In Chicago's Slums

i Finding a Ioilging place for the night when one has but 5 cents - an ordinary street car fare nickel - ia no easy job. ! Lodging houses where the beds rent for I 10 cents ho'd as grimly to tariff prices 1 as a coal combine ín arctic weather ; would do. It is a case of fiat money with those people. lí they had 500 beds and bnt fivo lodgers, the sixth conld not get an abatetnent, even though his flesh were dropping f rom his bones with f rost. "No pay, no bed," is the motto, and they stick to it. Nowadays dimes are being withdrawn from circulation. At least tho people who are forced into begging theni report that to be the state of the money niarket. Two nickles make a diine, it is tnie, and so do 10 pennies, bnt there seems to be a bear moveinent in small coins, and this forrn of currency also is hard to get, especially so for those who either can 't, don 't or won 't work for it. As a matter of fact there are many hundred persons in Chicago every night who cannot pnrchase a lodging for lack of means and who stay out so late tha aceess to the station honses is deniet because they are already overcrowded These people will then sleep anywhere. All they want is cover from the night. That can be had ju Chicago for 5 cents. But the lowest tramp, if fortune favored him with a diine, would shrink with horror from lodging in snch a place. There are one or two places of the kind in Chicago, and they are hard to find. When found, they are the very apotheosis of degradation, dirt and dinginess. Beside the 5 cent places those where admittance is a dime are palaces. For 5 cents the lodger is allowed the privilege of a chair until morning - simply that and nothing more. The keepers of such places form the lowest elementa of society. They do not treat their patrons as humans, nor yet as beasts of the field. The 5 cent wretch becomes an object for blows and kicks. When his nickel enters the greasy pocket that gapes for it, he is then an atom of squalor, and he is treated accordingly. Recently the Atlas hotel was visited. It is probably the worst lodging house in Chicago. The prices begin at 5 cents and run to 15 cents. It is located on Custom House place a few yards from Van Buren street. On one side of it is a stable. There the horses get clean straw every night for bedding. On the other side is a deserted church, which ha3 been purchased and which will be shortly converted into another lodging house. Amid such surroundings the poor fellow who has but a nickel is allowed to stay over night. He can sit on a three legged chair, or he can lie down on the floor. In either event he is forced to sleep with another man half covering him, for every night the filthv lar is