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For Business and Pleasure Keire, Mara Laura Published by Johns Hopkins University Press Keire, Mara Laura. For Business and Pleasure: Red-Light Districts and the Regulation of Vice in the United States, 1890–1933. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010. Project MUSE. doi:10.1353/book.467. https://muse.jhu.edu/. For additional information about this book https://muse.jhu.edu/book/467 [ Access provided at 1 Oct 2021 16:48 GMT with no institutional affiliation ] This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For Business & Pleasure This page intentionally left blank studies in industry and society Philip B. Scranton, Series Editor Published with the assistance of the Hagley Museum and Library For Business & Pleasure Red-Light Districts and the Regulation of Vice in the United States, 1890–1933 mara l. keire The Johns Hopkins University Press Baltimore ∫ 2010 The Johns Hopkins University Press All rights reserved. Published 2010 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1 The Johns Hopkins University Press 2715 North Charles Street Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363 www.press.jhu.edu Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Keire, Mara L. (Mara Laura), 1967– For business and pleasure : red-light districts and the regulation of vice in the United States, 1890–1933 / Mara L. Keire. p. cm. — (Studies in industry and society) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn-13: 978-0-8018-9413-8 (hbk. : alk. paper) isbn-10: 0-8018-9413-1 (hbk. : alk. paper) 1. Red-light districts—United States—History—20th century. 2. Prostitution—United States—History—20th century. 3. Vice control— United States—History—20th century. I. Title. hq125.u6k45 2010 363.40973%09041—dc22 2009020233 A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Frontispiece: ‘‘Devere’s High Rollers Burlesque Co.’’ Lithograph, 1898. As an idealized member of the sporting class, the ‘‘High Roller Girl’’ outdrinks and outsmokes the punter who has passed out and lost his toupee. Theatrical Poster Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ query/r?pp/var:@field(NUMBER+@band(var+0296)). Special discounts are available for bulk purchases of this book. For more information, please contact Special Sales at 410-516-6936 or [email protected]. The Johns Hopkins University Press uses environmentally friendly book materials, including recycled text paper that is composed of at least 30 percent post-consumer waste, whenever possible. All of our book papers are acid-free, and our jackets and covers are printed on paper with recycled content. To Chris From A to Zee This page intentionally left blank Contents Acknowledgments xi introduction It’s A Wonderful Life Red-Light Districts and Anti-Vice Reform 1 chapter 1 Segregating Vice, 1890–1909 5 chapter 2 The Sporting World, 1890–1917 23 chapter 3 Race, Riots, and Red-Light Districts, 1906–1910 51 chapter 4 The Vice Trust A Reinterpretation of the White Slavery Scare, 1907–1917 69 chapter 5 The War on Vice, 1910–1919 89 chapter 6 The Syndicate Prohibition and the Rise of Organized Crime, 1919–1933 114 conclusion Progressivism, Prohibition, and Policy Options 136 Notes 141 Essay on Sources 217 Index 225 This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments On 29 April 2008, my son, Nathaniel Keire McKenna, was born. Coming five and a half weeks before his due date, Nat was, as my friend Chris Kobrak observed, the first Keire/McKenna to deliver early. Chris’s statement holds particular true for this book. This project took years to complete, and over that time, I wracked up many debts. I owe the most to my academic ‘‘parents,’’ David Musto, Ron Walters, and Doro- thy Ross. As my senior essay advisor at Yale, David taught me the joy of following out a hunch and grounding it in a strong evidentiary base. I am forever thankful for his willingness to take on an undergraduate with strong polemical views but little methodological rigor. Over the hours we spent talking in his office, he guided me into a fascinating area of study even as he gently taught me the rudiments of academic investigation. I’ve since moved away from the history of drug use, but just as readers can see traces of that topic in my book, I can see David’s lasting influence in the way I write and research. From the moment Ron Walters picked me up at the airport wearing a brown leather jacket and driving an Alfa Romero convertible with a duct-taped ragtop, I knew that I’d found my ideal advisor. Every interaction since then has proved that initial impression right. Ron encouraged me to expand my interests and explore topics I would never have had the courage to investigate without his backing. I came into graduate school arguing for the benefit of studying narrow topics deeply, but Ron’s arguments about the beauty of a well-written synthesis won me over. If he occasionally teases me that he didn’t intend for me to embark on an archival synthesis, I can only shrug and blame it on an incomplete conversion. Sorry Ron, if dissertation boot camp didn’t cure me, nothing will. I owe more to Dorothy Ross than I can put into