When commissions make investigations or some crisis forces the issue of the social evil, women are among the first to demand full publicity and effective action. A good example of their determination in this matter is afforded by the battle of the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association in Hartford, Connecticut, against a conspiracy of silence on the part of the town council. This interesting episode, which stirred the whole state, is thus described in The Survey:

The names of the Hartford Common Council will not be lost to memory if a six-foot signboard in front of the woman suffrage headquarters can prevent oblivion. The sign, which placards with startling headlines the attitude of each City Father toward the suppression of commercialized vice, is the vigorous protest of the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association [led by Mrs. Thomas Hepburn] against a principle which has been largely responsible for the unsavory reputation of Hartford.

In December, 1911, the trial of the notorious white slavers, Morris and Lena Cohen, revealed the fact that a policy of toleration, extending over many years, had made Hartford a recognized market for prostitutes and a center for the white slave traffic between New York and points further east. Following this disclosure, Mayor Smith ordered all houses of prostitution closed and appointed a vice commission that the problem might be attacked still more drastically in the future.

The Common Council refused to appropriate any city funds to make an investigation possible, but the vice commission was not deterred from its undertaking. It raised its own funds, carried on its investigations and in July, 1913, published a report which probes ruthlessly into the underworld of Hartford. Among the fifteen specific recommendations dealing with local conditions, the most emphatic is, “that the present policy of keeping the houses closed be adhered to rigidly.” “The experiment,” the report continues, “if such we may call it, has certainly had no evil results. Most of those best qualified to judge affirm that it has led to better conditions. In the face of these facts, a return to the old plan of tolerating houses of ill fame would be a deliberate connivance at an illegal traffic.” Owing to lack of money but 500 copies of this report could be published and the City Council refused to appropriate funds for further editions for general distribution to make facts known to the whole city.

But the Council did not count on the determination of the Hartford suffragists to procure a widespread dissemination of facts regarding the enormity of the vice situation. To the horror of saloon-keepers, dive-keepers, complaisant citizens, and the prominent newspapers, the Woman Suffrage Association reprinted the report and placed it for sale at suffrage headquarters in the midst of the shopping district. So much publicity was given to the matter in this way that it has become difficult for an immediate return to the old condition of a segregated vice district in the city.

Nevertheless, an aroused public sentiment did not mean an aroused Common Council. It has frequently been rumored in Hartford that the connection between commercialized vice and politics was closer than the average citizen realized. But aside from continued delay there was no evidence to show that these suspicions were well founded until, at a recent meeting, the majority of councilmen practically declared their indifference toward an illegal traffic in women. At this meeting Councilman Beadle introduced a resolution “that the Court of Common Council register its approval of the policy of repression in the regulation of vice as inaugurated by former Mayor Edward L. Smith and publicly approved by present Mayor Louis R. Cheney and that the same should be rigidly adhered to.” By a vote of 24 to 5, action on the resolution was indefinitely postponed. In other words, of 29 councilmen present Messrs. Beadle, Havens, Harger, Watson and Brockway were the only ones willing to go on record as inalienably opposed to the toleration of commercialized vice.

It was this definite committal of attitude by the Common Council which precipitated the latest insurrection by the suffrage party. In their efforts to secure a cleaner, safer Hartford, the Woman Suffrage Association is distributing pamphlets which contain salient facts in the history of vice regulation in Hartford and at their doors they have erected the sign appealing to the mothers of Hartford.

After investigations and publicity come remedial measures, legislative and social. Legislation for the protection of girls is fostered by women in nearly all the states now and much of it has been initiated by them. The Protective Agency for Women and Children, an outgrowth of the Chicago Woman’s Club, has secured legislation in Illinois, making crimes of indecent offenses against children. One of the most significant stories is that of the struggle for an adequate age of consent law in the states.

