icious."

One of the saddest features of police work is dealing with the social
evil, with prostitutes and houses of ill fame. In so far as the law gave
me power, I always treated the men taken in any raid on these houses
precisely as the women were treated. My experience brought me to the
very strong conviction that there ought not to be any toleration by law
of the vice. I do not know of any method which will put a complete
stop to the evil, but I do know certain things that ought to be done to
minimize it. One of these is treating men and women on an exact equality
for the same act. Another is the establishment of night courts and of
special commissions to deal with this special class of cases. Another
is that suggested by the Rev. Charles Stelzle, of the Labor Temple--to
publish conspicuously the name of the owner of any property used for
immoral purposes, after said owner had been notified of the use and has
failed to prevent it. Another is to prosecute the keepers and backers of
brothels, men and women, as relentlessly and punish them as severely as
pickpockets and common thieves. They should never be fined; they should
be imprisoned. As for the girls, the very young ones and first
offenders should be put in the charge of probation officers or sent to
reformatories, and the large percentage of feeble-minded girls and of
incorrigible girls and women should be sent to institutions created for
them. We would thus remove from this hideous commerce the articles
of commerce. Moreover, the Federal Government must in ever-increasing
measure proceed against the degraded promoters of this commercialism,
for their activities are inter-State and the Nation can often deal with
them more effectively than the States; although, as public sentiment
becomes aroused, Nation, State, and municipality will all cooperate
towards the same end of rooting out the traffic. But the prime need is
to raise the level of individual morality; and, moreover, to encourage
early marriages, the single standard of sex-morality, and a strict sense
of reciprocal conjugal obligation. The women who preach late marriages
are by just so much making it difficult to better the standard of
chastity.

As regards the white slave traffic, the men engaged in it, and the women
too, are far worse criminals than any ordinary murderers can be. For
them there is need of such a law as that recently adopted in England
through the efforts of Arthur Lee, M.P., a law which