THE FAILURE AND SHAME OF THE REGULATION OF VICE.
"When the Law fails to regulate sin, and not to take
it utterly away, it necessarily confirms and
establishes sin."--John Milton.
"The law ought to make virtue easy and vice
difficult."--Wm. E. Gladstone.
"They enslave their children's children, Who make
compromise with sin."--James Russell Lowell.
THE YOUNG MAN'S VIEW.
A ruined young man in one of Chicago's segregated districts for
advertising and encouraging vice, asked this question, as he stood on
the curbstone in one of our midnight gospel meetings: "If the wise men
who are set up over us to rule us want it this way, what can you expect
of us?"
Such is the inevitable reasoning of young men. They commonly believe
that the city licenses the criminal resorts which its police protect,
and they are not conscious of bad citizenship in supporting resorts
which are in such favor with the city government.
Long ago Archdeacon Paley wrote in his Moral Philosophy "The avowed
toleration, and in some countries, the licensing, taxing, and regulating
of public brothels, has appeared to the people an authorizing of
fornication. The Legislators ought to have foreseen this effect."
LAWGIVERS ARE INEXORABLE.
The greatest of lawgivers, Moses, made no compromise with vice. He is
inexorable. "There shall not be a harlot of the daughters of Israel."
The daughter of a priest who profaned herself was to be burnt to death.
The Old Testament is hot with warnings against patronizing "strange
women," that is, foreign prostitutes who had invaded the Holy Land, like
the imported white slaves of the French traders here today. Manu, the
ancient lawgiver of India, provided that the adulterer should be burnt
to death on an iron bed, and the adulteress devoured by dogs in a public
place. Buddha speaks with loathing of immoral conduct.
The Son of God, that his mercy towards repentant women who washed his
feet with their tears might not be taken as softness towards sin, came
back from heaven to say in the Book of Revelation, that he will "cast
into great tribulation" and "kill with death" wanton women and the men
who visit them. Of these iniquities the compassionate Redeemer says,
"Which things I also hate." Rulers cannot claim any consent or
condonement of their regulation of vice from the Head of all human
government, the King of kings, to whom they must answer for their rule
or misrule.
FALLEN GOVERNMENTS AND A FALLEN CHURCH.
So scandalously far can a fallen government and a fallen church depart
from the Head of the church and the Head of human government, that we
have seen kings, even the pious king of France, Saint Louis, giving a
royal permit to harlots; and the Mayor of London, William Walworth, in
1381, managing the brothels at Southwark for the Bishop of Winchester,
who owned, licensed and regulated those abominable places. The
Reformation party prevailed upon Henry VIII, in the thirty-seventh year
of his reign to end this infamy, and "this row of stews in Southwark was
put down by the king's commandment, which was proclaimed by sound of
trumpet." Thus as Dr. Fuller wrote, "This regiment of sinners was
totally and finally routed"--a warning to other vice districts, and an
example of how to deal with them.
From that date, 1545 to 1864, England gave no official endorsement to
vice. Then a wicked government, after calling the medical head of the
system of regulation in Paris to visit London, and getting the Parisian
chief of police to write a book for their information, thrust upon the
unsuspecting English nation the odious French system of legalized
vice--restricting its application at first to certain garrison towns,
but cunningly extending it to the whole country, the Crown colonies, and
Canada and India. After a heroic crusade of twenty-two years, led by
Mrs. Josephine Butler, the aroused conscience of Great Britain compelled
Parliament in 1886 to repeal the loathsome Contagious Diseases Acts.
ILLINOIS REJECTS THE PARISIAN SYSTEM.
The Statutes of Illinois show that in the year 1874, certain city
officials in this State were about to license houses of ill-fame and to
provide for enforced medical inspection of their inmates, according to
the detestable methods established a century ago in Paris--a system
which made the blood of Frances Willard turn to flame, when she saw its
workings in Paris, and made her resolve that American womanhood should
never be subjected to it. The outrageous French system of giving legal
standing to vice, and attempting to assure men that they can violate the
moral law and escape the physical penalty, is utterly repugnant to the
Anglo-Saxon conscience. As President Roosevelt cabled to the
Philippines, when he was urged to take measures for reducing disease in
the army, "The way to reduce the disease is to reduce the vice." Lord
Herbert, when Minister of War, by improving the habits of the men,
reduced the disease in the British army 40 per cent in six years,
1860-66. Under Lord Kitchener's command in India today every soldier
finds a tract in his knapsack telling him plainly the consequences of
vice, and urging him to lead a manly and honorable life. The tract was
prepared jointly by Lord Kitchener and the Bishop of Lahore.
[Illustration: CLOSED OUT AS ALL DENS OUGHT TO BE
Formerly a notorious resort containing many white slaves. Now closed, as
a result of the fight against the traffic in young girls]
[Illustration: HUNDREDS OF CHILDREN MUST WALK DAILY THROUGH THIS
INFERNAL REGION
One of the streets in the vice district showing the school children
passing the doors of these awful dens of sin and shame]
The attempt to license infamy in cities of Illinois was thwarted by an
Emergency Act, approved and in force March 27th, 1874. (See Revised
Statutes, Chapter 24, Sec. 245, p. 352.)
Article V of the Cities and Villages Act provides in Section 62, item
45, that the city council shall have power not to regulate, but to
suppress houses of ill-fame, within the limits of the city and within
three miles of the outer boundaries of the city. p. 318.
It is not by authority of the people of Illinois that segregated
districts are proclaimed, whereby a white slave market is established,
and the most loathsome criminals of the world are invited to make
commerce of American and alien girls.
AN UNPARDONABLE SIN.