Lavinia Dock, in her study of “Sex and Morality,” tells of that struggle in Illinois:

The other bill, presented in the name of the federated club women of the state, amended the existing statute by raising the age of consent from 14 to 18. The course of this bill through the Legislature affords a good illustration of the difficulties met by women when they undertake to create new legislation that affects dominant man. At every meeting of the legislature since the year 1887 an amendment raising the age of consent had been presented and had been smothered in committee. This bill narrowly escaped a like fate. It was introduced in the Senate and the senators were practically unanimous in their promises to vote for it; of course their mental reservation was “if it ever gets out of committee.” The women in charge of the bill were allowed to plead their cause. Two features of the meeting were that many members of the committee who had promised support were “unavoidably absent” and that a lawyer from Chicago who was not required to disclose the interests he represented was allowed to make an elaborate attack on the proposed amendment. It quickly became evident that the Committee would not favorably consider the raise to 18 years. On a compromise at 16 the result hung in doubt until the friendly chairman, Senator Juul, who introduced the bill, decided a tie vote on the motion to report the bill. Once before the Senate, the senators stood by their promises and the bill was quickly passed unanimously.

In the House the bill met with a reception that was far from friendly. The committee refused to hear the women in charge of the bill and the program was silence and secrecy. The House Committee, however, did not dare to kill the bill and contented itself with adding several minor amendments apparently intended to afford loopholes of escape to offenders. When the amended bill was returned to the Senate, the women, believing the amendments to be innocuous and regarding the raising of the age by two years as a substantial victory, requested that it be passed. It was.

This bill has been a great aid to all the organizations interested in protecting young girls, and convictions have been frequent under it. But the club women were actually obliged to print both the old law and the amended law and post them in police stations and police courts to secure these convictions.

In this connection it should be stated that the very first legislation undertaken by the Iowa State Federation of Women’s Clubs was in 1894, when it petitioned the legislature to raise the age of consent in that state from 15 to 18 years; the age was raised to 16.

In practically every state in the Union women have worked for a similar age of consent but it is by no means yet established at 18 years in many places. They have also supported all other measures giving more security to girls.

The way in which California women have striven for remedial legislation is thus described by Mary Roberts Coolidge in The Survey, under the title of “California Women and the Abatement Law”:

Women voters, it is now generally conceded, were chiefly responsible for the passage by the California legislature of 1913 of two important measures dealing with the social evil. One, the bill to appropriate $200,000 for a detention home for girls, met with little opposition, because perhaps it was preventive in character. The other, the red-light abatement bill, was bitterly fought, not only upon the floor, but by every secret device known to vicious interests throughout the state.

Although it passed the Assembly by a vote of 62 to 17 and the Senate by a scarcely less significant majority of 29 to 11, it was apparent in the debates that many of the legislators were yielding to the demands of urgent constituents rather than to willing conviction. A political pressure, to which all politicians are accustomed when corporate and financial interests are involved, made them squirm unhappily when brought to bear by 50,000 organized women.

The red-light bill had scarcely received the governor’s signature and the women had scarcely turned their minds to the emergency measures which would be needed by those who would be thrown out of their miserable trade by the law, when rumors of a referendum to be invoked against it began to be heard. The so-called Property Owners’ Protective Association, with offices in the Phelan Building, San Francisco, became the distributing center for the referendum petitions. Two months later it was announced that they had secured over 30,000 names. As only 19,283 signatures of qualified voters were necessary to hold up the law, the referendum was assured of a place on the ballot of November, 1914.

Although disappointed that the abatement law was not to go into effect in August, some of the women leaders saw an opportunity in this delay to educate citizens further in the intent of the law itself. In this way they could insure more intelligent public support when it should finally become operative. At this stage of readjustment the questionable methods and support behind the anti-abatement referendum were suddenly exposed by the discovery that hundreds—and since then, thousands—of signatures to the petitions were not genuine. So many, indeed, that, if the facts had been known before the petitions were certified, there might have been enough to invalidate the referendum itself.

