In no respect has the utter impotence of medieval machinery in
suppressing vice been more definitely proved than in the great failure
of society in dealing with what is called the social evil. Whenever
my mind runs on this subject, as anyone’s mind must in the present
recrudescence of that Puritanism which never had its mind on anything
else, I invariably think of Golden Rule Jones and the incidents in
that impossible warfare which worried him into a premature grave. He
was an odd man, born so far out of his time that the sins of others
never troubled his conscience. He was so great, and knew so much of
life, more perhaps than he did of history, on every page of which he
would have found the confirmations of the opinions life had taught him,
that he divined all lewdness, all obscenity to be subjective and not
objective, so that he found less to abhor in the sins of the vicious
than in the state of mind of their indefatigable accusers and pursuers.
And he had his own way of meeting their complaints. Once a committee of
ladies and gentlemen called upon him with the demand that he obliterate
the social evil, off-hand and instantly. They were simple, brief and to
the point. They informed him that the laws providing for chastity were
being broken, that there were prostitutes in the city, and in short,
urged him to put a stop to it.
“But what am I to do?” he inquired. “These women are here.”
“Have the police,” they said, a new, simple and happy device suddenly
occurring to them, “drive them out of town and close up their houses!”
They sat and looked at him, triumphantly.
“But where shall I have the police drive them? Over to Detroit or to
Cleveland, or merely out into the country? They have to go somewhere,
you know.”
It was a detail that had escaped them, and presently, with his great
patience, and his great sincerity, he said to them:
“I’ll make you a proposition. You go and select two of the worst of
these women you can find, and I’ll agree to take them into my home and
provide for them until they can find some other home and some other way
of making a living. And then you, each one of you, take one girl into
your home, under the same conditions, and together we’ll try to find
homes for the rest.”
They looked at him, then looked at each other, and seeing how utterly
hopeless this strange man was, they went away.