mmission's method was poor, not its intentions. It was an average
body of American citizens aroused to action by an obvious evil. But
something slipped in to falsify vision. It was, I believe, an array of
idols disguised as ideals. They are typical American idols, and they
deserve some study.

CHAPTER VI

SOME NECESSARY ICONOCLASM

The Commission "has kept constantly in mind that to offer a
contribution of any value such an offering must be, first, moral;
second, reasonable and practical; third, possible under the
Constitutional powers of our Courts; fourth, that which will square
with the public conscience of the American people."--The Vice
Commission of Chicago--Introduction to Report on the Social Evil.

Having adjusted such spectacles the Commission proceeded to look at "this
curse which is more blasting than any plague or epidemic," at an evil
"which spells only ruin to the race." In dealing with what it regards as
the greatest calamity in the world, a calamity as old as civilization,
the Commission lays it down beforehand that the remedy must be "moral,"
constitutional, and satisfactory to the public conscience. I wonder in
all seriousness what the Commission would have done had it discovered a
genuine cure for prostitution which happened, let us say, to conflict
with the constitutional powers of our courts. I wonder how the Commission
would have acted if a humble following of the facts had led them to a
conviction out of tune with the existing public conscience of America.
Such a conflict is not only possible; it is highly probable. When you
come to think of it, the conflict appears a certainty. For the
Constitution is a legal expression of the conditions under which
prostitution has flourished; the social evil is rooted in institutions
and manners which have promoted it, in property relations and business
practice which have gathered about them a halo of reason and
practicality, of morality and conscience. Any change so vast as the
abolition of vice is of necessity a change in morals, practice, law and
conscience.

A scientist who began an investigation by saying that his results must be
moral or constitutional would be a joke. We have had scientists like
that, men who insisted that research must confirm the Biblical theory of
creation. We have had economists who set out with the preconceived idea
of justifying the factory system. The world has recently begun to see
th