The Property Owners’ Protective Association had declared that they would get these signatures outside the bay cities in order to prove that the country was as much opposed as the cities to the law. But a scrutiny of the petitions from each county shows that out of a total of 31,930 signatures certified, 53 per cent. (17,119) were from San Francisco alone and that Alameda and San Francisco counties together furnished 60 per cent. of the whole, while Los Angeles gave only 19 per cent., Sacramento less than 5 per cent. and each of the other counties a negligible hundred or two names.

These figures showed where the enemy lived. The fight against this law was being made by the vice-and-liquor combination of San Francisco and Oakland, backed by property owners who were reaping the rentals of the tenderloin districts but dared not let their names be known. Against such as these, women citizens had no direct recourse. But they addressed themselves to the district attorney of San Francisco, whose duty it was to prosecute the offenders.

But in spite of the fact that forged names appeared on the referendum petitions, no indictments were made. Early in December it looked as if nothing further would be done about these frauds. The district attorney gave little evidence of continuing the cases. But until he definitely refused to take action, the governor could not be expected to direct the attorney-general to take the matter out of the district attorney’s hands.

Various committees of women continued to urge action upon the district attorney, and one group from the San Francisco Center of the California Civic League made it their business to visit him week after week to inquire what he intended to do about these forgeries. On each occasion he refused to commit himself definitely, but he could not put his polite questioners out of the office—they were women of too much social backing. Besides, all these committees of women were voters and leaders, perhaps, of unnumbered feminine electors. An uncomfortable plight certainly for an official who might not wish to go on record on a ticklish question.

The district attorney, in search of further evidence, finally sent to the office of the secretary of state at Sacramento for the original petitions. Although he declared that he had been shamefully abused by some of these groups of women, he was nevertheless compelled to take the forgery cases before a new grand jury. And, meanwhile, the press of the state was demanding results and insisting that the attorney general should prosecute the cases if the district attorney failed.

About the middle of February the district attorney again presented the matter before the grand jury. Indictment of one Belle Weil, who had circulated one of the referendum petitions, resulted.

In a struggle against entrenched and highly profitable evils, women may seem to be at great disadvantage. In this case there is also a body of men—small, perhaps, but of a sort that cannot be pooh-poohed—who have been carrying on an equally effective campaign of publicity and education. Women, in fact, have some advantages over men in such a contest against the powers of evil. They have as yet no party traditions to hamper them; no direct business relations to be jeopardized; and, above all, they have a larger amount of daytime leisure in which to do detail reform work and to convert small groups of people.

The various bodies of organized women who were behind the demand for the abatement and injunction law last year are now pouring out thousands of leaflets which defend and explain the cause in a simple and effective way. They are training women to speak on the subject and providing them with carefully digested information. In Berkeley the education committee of the civic center is prepared to send a speaker to any meeting where the subject may be presented; and is, moreover, asking every social, civic and religious organization—of which there are over a hundred in the town—to give time for a statement of the issues involved in the anti-abatement referendum.

Whatever the fate of the referendum, the campaign of education, which is now going on, is of the highest value to the citizens of the state. And since this referendum has been invoked by vicious methods it becomes evident that the very principles of direct legislation are at stake. If this law may be held up and perhaps defeated by forgeries, then any other may be.

Whatever the individual citizen may think of the policy of attacking the property owner who reaps the profits of commercialized vice—which is the sole aim of the abatement law—he cannot ignore the duty of guarding the referendum principle. It should be made unpleasant and unprofitable for men to tamper with petitions. And at the next legislature the law should be so strengthened as to make the punishment of such acts swift and easy.

The act was sustained but a test case was soon made in order to bring the law before the Supreme Court, where its constitutionality must be decided.

Women are equally alert to fight legislation, dealing with the social evil, which discriminates against the sex. This fight is constantly carried to the courts, the final place of appeal, if the battle is lost in the legislature. Women succeeded in having a piece of legislation declared unconstitutional in New York four or five years ago as a result of their almost united protest against it; that is, the social workers, the suffragists, the medical women and nurses, women’s club leaders and others united in an endeavor to prevent an important measure from being put into effect after it had passed the state legislature.

