of the "sporting-house" where they had been
hidden. After a few drinks Goldberger began, with some
hesitation, to narrate how he had had a quarrel over his
best girl with a professional "card-sharp," who had hit
him in the jaw. The fellow was a stranger in Chicago,
and if he was found some night with his head cracked
there would be no one to care very much. Jurgis, who
by this time would cheerfully have cracked the heads of
all the gamblers in Chicago, inquired what would be com~
ing to him; at which the Jew became still more confi~
dential, and said that he had some tips on the New Orleans
races, which he got direct from the police captain of the
district, whom he had got out of a bad scrape, and who
"stood in" with a big syndicate of horse owners. Duane
took all this in at once, but Jurgis had to have the whole
race-track situation explained to him before he realized the
importance of such an opportunity.

There was the gigantic Racing Trust. It owned the
legislatures in every state in which it did business; it
even owned some of the big newspapers, and made public
opinion -- there was no power in the land that could
oppose it unless, perhaps, it were the Pool-room Trust.

[[306]]

p305 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p306w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p307

v?