lity are the surest methods for enabling immorality not
merely to exist--which it would in any case--but to flourish. A vigorous
campaign is initiated against immorality. On the surface it is
successful. Morality triumphs. But, it may be, in the end we are
reminded of the saying of M. Desmaisons in one of Remy de Gourmont's
witty and profound _Dialogues des Amateurs_: "Quand la morale triomphe
il se passe des choses tres vilaines."

The reason why the "triumphs" of legislative and administrative morality
are really such ignominious failures must now be clear, but may again be
repeated. It is because on matters of morals there is no unanimity of
opinion as there is in regard to crime. There is always a large section
of the community which feels tolerant towards, and even practises, acts
which another section, it may be quite reasonably, stigmatizes as
"immoral." Such conditions are highly favourable for the exercise of
moral influence; they are quite unsuitable for legislative action, which
cannot possibly be brought to bear against a large minority, perhaps
even majority, of otherwise law-abiding citizens. In the matter of
prostitution, for instance, the Vice Commissioners of Chicago state
emphatically the need for "constant and persistent repression" leading
on to "absolute annihilation of prostitution." They recommend the
appointment of a "Morals Commission" to suppress disorderly houses, and
to prosecute their keepers, their inmates, and their patrons; they
further recommend the establishment of a "Morals Court" of vaguely large
scope. Among the other recommendations of the Commissioners--and there
are ninety-seven such recommendations--we find the establishment of a
municipal farm, to which prostitutes can be "committed on an
indeterminate sentence"; a "special morals police squad"; instructions
to the police to send home all unattended boys and girls under sixteen
at 9 p.m.; no seats in the parks to be in shade; searchlights to be set
up at night to enable the police to see what the public are doing, and
so on. The scheme, it will be seen, combines the methods of Calvin in
Geneva with those of Maria Theresa in Vienna.[215]

The reason why any such high-handed repression of immorality by force is
as impracticable in Chicago as elsewhere is revealed in the excellent
picture of the conditions furnished by the Vice Commissioners
themselves. They estimate that the prostitutes in disorderly houses
known to the police--l