The object of their attack was Clause 79 in what is known as the Page Law, which clause provided for medical examination of convicted prostitutes and their compulsory detention during treatment. Their objection to this process of “hygienizing” vice was made by the women on the ground that the prostitutes were not being imprisoned until reformed, or until sufficiently punished, but until presumably well, when they were to be returned to the streets. It was contended that this clause was utterly worthless from a sanitary standpoint and “its indirect influence, as has been proved by the history of every regulative act, will be to increase the evil which its direct influence will not be competent to cure.”

Pamphlets describing the law and its inevitable consequences were printed by the women and distributed widely among their organizations. One of these was signed by the following groups of persons: the Women’s Prison Association, which took the lead in this struggle; National Woman Suffrage Association; Hygienic Committee of the Woman’s Medical Association; Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, State of New York; The American Purity Alliance; the National Vigilance League (Men’s); Friends’ Philanthropic Committee; Council of Jewish Women, New York Section; Woman Suffrage Party, New York City; Equality League of Self-Supporting Women; Brooklyn Auxiliary of the Consumers’ League; and the American Federation of Nurses.

The battle for remedial measures is only half won when the desired legislation is placed on the statute books. It is hardly half won, for the enforcement of these laws is contested inch by inch by powerfully organized forces of vice with almost unlimited financial resources and the aid of the most skilled lawyers. Women are alive to this fact, and realize the necessity of eternal vigilance in law enforcement. A few passages of recent history will illustrate their determination not to relax their efforts simply because good laws have been obtained.

Commercialized vice is a national problem recognized as such by the Mann Act which makes it a violation “for any person knowingly to persuade, induce, coerce, or cause, or to aid or assist any woman or girl to go from one state to another for prostitution, debauchery or other immoral purposes, with or without her consent. The maximum penalty if the victim be over 18 is five years’ imprisonment and $5,000 fine; and twice that amount if she be under 18.”

The difficulty sometimes is to get judgment in the courts in cases of arrest under the Mann Act.

In Minnesota the women’s clubs made a state issue of a case in which a married man, deserting his family, took a girl from Wisconsin to Minnesota, and was sentenced by Judge McPherson to three months in the county jail and a fine of $1,000. The women’s clubs petitioned the judge of the United States Court of Appeals, who makes the assignments of the district judges, to assign Judge McPherson to another district, “lest another case of white slavery be placed upon the calendar subject to Judge McPherson’s judgment.” This petition was refused, on the ground that the degree of punishment is expressly intrusted to the trial judge. It was stated also that the United States district attorney who prosecuted the case was satisfied with the sentence. The man had pleaded guilty to taking a girl under eighteen across state borders for cohabitation. Judge McPherson defended his sentence on the ground that there was no evidence to show that the girl was coerced. The club women countered vigorously with a statement to the effect that coercion was not the point; that by the man’s own story, plus all human experience, the girl was surely entered on a life of prostitution; what they wanted was such punishment as would be the talk of every barroom and a specter to any man who contemplated doing it in the future.^[14]

The federal judges and attorneys generally take into account the circumstances in the case and only in clear cases where white slavery is accomplished by force have the full penalties been imposed. The transportation of regular prostitutes was not punished, in one instance the judge saying that thus “our own daughters” are better protected. Women with a social conscience take the position that all women are their daughters and that no daughter is safe until the traffic is suppressed. Moreover they seek to protect their sons wherever they are and they call upon the national government to help them do it.

That women voters will not tolerate a wide-open indorsement of vice was proved in the case of the policy pursued by Mayor Gill of Seattle in 1910–1911. It is true that conditions were so flagrantly vile that the instincts of women were in open revolt, yet Mayor Gill, in his alliance with the interests that were profiting by the public traffic, seemed firmly entrenched.

