reached. It was clear to those who had studied the problem that two things were necessary to the success of any movement looking towards the reduction of commercialised vice:

I. That the warfare against evil-doers should be permanent—that is, that the organisation taking up the work should be a permanent rather than a temporary one.

2. That the work in its initial and experimental stages should be carried on entirely apart from publicity; that it should begin in a small way and develop as the problem was grasped and as wise methods of attack presented themselves.

It is understood that a small and informal committee has been formed, which is to be the nucleus of a permanent organisation, the purpose of which is to deal eventually with the larger question involved, the committee addressing itself for the present to a careful study of the problem and the working out of wise lines of attack.

In the light of what has been stated in the preceding pages, it is clear that public opinion throughout the United States is now gradually being aroused to the enormities of this infamous traffic, and that during the next few years we may expect to see a decided progress made in the checking of what has become the most shameful species of business enterprise in modern times.

CHAPTER III

A DECADE'S DEVELOPMENT IN THE UNITED STATES

THE immediate results of the work of the Committee of Fifteen have been recounted above in the preceding portions of this book. Having accomplished its chief object, in part at least, and for the time being, the committee dissolved. But it was not long before the need was felt for taking up the work anew along several different lines. The three chief manifestations of this newer movement were: The inauguration of the Committee of Fourteen; the formation of the American Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis, followed by similar societies elsewhere; and the creation of vice commissions in several cities, notably Chicago and Minneapolis.

We shall deal with each of these in order.

I. The Committee of Fourteen

In its original report the Committee of Fifteen had called especial attention to the evils connected with the Raines-Law hotels. As these evils seemed

to increase rather than diminish, a committee of fourteen citizens of New York was organised in 1905, for the express purpose of suppressing these hotels. The committee included in its membership a few of the old Committee of Fifteen, as well as the widow of its lamented chairman, who had in the meantime passed away. It was soon recognised, however, that many other evils were connected with the existing laws. Accordingly a sub-committee was created in 1907, for the closer investigation of these other phases of the social evil, and before long assumed the name of the Research Committee of the Committee of Fourteen. Its first work was to investigate the relation of the magistrates' courts to the women of the street in New York City, and also the disposition of disorderly-house cases of all kinds, and in the care of special associations. This report was submitted to Governor Hughes, and had no little influence in the creation of the Page commission (so-called from its chairman, Mr. Alfred R. Page), formed to investigate the courts of minor criminal jurisdiction in New York.

2

The report' of that commission resulted in the passage of the famous Page law, which revolutionised the procedure in the New York city magis

1 Final Report of the Commission to inquire into Courts of Inferior Criminal Jurisdiction in Cities of the First Class, Albany, 1910, pp. 81. The proceedings were published in 1909 in two thick volumes.

2 Act of June 25, 1910, ch. 659, with short title: "Inferior Criminal Courts Act of the City of New York."

trates' courts and which introduced a host of other beneficent changes. In the meantime the research committee had begun in 1908 their larger investigation into the administration of all the laws which had any direct reference to the social evil and after two years of close investigation published their report in 1910.'

As the report was confined to the problem of law enforcement, the committee did not attempt to ascertain the causes of the extent of the social evil, or to deal with the various systems of regulation, or with the arguments for or against its existence. They limited their efforts to the study of each particular law, and to a presentation of so much of the prevailing conditions as might fairly represent the effectiveness of the law. The report classified the laws into seven groups, according as they affected the following points:

Social conditions, embracing the places where prostitution is carried on or facilitated, such as tenement houses, disorderly houses, Raines-Law hotels, and dance halls.

2. The protection of women, covering such topics as seduction under promise of marriage, compulsory marriage, compulsory prostitution of wives, vagrancy, and disorderly conduct.

3. The modification of penalties and procedure

The Social Evil in New York City: A Study of Law Enforcement by the Research Committee of the Committee of Fourteen. New York, 1910, pp.

in the attempt to better the conditions of the unfortunate women. Under this head special attention was paid to prohibition laws and to the night courts.

4. Special education, especially the matters connected with obscene prints and articles, the display of immoral pictures, and the presentation of immoral plays and exhibitions.

5. The protection of the family. Under this head fell the laws connected with marriage licenses, false personation, adultery, abortion, and midwifery.

6. The protection of children, more especially the problems of rape, of abduction, of kidnapping, of child labour, and the children's court.

7. The protection of those seeking work, covering investigation of the employment agencies.

On each of those points the committee presented a mass of information which it would be hopeless to attempt to summarise here. The conclusion to which the committee came was that the social evil in New York City is an elaborate system systematically fostered by business interests rather than a consequence of emotional demand. What reformers have to deal with, they tell us, is not simply vice as such, but vice as a business conducted for profit, with various beneficiaries in all walks of life. The committee understated rather than overstated the evils of the situation,