words. That’s not surprising given the stunning breadth of her knowledge and her astonishing grasp of sources in areas outside her apparent specialty. But as much as she broadened my scholarly grounding, Dorothy taught me an intellectual rigor that I could not have learned from anyone else. Still, for all the influence she’s had on my scholarship, I’m most grateful for her mentorship. Dorothy’s proved an inestimable guide on how to balance the strains of career and family. And for that she has my heartfelt gratitude. While David, Ron, and Dorothy are the ones to whom I owe the most, I would also like to thank the senior scholars who graciously gave their time to talk to someone at an earlier stage in her career. For their assistance, counsel, and support I want to thank xii acknowledgments Lou Galambos, John Russell-Wood, Toby Ditz, Judy Walkowitz, Vernon Lidke, Geoff Jones, Tim Gilfoyle, Paul Boyer, John Burnham, Bill Rorabaugh, David Courtwright, Austin Kerr, Gary Kornblith, Carol Lasser, Michael Denning, Ann Fabian, Harry Stout, Tony Badger, Michael O’Brien, Iwan Morgan, Richard Carwardine, Mitt Re- gan, Ann Schofield, Maggie Walsh, and Catherine Clinton. This book benefited immensely from the extensive financial support of many generous institutions. The History Department at the Johns Hopkins University pro- vided graduate fellowships as well as travel allowances. When money for graduate education seemed increasingly scarce, a George Soros Dissertation Fellowship from the Drug Policy Alliance and a Charlotte Newcombe Dissertation Fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation provided invaluable assistance during my final years of graduate school. After I achieved gainful employment, the British Arts and Humani- ties Research Council awarded me matching sabbatical leave at a crucial time for finishing the manuscript. I would also like to thank the following institutions for fellowships and travel grants: the American Historical Association; the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society, Hagley Museum and Library; the Rad- cliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University; the Rockefeller Archive Cen- ter; the American Institute of Pharmacy History; Newcomb College, Tulane Univer- sity; and the Historic New Orleans Collection. Money is always good, but so is time and space. As a postdoctoral fellow at the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford and later as a sabbatical scholar at the Georgetown Law Center, I not only gained office space and library access, I also found much needed communities for starting and finishing my book manuscript. Just as important as money and time was the assistance of people who helped me find crucial source material. I’d like to thank the archivists and librarians from the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, Jerusalem, Israel; the Chicago Historical Society; the Department of Special Collections, Regenstein Library, Uni- versity of Chicago; Special Collections, Columbia University; the Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington, Delaware; the Law Library, Harvard University; the Historic New Orleans Collection; Special Collections, the University of Illinois at Chicago; the Department of Archives and Special Collections, Noel Memorial Library, Louisiana State University in Shreveport; the Social Welfare History Archives, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis; the Newberry Library, Chicago, Illinois; the New York Li- brary for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center; the Rare Books and Manuscripts Division, New York Public Library; the Rockefeller Archive Center, Pocantico Hills, New York; the Schlesinger Library, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Har- vard University; the Center for American History, University of Texas, Austin; the William Ransom Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University; the United States National Archives; and most especially the stalwarts at Johns Hopkins University’s Inter-Library Loan. All scholars need to present their work and I was fortunate to receive invitations from a number of institutions. The Center for Interdisciplinary Studies (ZiF), Univer- sity of Bielefeld; Yale School of Medicine; the American Historical Association; the acknowledgments xiii College of Physicians of Philadelphia; the Business History Conference; the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Culture, Hagley Museum and Library; the American Studies Association; the Irish Association for American Studies; the Urban History Group; the British Association for American Studies; King’s College London; University of Oxford; University of Reading; the Institute for Historical Re- search, University of London; University of Nottingham; University of Cambridge; University of Sussex; Queen Mary, University of London; University of Limerick; the European Centre for the Study of Policing, the Open University; the School of Ad- vanced Study, University of London; the Reading Historical Association; Duquesne University; and the Johns Hopkins University gave me the opportunity and the audi- ence to test my ideas.