Through the power of the recall, the women of Seattle led a movement against Mayor Gill and his vice policy which was successful; the mayor was removed from office; and a reform policy was instituted.

At the last election, however, contrary to the expectation and to the amazement of women in other parts of the country, Mayor Gill was reinstated as mayor. Criticism was rife and men joined with women in attributing the result to the fickleness of women and their superficiality. They were even accused of worse things.

In explanation of their conduct, the women of Seattle stated that Mayor Gill pleaded with them for a chance to redeem himself in the eyes of his neighbors and friends and in the eyes of the citizens of his city among whom his family had to live and where his son must suffer from the opprobrium in which his father would be held forevermore unless this chance was given. Mayor Gill testified that he had thought a wide-open town was what the people wanted and what would pay best. He found it was not what the people wanted, least of all the women who now were voters, and he would bow to their will for their sakes and for the sake of his family whose respect he must regain. The women claimed that there seemed more security with Mayor Gill under such pressure and in view of his knowledge of women’s actual power if he failed to make good this time; that a big point of view required them to give him a chance to redeem himself. They gave him the chance and Mayor Gill is carrying out the wishes of the women during his present administration.

The women of California undertook a similar campaign in San Francisco in April of 1913. When a police magistrate reduced the bail which another judge had fixed for a prisoner accused of attacking a young girl and the prisoner immediately fled when released on the reduced bail, the women went to work and soon secured the necessary signatures to a petition for the recall of the magistrate. In the recall election, the erring magistrate was defeated and an able young lawyer with a wider view of this grave social problem took his place.

Miriam Michelson, in the Sunset Magazine, tells the story:

Now this threatened recall of a police judge is undertaken, I should say, not because the women believe this particular judge to be unique in flagrant adherence to a police court system of leniency in sex-crimes; not because they think him the worst of his type that San Francisco has known; but because they consider him a type and because they consider the police court system one that must be changed. This recall presents something definite, something to do, which feminine hands have been aching for.

You may talk to women of the futility of figuring social sex sins, but they seem to be congenitally incapable of believing you. I heard a man talk to an audience in behalf of this measure, and when he touched upon that old, old text—it always has been; it always will be—there came a curious resemblance in every woman’s face within my vision; for every face had hardened, stiffened, was marked with the family likeness of rebellion. The lecturer was addressing himself to deaf ears, to eyes determined not to see.

And this is at once the weakness and the strength of the new element in elections. Those who have watched the ardor of the most eager and high-minded reformers burn out in commissions, in barren resolutions and recommendations, see in the average woman’s limitations that power, that one-idead incapacity to look philosophically on both sides of a question which marks Those Who Can Change Things. You may object that such qualities produce a Carrie Nation. They do, but they also make a Joan of Arc, a Harriet Beecher Stowe....

Her recently awakened realization of equality, the new broom that her conscience is, revolts at a policy that establishes a municipal clinic for women prostitutes, yet by a curious, cowardly subterfuge, overlooks the male’s share in infection; as though the plague created and disseminated in common could have but one source! And in addition to all this, she is learning that when she is ready at last to attack the vested, organized, recognized institution of prostitution, the first result of her activities will mean greater misery and perhaps speedier death for the woman who is already at the lowest point of the social scale....

But over against this set this fact: There are seven hundred women in San Francisco whose one aim in civic life is to found a state training school for girls gone wrong who would go right. This association has a representative in Sacramento whose sole business it is to further a bill for the establishment of a helping station to girls on the way to usefulness and moral health, modeled upon similar establishments in other states. Here is work, backed by thirty thousand club women of the state, proceeding definitely, practically to a solution of one of the most appalling obstacles to the crusade against vice.... But the time has not yet come when woman will face her individual share of atonement for a social sin in which she has acquiesced. Ultimately, with universal suffrage, the wheel of time must place at the door of the protected woman responsibility for the prostitute. As yet she cannot see herself, in her own home, taking up the broken lives, diseased bodies, debased minds and deadened souls—the by-product of that which men tell her has always been and always must be.

