e of things, to play over the
whole horizon of possibilities, and to recognize that all is not said
when we have spoken. In those words "reasonable and practical" is the
Chinese Wall of America, that narrow boundary which contracts our vision
to the moment, cuts us off from the culture of the world, and makes us
such provincial, unimaginative blunderers over our own problems. Fixation
upon the immediate has made a rich country poor in leisure, has in a land
meant for liberal living incited an insane struggle for existence. One
suspects at times that our national cult of optimism is no real feeling
that the world is good, but a fear that pessimism will produce panics.

How this fascination of the obvious has balked the work of the Commission
I need not elaborate. That the long process of civilizing sex received
perfunctory attention; that the imaginative value of sex was lost in a
dogma; that the implied changes in social life were dodged--all that has
been pointed out. It was the inability to rise above the immediate that
makes the report read as if the policeman were the only agent of
civilization.

For where in the report is any thorough discussion by sociologists of the
relations of business and marriage to vice? Why is there no testimony by
psychologists to show how sex can be affected by environment, by
educators to show how it can be trained, by industrial experts to show
how monotony and fatigue affect it? Where are the detailed proposals by
specialists, for decent housing and working conditions, for educational
reform, for play facilities? The Commission wasn't afraid of details:
didn't it recommend searchlights in the parks as a weapon against vice?
Why then isn't there a budget, a large, comprehensive budget, precise and
informing, in which provision is made for beginning to civilize Chicago?
That wouldn't have been "reasonable and practical," I presume, for it
would have cost millions and millions of dollars. And where would the
money have come from? Were the single-taxers, the Socialists consulted?
But their proposals would require big changes in property interests, and
would that be "reasonable and practical"? Evidently not: it is more
reasonable and practical to keep park benches out of the shadows and to
plague unescorted prostitutes.

And where are the open questions: the issues that everybody should
consider, the problems that scientists should study? I see almost no
trace of them. Why are the sexual