Chapter XXI

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.

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

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.