nt force.

[Statistics given of pauperism, lunacy, idiocy and crime growing
out of intemperance.]

The prosecutions in our courts for breach of promise, divorce, adultery,
bigamy, seduction, rape; the newspaper reports every day of every year
of scandals and outrages, of wife murders and paramour shootings, of
abortions and infanticides, are perpetual reminders of men's incapacity
to cope successfully with this monster evil of society.

The statistics of New York show the number of professional prostitutes
in that city to be over twenty thousand. Add to these the thousands and
tens of thousands of Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, New Orleans, St.
Louis, Chicago, San Francisco, and all our cities, great and small, from
ocean to ocean, and what a holocaust of the womanhood of this nation is
sacrificed to the insatiate Moloch of lust. And yet more: those myriads
of wretched women, publicly known as prostitutes, constitute but a small
portion of the numbers who actually tread the paths of vice and crime.
For, as the oft-broken ranks of the vast army of common drunkards are
steadily filled by the boasted moderate drinkers, so are the ranks of
professional prostitution continually replenished by discouraged,
seduced, deserted unfortunates, who can no longer hide the terrible
secret of their lives.

The Albany Law Journal, of December, 1876, says: "The laws of
infanticide must be a dead letter in the District of Columbia. According
to the reports of the local officials, the dead bodies of infants,
still-born and murdered, which have been found during the past year,
scattered over parks and vacant lots in the city of Washington, are to
be numbered by hundreds."

In 1869 the Catholics established a Foundling Hospital in New York City.
At the close of the first six months Sister Irene reported thirteen
hundred little waifs laid in the basket at her door. That meant thirteen
hundred of the daughters of New York, with trembling hands and breaking
hearts, trying to bury their sorrow and their shame from the world's
cruel gaze. That meant thirteen hundred mothers' hopes blighted and
blasted. Thirteen hundred Rachels weeping for their children because
they were not!

Nor is it womanhood alone that is thus fearfully sacrificed. For every
betrayed woman, there is always the betrayer, man. For every abandoned
woman, there is always _one_ abandoned man and oftener many more. It is
estimated that there are 50,000 professi