The Man in Court | Page 4

judge must." Far more difficult to deal with
is the opposition of the people who believe that the moral sense of the
community would be jeopardized by any laws suggesting that
prostitution is unavoidable.
In ironic contrast to the failure of legislation to prevent the spread of
disease, is the success of an ill-advised statute making adultery a crime.
Under it, a married man having relations with a prostitute and the
woman herself, are subject to criminal prosecution. It affords a fresh
field for extortion, how largely used it is impossible to say.
The history of the passage of the adultery act presents one of the most
ghastly jokes ever perpetrated by a State Legislature.
For years such a bill had been introduced in the New York Legislature
and had been passed by either the Assembly or the Senate without
comment and then quietly killed in the other house. It was obvious that
such a law could not be properly enforced and its blackmailing
possibilities were manifest, yet no one, not even Governor Hughes,
who was then in office, could be openly opposed to its passage.
The tender morality of the community would not allow a public
discussion.
It was said, at the time, that when the representative of a society for the
suppression of vice called on one member asking him to introduce the
bill, he declined to do so on the ground that he represented a Fifth
Avenue District and it would make him too unpopular among his
constituents. When the bill had been introduced by another member
and came up for final passage, it was decided, since Governor Hughes
had vetoed many political bills of members of both houses, to put him
in a dilemma. If the bill were presented to him he would have to sign an
absurd statute or declare himself the friend of unrighteousness. He
signed it and the bill became a law. Since its enactment there have been
ridiculously few convictions under it.

The successive carelessness, timidity, and levity of the Legislature is
depressing, but there is an encouraging increase of interest on the part
of the public. The average man is not merely interested in the problem;
he appears to take the sensible view that the "social evil" is not so much
a moral question as a condition, a problem to be met like other
problems. We have become less concerned with the private morals of
our fellow citizens than with their health, safety, and the prevention of
unnecessary suffering. We perceive that the courts are only our agents
and are not directly responsible for what they do; they are following
instructions given by our ancestors and which we have neglected to
abolish or modify.
The visitor leaves the Night Court with a strange sense of having his
social values overthrown. He feels almost sympathetic with the women
whom he has seen. They may be offenders against morals and the
social order, but they are human beings over whom the waters of
civilization seem to sweep with relentless flood. The frightful waste of
life and energy seems inexcusable. And it is as though some mill dam
had burst and was flowing in a terrific torrent down a river bed along
which a few are drawn white and drowned.
The ordinary man knows that the women who go under are such a
small proportion of those who escape, that it seems either a ghastly
joke or a terrible tragedy. The whole paraphernalia of the court-room
merely accents the contrast between those who are caught and those
who go free.
But all criminal courts are always unpleasant. And humanity if seen
only in the setting of a criminal trial would be a discouraging object.
Turning to the more civil court, we find an almost equal unfitness
between the courts and modern conditions.

II
THE CIVIL COURT

In a twenty-four-story office building, on a smooth gliding elevator, up
seventeen stories, down a low-ceilinged corridor, past fireproof doors
labeled: "Clerk's Office," "Judge's Chambers," "Witness Room," we
find the typical modern court. The old idea of a very pseudo-classic
courthouse on a placid village green to which the neighboring county
squires have ridden, and where the jail is in the cellar and the town
recorder in the attic, is fast disappearing. The old courthouse in the city,
of red sandstone with battlements and turrets, minarets, and a clock
tower, seems out of date.
The white marble palaces of the higher courts wherein broad stairways,
paneled mahogany, stained glass, and soft noiseless carpets giving an
air of repose and refined culture, are not altogether consistent with the
modern spirit. The man on the street does not understand whether the
marble statues on the roof are symbols of justice or late presidents of
the United States. The usual courthouse of