y laws suggesting that
prostitution is unavoidable.

In ironic contrast to the failure of legislation to prevent the spread
of disease, is the success of an ill-advised statute making adultery a
crime. Under it, a married man having relations with a prostitute and
the woman herself, are subject to criminal prosecution. It affords a
fresh field for extortion, how largely used it is impossible to say.

The history of the passage of the adultery act presents one of the
most ghastly jokes ever perpetrated by a State Legislature.

For years such a bill had been introduced in the New York Legislature
and had been passed by either the Assembly or the Senate without
comment and then quietly killed in the other house. It was obvious
that such a law could not be properly enforced and its blackmailing
possibilities were manifest, yet no one, not even Governor Hughes, who
was then in office, could be openly opposed to its passage.

The tender morality of the community would not allow a public
discussion.

It was said, at the time, that when the representative of a society
for the suppression of vice called on one member asking him to
introduce the bill, he declined to do so on the ground that he
represented a Fifth Avenue District and it would make him too
unpopular among his constituents. When the bill had been introduced by
another member and came up for final passage, it was decided, since
Governor Hughes had vetoed many political bills of members of both
houses, to put him in a dilemma. If the bill were presented to him he
would have to sign an absurd statute or declare himself the friend of
unrighteousness. He signed it and the bill became a law. Since its
enactment there have been ridiculously few convictions under it.

The successive carelessness, timidity, and levity of the Legislature
is depressing, but there is an encouraging increase of interest on the
part of the public. The average man is not merely interested in the
problem; he appears to take the sensible view that the "social evil"
is not so much a moral question as a condition, a problem to be met
like other problems. We have become less concerned with the private
morals of our fellow citizens than with their health, safety, and the
prevention of unnecessary suffering. We perceive that the courts are
only our agents and are not directly responsible for what they do;
they are following instructions given by our ancestors and which we
have neglected to abolish