It is not merely by drastic legislation directed immediately at the social evil that women are attempting to solve the problem. They know full well the complexity of the disease. They are coming more and more to the view that the indirect attack on low wages, bad housing conditions, and the other evils which lower standards of living is more effective than the frontal assault. They are also attacking the problem with measures designed to safeguard young girls who for economic reasons must work out of the home.

In their efforts to trace the whereabouts of immigrant girls, to do follow-up work, to establish immigrant homes, to secure matrons on steamers and women inspectors, women are constantly controlling some portion at least of the social evil. Miss Sadie American, Executive Secretary of the Council of Jewish Women, states that her organization, which does so much to safeguard Jewish girls, could do vastly more if it had the facilities that the government has in the way of registered lists of newly arrived citizens with their destinations. Certainly the organization of women as a social service adjunct to the Department of Immigration would be a step acceptable to women and of incalculable preventive value to the country.

The women of California are preparing to establish preventive and assimilative work among the foreigners who will doubtless pour into that state in a little while as a result of the opening of the Panama Canal.

“A committee for the protection of girls will be organized by Mrs. F. G. Sanborn, president of the Woman’s Department of the Panama-Pacific exposition. This work is regarded as very important when it is remembered that 6,000 girls were lost during the Chicago World’s Fair. Club women in San Francisco are actively interested in the Woman’s Department of the exposition.”^[15]

Intercommunity and interstate responsibility for the diminution of the social evil receives increased emphasis in the writings and the civic work of women. They have learned that suppression of disorderly houses in one city may only drive evil doers into a neighboring city or a neighboring state. Even eternal vigilance to prevent the return of the traffickers and their victims does not satisfy those parents who read of surrounding iniquity and whose young people travel or work from place to place. By the organization of travelers’ aid societies, women and men have sought to protect girls and women in their travel by train and by boat from kidnapping or allurement on misunderstanding or misdirection. Such societies exist in every large urban center and are of the greatest value as preventive work in safeguarding women and girls from criminals.

Among the societies which seek to deal with prostitution, in which women lead or with which they are affiliated, may be mentioned the Kansas City Society for the Suppression of Commercialized Vice which has two women on its board of directors. This organization was the outcome of a meeting held by the Public Morals Committee of the Church Federation in September, 1913, when the following resolutions setting forth the program of the society, were adopted unanimously:

Whereas the present conditions of tolerated vice in Kansas City are undermining the foundation of character in our citizens, promoting their physical degeneracy, withdrawing from its proper use an enormous sum of money, and casting reproach upon the fair name of our city;

Therefore, be it Resolved:

That we as citizens of Kansas City in mass meeting assembled, unreservedly condemn the policy of the segregation of vice;

That we abhor the iniquitous fine system by which we as citizens are forced to become partners in the profits of vice, and we favor whatever proceedings may be necessary to divorce the city from a participation in such profits;

That we call upon the prosecuting attorney to use the full powers of his office to enforce the laws against vice;

That we favor a state-wide campaign in Missouri for the enactment of a law similar to the Iowa injunction and abatement law;

That a committee of representative citizens be appointed with power to increase their number to arrange for a permanent organization in opposition to commercialized vice in Kansas City.

The objects of the Society are stated as follows:

The Society is organized to abolish commercialized vice and to prevent the recognition of sexual immorality on the part of the city or state in any way other than constant opposition to and enforcement of laws against it;

The enactment of further legislation to facilitate the abatement of the crime and injunction of property used for the purpose;

A propaganda which shall by forewarnings cut off both demand and supply.

In writing of results already accomplished, this Society says:

We closed all of the 63 immoral houses on the police fine list. Robert Thornton, resident U. S. officer to enforce the Mann Act, stated that about one-third of his list of 559 immoral women in Kansas City left town and that of the remainder from 100 to 150 found respectable employment and would not return to their old ways. This shows a reduction of 50 per cent. of the immorality in Kansas City due to the 559 prostitutes on the government agent’s list.

