The Merchant of Venice

Brooklyn, the smaller, blacker southern neighbor of Venice, has strip joints and massage parlors ("Adult Entertainment! ATM Inside!") that help sustain the town. Echols and the Venice City Council have declined the role of host to the sex business. Farther south stands East St. Louis, itself on the brink of disincorporation 10 years ago but saved by the Casino Queen, at its waterfront, which pumps around $10 million a year into the city coffers, more than double all the city's other revenue sources.

Echols' morality may make him decline the offer to profit from sex, but gambling is another thing altogether. He even attempted to work with Granite City and Madison to get the license for a casino boat, but East St. Louis got it. He says, only half-jokingly, that cities like Venice ought to get a cut — even 1 percent would be a lot — from East St. Louis' share of the Casino Queen revenue: "God knows there's enough people in Venice that go down there and lose their money — including me!"

Though Venice is part of the heavily industrialized "tri-cities" area with Granite City and Madison, it gets very little of the tax base or the jobs. Most of the industry is outside Venice, and most of the employees are whites from outside Venice.

Echols tells an anecdote about his own first attempt, at the age of 18, to apply for a job at the Dow Chemical plant in town. "I went out there, and the guy let me sit there and fill out the application, and with a smile on his face he tore it up right in front of me and let the pieces fall down into the trash can," he says.

Did the man say anything?

"No, just had one of those ridiculous smirks on his face."

What businesses Venice does host are few and far between: a large lot on the southern edge of town where Chrysler cars and vans await shipment by rail; two mom-and-pop groceries; four small taverns; a Mobil gas station; a handful of light-industrial small businesses; two elementary schools and a high school. All the homes are modest, some neatly trimmed with flower gardens and painted fences. Most neighborhoods are liberally sprinkled with vacant or abandoned homes. Three public housing complexes are spread around town — one of them, the Viola Jones Homes, is where Echols spent much of his youth.

Interestingly, Echols himself earns a living catering to the poor in town. Along with his son, Tyrone Q. Echols Jr., he owns the Currency Exchange on Broadway. The business depended heavily for years on welfare recipients cashing their monthly checks, for which Echols' business got a per-check fee.

"It's not a money-making business anymore," says Echols. "The state revamped the welfare situation, and you don't get the welfare checks anymore. We used to be a direct delivery agent for that and for food stamps." All that has changed. Illinois now gives "link" cards to welfare recipients — no more checks or food stamps. "Probably put about a 40 percent dent in our business," he says. "They've got the card, so we lost out on that. It used to be probably $500-$600 a month just for handling the food stamps. We'd probably pick up another $500-$750 in cashing the checks. That's gone." The business now is mostly cashing other government checks. "We don't make anything much from it," he says with a sigh. "If you add it all together, you might come up with about $14,000 a year. You'd starve to death."

Fortunately, the mayor has a couple of other small sources of income. He and his son own about 20 pieces of property in Venice and neighboring Madison, ranging in assessed valuation from $240 to about $30,000. Echols' son also serves as the acting bridge manager.

As for his salary as mayor, Echols gets a mere $300 a month. The city survives on a total operating budget of about $1.7 million and a total municipal workforce of fewer than 30 people. It has its own police and streets departments, a garage and a volunteer fire department, with a comptroller and an administrative secretary constituting "City Hall."

The last raise given city employees was 15 years ago. "The one thing that helped keep this little city afloat was that we just didn't give any raises — the money was just not there," he says. "These municipal jobs will never be booming jobs, but they might keep you from starvation."