Thursday, 13th November 1913: Woman Who Led Campaign To Put End To Vice In Chicago Confers With Chief Beavers, The Atlanta Constitution

Reading Time: 4 minutes [637 words]

Photos by Francis E.

Price.

Chief

Beavers, who stamped out Atlantas segregated district, and Virginia Brooks,

who started big fight on vice in Chicago. This picture was taken Wednesday

afternoon by The Constitutions photographer, in Chief Beavers office.

When yesterday afternoon at 5

oclock, a loud report, as if from a miniature cannon, resounded from the

private office of Chief Beavers in police headquarters, and activity there for

a moment ceased. It was only a local photographer who caught the chief just as

she grasped in warm welcome the little hand of Virginia Brooks, that celebrated

young western woman who cleaned up the town of West Hammond. 111., started

the same crusade in Chicago, led the women who won the fight for suffrage in

that state, and is today one of the most-feared and one of the most-loved women

in the west. Feared for her courage in condemning evil where she sees it; loved

for the good she has done.

In the east, she is called the Inez

Millholland of the West, and in the south I predict she will eb called the

beautiful messenger who came to tell us the relation of womans cause to civic

and social betterment.

Warning Against Vice.

She arrived Wednesday from Augusta,

where she stirred the women of the Civic league to undertake a vital work for

the eradication of vice. She goes to Rome today, and to Macon tomorrow, and

incidentally she is accompanied by her husband. Charles Washburn, city editor

of The Chicago Tribune, who is just as warm a supporter of womans cause as

is the charming woman who bears his name. She gave up the name of Virginia

Brooks shortly after the press of the two continents rang with praise of her

work in West Hammond, Ill., when, through her leadership of a group of social

workers, she cleaned up the town, not merely from the standpoint of

sanitation and health, but morally.

With the abolition of the segregated

district went the loafers, vagrants and undesirable characters, who are a

menace to any community where the town is open, claimed the young

philanthropist in her interview with Chief Beavers, when she congratulated him

on reports of the work he had done in Atlanta.

When the bad places disappeared,

industry in the town took on new life; men acquired better positions, better

wage; the homes became more prosperous-looking, and the schools better. The

method pursued in the campaign there inspired a similar work in many towns of

the west.

Men and Women Work Together.

How did we do it? Men and women worked

together for the betterment, just as they are doing in Chicago in the crusade

being successfully waged there against vice. WE did it by publicity, took. When

men in office failed to enforce the laws, failed to support the police in their

efforts, we published them. We had posters, distributed literature, telling the

truth, and then worked for the men who were willing to undertake the offices

and push the reform.

Mrs. Washburn was most interesting in

her comments on womens suffrage. Chief Beavers acknowledging his belief in the

cause. She told of the last six months of the campaign waged by the women in

Illinois, and the men in sympathy with them, she having stumped the state in

the doubtful districts.

PAGE 11, COLUMN 3

NOT

GUILTY IS PLEA

CONLEY

WILL MAKE

The case of Jim Conley, negro factory

sweeper whose testimony was the main factor in the convention of Leo Frank on a

charge of having murdered Mary Phagan, will probably be placed on trial today.

His case was not reached in the superior court before Judge Ben Hill Wednesday.

According to Conleys attorney, William

B. Smith, the negro will not make a plea to either counts in the indictment

against him, charging him with being an accessory after the fact in the slaying

of the factory girl.

There is no

law against this man, said Smith on Wednesday, and he will go free if it is

within my power to free him.