Plato taught that the unpardonable sin is to betray a great public
trust. What public trust is so great as the health and morals of the
people? The old Roman law had at its foundation this motto: "The safety
of the people is the supreme law." The Supreme Court of the United
States has declared more than once: "No legislature can bargain away the
public health or the public morals. The people themselves cannot do it,
much less their servants." Stone vs. Mississippi, 101 U. S. Rep.,
814-819.
A great lawyer has written: "Even if the legislature does attempt to
give sanction and confer its authority upon any enterprise which is
immoral in its nature or which results in immorality, then the Governor
and the Judge have each an oath registered in heaven to declare such
legislation void." Moral Law and Civil Law, p. 90.
SUPREME COURTS ARE UNSTAINED.
It is the settled doctrine of the highest courts, as voiced by the
Supreme Court of California in the case of Pon vs. Wittman, in July,
1905, that:
"These houses are common or public nuisances. Their maintenance directly
tends to corrupt and debase public morals, to promote vice, and to
encourage dissolute and idle habits, and the suppression of nuisances of
this character and having this tendency is one of the important duties
of government."
But notwithstanding the unequivocal declarations of Supreme Courts,
there are nearly always politicians whose political creed is learned
from the white slave trader, and the serpentine woman who keeps the
glittering vestibule of hell. Such a mother of harlots, clothed in silks
and decked in diamonds, can state the argument for regulation much more
logically and eloquently than any policeman, politician, or rare
misguided preacher (lineally descended from the Bishop of Winchester
aforementioned) can state it for her benefit and profit.
Let us be careful that we be not numbered among those of whom it is
written, "There were false prophets among the people."
The white slave traders, and all who wilfully or ignorantly aid and abet
their abominable commerce in girls, are ardent advocates of segregation
or some form of regulation--whereby they obtain a police status which
enables them to exploit the helpless and foolish, and ignorant, and
vicious to dispense alike to guilty men and innocent wives and babies,
blindness, insanity, locomotor ataxia, abscesses, tumors, surgical
operations and coffins.
To protect these loathsome resorts is like maintaining a thousand pest
houses, not for purposes of quarantine, but with the sole result of
advertising and spreading the pestilence.
THE SHAME OF BRUSSELS, INDIA AND HONG KONG.
In Brussels, where regulation was held to be perfect, and a model for
other countries, English girls were found enslaved, and the chief of
police resigned after being exposed as a partner with the white slave
traders.
In India, regulation went the abhorrent length that an army circular
memorandum, under authority of Sir Frederick, afterwards Lord Roberts,
made the army itself a procurer of prostitutes, saying: "It is necessary
to have a sufficient number of women; to take care that they are
sufficiently attractive; and to provide them with proper houses"--free
quarters. When Dr. Kate Bushnell and Mrs. Andrew, two American ladies,
exposed the frightful conditions existing, by authority, in India, Lord
Roberts at first said that they spoke falsely, but afterwards said, when
convicted of the truth, "I apologize to the ladies without reserve."
In Hong Kong, under regulation, government money was used by detectives
to induce women to sin with them, in order to enroll them as public
women. In India and Hong Kong alike, under the reign of Queen Victoria,
of happy memory, these registered women were called "Queen's women."
Under such shameful misrule Hong Kong became the base for the shipment
of Chinese slave girls to California, by which Mongolian brothel slavery
was introduced into America--a horror worse than the bubonic plague.
BLAMELESS GIRLS ENSNARED IN CHICAGO.
In this First Ward of Chicago, said to be the most influential and
richest ward in the world, are nearly two miles of indecent resorts.
Since a district in this ward was thrown open to this most diabolical
commerce, blameless Chicago virgins have been lured to apartments on
Wabash avenue, under the shadow of churches of cathedral importance, and
then sold into the adjacent white slave market--the illegal red light
district. This was shown in court at Harrison Street, before Judge
Newcomer, June 1, 1907.
Intoxicating liquor has been sold illegally, without a license, in
hundreds, perhaps thousands of resorts in the city, against the protest
of the Chicago Law and Order League repeatedly addressed to the Mayor.
Surely this will not be allowed to continue--the virtual payment of a
bounty of a thousand dollars a year, the price of a saloon license, to
the keeper of an indecent resort. Surely the First Ward debauch in the
Coliseum will never be allowed again.
REPEAL OF REGULATION NOW DEMANDED IN EUROPE.
The International Bureau for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic,
representing every country in Europe, except Turkey, has recently
written:
"We are anxious to call the attention of our readers to the fact that
when we started the work for the suppression of the white slave traffic,
we maintained that, apart altogether from that direct work, the
respective governments would have their attention drawn to the
importance of the question of the repeal of the system of regulation of
vice. Our anticipations are being fully realized in different countries,
where the National Committees are declaring by vote that the White Slave
traffic is promoted and kept alive by the government regulation of vice,
and are calling upon their respective governments to abolish the
system." (23d Annual Report of the National Vigilance Association,
London, page 17.)
The only righteous attitude of government toward all crime and vice is
eternal antagonism. The government should educate the people concerning
the frightful effects of vice and never encourage these ruinous
practices. The responsibility of government in this connection are
nothing less than awful.
POSITION OF THE CLERGY.
The editor of a great Chicago daily said to me, concerning the readiness
of many people to segregate and regulate vice. "The clergy won't stand
for it."
Mr. Huxley, shortly before his death, addressing a company of clergymen,
said that men of science in their search for the truth, may find
themselves obliged to return to the guardians of Divine revelation, the
ministers of God, and that if they did so return, he hoped that the
clergy would not have betrayed the gates.
James Russell Lowell has told us truly that compromise in a matter of
fundamental morals, that is, slavery, cost us the Civil War. In matters
of eternal truth, and in matters of fundamental morals, we must not, we
will not, compromise. WE WILL NEVER BETRAY THE GATES.
E. A. B.