not yet
been brought under the ban of the law.

During any period, such as that in which we are now living, when society
is rapidly assuming a higher ethical type, it is inevitable that much
resistance should be made to the enforcement of the new standard of
justice. Old methods of business and old political practices are not
easily repressed, even when the public opinion of the community has come
to regard them as socially injurious. Forms of conduct once permitted,
but now regarded as anti-social, tend to persist in spite of the effort
of law and public opinion to dislodge them. The more rapid the ethical
progress of society, the more frequent and the more pronounced will be
the failure of the morally backward individuals to meet the requirements
of the new social standard. At such a time we always see an increase in
crimes, misdemeanors and acts which enlightened public opinion condemns.
This is due, however, not to any decline in public morality, but to the
fact that the ethical progress of society as a whole has been more rapid
than that of the offending class.

There is another source of error which we must guard against. Social
immorality is not always detected even when it exists. Much that is
socially immoral both in politics and in business escapes observation.
Nevertheless, the agencies for ferreting out and holding up to public
condemnation offences against society, are far more efficient and active
to-day than they have ever been in the past. Both the corrupt public
official and the unscrupulous business man dread the searchlight of
public opinion, which is becoming more and more effective as a regulator
of conduct with the growth of intelligence among the masses. Nor is it
surprising that when the hitherto dark recesses of politics and business
are exposed to view, an alarming amount of fraud and corruption should
be revealed. We are too prone to forget, however, that publicity is
something new--that in our day the seen may bear a much larger
proportion to the unseen than it has in the past. What appears, then, to
be an increase in business and political immorality may, after all, be
largely accounted for as the result of more publicity. Here, again, we
see that the facts usually taken to indicate a decline in public
morality are susceptible of a very different interpretation.

Another feature of present-day society which deserves careful
consideration by reason of its far-reaching effect upon public mo