y at the door of the economic dependence of
women. Mrs. Florence Kelley, executive secretary of the National
Consumers' League, whose life was being spent in improving the
economic position of women, said: "How are we dealing with this
monstrous evil? Are we going to wait patiently and rear a whole
generation of children and grandchildren and trust to their gradual
increase in strength of character?" She told of the mothers who bring
up children in the best and wisest manner but the environment outside
the home, which they have no power to shape, nullifies all their
teaching. "That is a very slow way of dealing with a cancer," she
said. "Women have tried for forty years to get the power to have the
laws enforced and that is our greatest need today." A principal
feature of this important discussion was the strong, analytical
address of the Rev. Anna Garlin Spencer, in the course of which she
said:

The formation of the New York Society for Sanitary and Moral
Prophylaxis marked an important era. For the first time the
physicians as a whole assumed a social duty to promote purity.
They had done it as individuals, but this was the first instance
of their banding themselves together on a moral as well as a
sanitary plane to enlighten the public as to the causes of social
disease.... Dr. Prince Morrow should be everlastingly honored by
every woman.... I consider no woman guiltless, whether she lives
in a suffrage State or not, if she does not hold herself
responsible for guarding less fortunate women. Corrupt custom has
rent the sacred, seamless robe of womanhood and cast out part of
the women, abandoning them to degradation. We must learn to
recognize the responsibility of pure women for the fallen women,
of the woman whose circumstances have enabled her to stand, for
the woman whom adverse conditions have borne down. We should
oppose the sacrifice of womanhood, whether of an innocent girl
sacrificed with pomp and ceremony in church, or of a poor waif in
the street; and the great protection is the ability of young
girls to earn their living by congenial labor. All the social
purity societies do not equal the trade schools as a
preventive....

We must not look at this matter from only one point of view or
say that we can do nothing about it until we are armed with the
ballot. I am a suffragist but not "hi