A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil | Page 2

of us who think we discern the beginnings of a new conscience
in regard to this twin of slavery, as old and outrageous as slavery itself
and even more persistent, find a possible analogy between certain civic,
philanthropic and educational efforts directed against the very existence
of this social evil and similar organized efforts which preceded the
overthrow of slavery in America. Thus, long before slavery was finally
declared illegal, there were international regulations of its traffic, state
and federal legislation concerning its extension, and many extra legal
attempts to control its abuses; quite as we have the international
regulations concerning the white slave traffic, the state and interstate
legislation for its repression, and an extra legal power in connection
with it so universally given to the municipal police that the possession
of this power has become one of the great sources of corruption in
every American city.
Before society was ready to proceed against the institution of slavery as
such, groups of men and women by means of the underground railroad
cherished and educated individual slaves; it is scarcely necessary to
point out the similarity to the rescue homes and preventive associations
which every great city contains.
It is always easy to overwork an analogy, and yet the economist who
for years insisted that slave labor continually and arbitrarily limited the
wages of free labor and was therefore a detriment to national wealth
was a forerunner of the economist of to-day who points out the
economic basis of the social evil, the connection between low wages
and despair, between over-fatigue and the demand for reckless
pleasure.
Before the American nation agreed to regard slavery as unjustifiable
from the standpoint of public morality, an army of reformers, lecturers,
and writers set forth its enormity in a never-ceasing flow of invective,
of appeal, and of portrayal concerning the human cruelty to which the

system lent itself. We can discern the scouts and outposts of a similar
army advancing against this existing evil: the physicians and
sanitarians who are committed to the task of ridding the race from
contagious diseases, the teachers and lecturers who are appealing to the
higher morality of thousands of young people; the growing literature,
not only biological and didactic, but of a popular type more closely
approaching "Uncle Tom's Cabin."
Throughout the agitation for the abolition of slavery in America, there
were statesmen who gradually became convinced of the political and
moral necessity of giving to the freedman the protection of the ballot.
In this current agitation there are at least a few men and women who
would extend a greater social and political freedom to all women if
only because domestic control has proved so ineffectual.
We may certainly take courage from the fact that our contemporaries
are fired by social compassions and enthusiasms, to which even our
immediate predecessors were indifferent. Such compunctions have ever
manifested themselves in varying degrees of ardor through different
groups in the same community. Thus among those who are newly
aroused to action in regard to the social evil are many who would
endeavor to regulate it and believe they can minimize its dangers, still
larger numbers who would eliminate all trafficking of unwilling
victims in connection with it, and yet others who believe that as a
quasi-legal institution it may be absolutely abolished. Perhaps the
analogy to the abolition of slavery is most striking in that these groups,
in their varying points of view, are like those earlier associations which
differed widely in regard to chattel slavery. Only the so-called
extremists, in the first instance, stood for abolition and they were
continually told that what they proposed was clearly impossible. The
legal and commercial obstacles, bulked large, were placed before them
and it was confidently asserted that the blame for the historic existence
of slavery lay deep within human nature itself. Yet gradually all of
these associations reached the point of view of the abolitionist and
before the war was over even the most lukewarm unionist saw no other
solution of the nation's difficulty. Some such gradual conversion to the
point of view of abolition is the experience of every society or group of

people who seriously face the difficulties and complications of the
social evil. Certainly all the national organizations--the National
Vigilance Committee, the American Purity Federation, the Alliance for
the Suppression and Prevention of the White Slave Traffic and many
others--stand for the final abolition of commercialized vice. Local vice
commissions, such as the able one recently appointed in Chicago,
although composed of members of varying beliefs in regard to the
possibility of control and regulation, united in the end in
recommending a law enforcement looking towards final abolition.
Even the most sceptical of Chicago citizens, after reading the fearless
document, shared the hope of the commission that "the