Since the closing of the red-light district in the north end the Society has shut up 15 or 20 other houses in various parts of the city. W. W. Knight, the newly appointed police commissioner, assures us that the town will be cleaned up. We have already given him information from our investigators which he says is very helpful.

In coÖperation with eleven other civic and religious organizations our society is bringing to Kansas City the next Congress of the World’s Purity Federation, which will convene November 5th to 9th, and will bring to Kansas City the very best specialists on social questions. The Congress will consider causes of the social evil and how best to combat them. It is believed that it will be a strong factor in molding public opinion on this subject.

The recent merger of the American Vigilance Association and the American Federation for Sex Hygiene into the American Social Hygiene Association will doubtless increase the efficiency of the work attempted by the two former societies and prevent duplication. Charles W. Eliot is president of the new society and Jane Addams is an honorary vice-president while the directors include Martha Falconer, Mrs. Raymond Robbins, and the Rev. Anna Garlin Spencer.

The purpose of the society is thus stated: “To acquire and diffuse knowledge of the established principles and practices and of any new methods which promote or give assurance of promoting social health; to advocate the highest standards of private and public morality; to suppress commercialized vice; to organize the defense of the community by every available means, educational, sanitary or legislative, against the diseases of vice; to conduct, on request, inquiries into the present condition of prostitution and the venereal diseases in American towns and cities; and to secure mutual acquaintance and sympathy and coÖperation among the local societies for these or similar purposes.”

The Society for Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis in New York City is one of the local societies that is doing much to arouse a public sentiment of a constructive character. While the officers are men, the list of members includes 579 women, a large number of whom are either physicians or school teachers and active and valuable members. The lecturers for the society are chiefly women and the work done is more among women than among men. Olive Crosby is the office secretary.

The New York Society is one of twenty branches similarly organized in different cities and states. The work carried on by it is educational; through lectures, conferences, pamphlets and agitation for better legislation and proper sex instruction. Among its educational pamphlets are some prepared by women, like that for teachers on “Instruction in the Physiology and Hygiene of Sex” by Dr. Helen Putnam, of the American Medical Association.

The Juvenile Protective Association of Chicago, of which Mrs. Louise De Koven Bowen is the head, emphasizes the need of labor and other legislation as a basis for some solution of the social evil. Among the preventive measures suggested are: the minimum wage law; publicity for the owners of disreputable houses by means of the tin-plate or card in the hallway; a law similar to the Albert Law in Nebraska which declares property used for purposes of prostitution a nuisance and the owner punishable for maintaining such; better regulations of hotels; medical certificates before the issuance of marriage licenses; and wider labor legislation. Mrs. Bowen has made a special study of the department store girl, among other types of workers, and she agrees with the Illinois Vice Commission that the economic conditions which surround the department store girl tend to her moral as well as her physical breakdown and need remedying as the basis for greater stability.

In November of 1912 a federation was effected in Chicago of nearly forty societies interested in social well-being and united against the social evil.

While concentrating on preventive measures, women are not neglecting what is known as “rescue work.” The name of Dr. Kate Waller Barrett is known to thousands of girls who have passed through the Florence Crittenton homes scattered throughout the country. Twenty-two thousand girls, it is claimed, entered these homes last year. In these places of temporary refuge, efforts have been made by the women in charge to accomplish the individual reformation of the girls under their care. Some effort is also made in these missions, under the direction of Dr. Barrett, to give industrial training to their occupants. The equipment, however, largely provides for the traditional cooking, sewing, cleaning and nursing. It is a question whether domestic service or nursing are the most suitable occupations for this type of girl.

Miss Maud Minor, of New York, who is head of Waverly House, a detention home for girls, is another woman deeply interested both in the probationary character of her work and in some of the larger preventive aspects of the social evil problem.