The Man in Court | Page 3

unless bail is found they will spend the night in cells.
A nervous, excited woman comes in--two policemen are with her. She has been arrested for disorderly conduct on Sixth Avenue near Thirty-first Street. She has been fighting with a man who has also been arrested and taken to the men's Night Court. Hers is a hard, tough face of the lowest type.
"Why should you try to scratch the man's face? What did he do?" the judge asks. "Is he your husband?"
"My husband, your Honor? Yes, I guess you can call Al that. We lives up town and when I went out he says to me, 'Hustle, kid, you got to hustle, the rent's due and if you don't get the money I'll break your neck.' The slob won't work. Well, a night like this you couldn't make a cent and I only had half a dollar and I wanted to get a bite to eat. I hadn't had a thing since four o'clock, and then I met Al going down Sixt' Avenue an' he tries to swipe me fifty cents off me and I was that wild I wanted to tear him. I'm sorry; I guess it was my fault. I don't want to see him jugged, so please let me off, your Honor, and I won't make no trouble."
"Take her record," said the judge, "and hold her as a witness against the man."
A string of women are brought in for sentence who have been having finger prints taken in the adjoining room. The judge proceeds to impose sentences according to the previous records which are shown. Some of the women are those who have passed in front before. The little bedraggled woman with the red feather has been arrested seven times in sixteen months. Another has spent eight weeks in the workhouse out of a period of seven months; another has been sent already to the Bedford Reformatory; another has been twice to houses of reform. Before the judge gives his sentence he refers the prisoners to the probation officer, who talks with them in a motherly way.
After talking with the little prisoner she addresses the judge. "She says its no use, your Honor, she does not want to reform--it will not be worth while to put her on probation."
"Committed to the Mary Magdalene Home," says the judge, and the name brings a startling surmise as to what He of Galilee would have said.
The foregoing is only a typical session of the court. Night after night, from eight o'clock until one in the morning, the scene is repeated. The moral effect and its reaction upon those who conduct the proceedings--the judges, officers, and the police, cannot but be deplorable; the evil done to those forcibly brought there could not be over-estimated.
Substantially the law is that the women may not loiter in the streets nor solicit in the streets, or in any building open to the public. They may live neither in a tenement house nor in a disreputable house. The law makes it a crime for the women to walk abroad or stay at home. Their existence is not a crime, but only in an indirect way the law makes them outlaws. Anyone wishing to prosecute or persecute finds it easy to do so. The worst enemies of these unhappy women are to be found, curiously enough, among both the best and the most evil people in the community. The unspeakably depraved are the men who, either as procurers, blackmailers, or the miserable men who live on a share of their earnings. The excellent people who oppose any remedial legislation which might relieve the situation, seem equally responsible for the present condition, however well-intentioned they may be.
One effect of the present system is the practically unchecked transmission of disease. A reform in this direction would not solve the basic problem, for there would remain full opportunities of blackmail and extortion, but it might still remove a menace to the health of the community which is probably more serious than tuberculosis.
A statute to this end was enacted in New York State a few years ago: an act for the medical examination of the women. It was declared unconstitutional because of one word. It should have read, "the judge may"; instead, it read, "the 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