Dens of Thieves

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Dec 8, 1914

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 41, No. 48.

THE state's attorney for Cook County, Illinois, the county in which Chicago is located, has been conducting some extensive investigations in the criminality that has been manifesting itself in that city. His findings are that there is an organization of bandits, and that policemen, as well as paid detectives, are members of this gang of pickpockets. They work on a regular plan, the policeman and the detective protecting the one who is actually doing the stealing.

One member of the gang, frequently a woman, will watch until she can locate on some individual on the street the pocket or receptacle where a watch, a pocketbook, or some other valuable is carried; and then at a given sign some kind of excitement is started, and in the jostling the theft is committed. If the individual calls out that he has been robbed, the policeman who is a party to the game of wickedness frequently arrests the person who has been robbed, in place of arresting the thief. In one case that was specifically mentioned in the reports, the victim caught both of the perpetrators, and called for the police. The policeman led them off to an alarm box to send in a call for the patrol-wagon. Then he conveniently let one of the men get away. He left the other one in charge of the victim of the theft while he ran after the fleeing thief. Of course he was not able to catch him; and when he came back, he found that the other one had got away, and so neither of them was arrested.

The report indicates that Chicago is full of just such work as that. The officers of the law find it very profitable to be in league with these thieving characters. There is no denying the fact that all the great centers of population in the world are full of dens of thieves, and their business is made all the more profitable because of their ability to ally themselves with the police departments and other officials. The stories that are now told of Chicago are simply the repetition of what has been reported over and over again, year after year; and yet our civilization, which has promised so much, does not put these things down. They grow worse and worse; and men who have read history ought to know that such conditions can not continue without bringing destruction to the nations that are engaged in them the body politic that permits them. But since they have grown, in their wicked proportions, until they have filled the world, the only hope that can be left to people who will look at these conditions without prejudice, is the second coming of Christ itself. For with these conditions general throughout the world, there is no part of it left to reform the other; and while many well-meaning men and women are doing heroic work in their efforts for reform, the conditions, in spite of them, continue to grow worse.

Not very long ago vice crusades were conducted in Chicago which, it was declared, would cleanse the city, and the news went out that the thing had been actually done; but now we have to be shocked with the information that after all that has been said and done, the great city is still in a desperate situation. God has forewarned us that evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived; and if we will take pains to examine, we will find that the facts are in harmony with God's word.