of these fabrications throw wrong sidelights on
the social problems, and by a false emphasis inhibit the feeling for
the proportions of life. If in "The Fight" the father, a senator,
visits a disorderly house, unlocks the room in which the freshest
fruit is promised him, and finds there his young daughter who has just
been abducted by force, the facts themselves are just as absurd as the
following scenes, in which this father shows that the little episode
did not make the slightest impression on him. He coolly continues to
fight against those politicians who want to remove such places from
the town. In "Bought and Paid For" marriage itself is presented as
white slavery. The woman has to tolerate the caresses of her husband,
even when he has drunk more champagne than is wise for him. The play
makes us believe that she must suffer his love because she was poor
before she married and he has paid her with a life of luxury. Where
are we to end if such logic in questions of sexual intercourse is to
benumb common sense? England brought us "The Blindness of Virtue," the
story of a boy and a girl whom we are to believe to be constantly in
grave danger because they are ignorant, while in reality nothing
happens, and everything suggests that the moral danger for this
particular girl would have been much greater if she had known how to
enjoy love without consequences.

The most sensational specimen of the group was "The Lure." It would be
absurd to face this production from any aesthetic point of view. It
would be unthinkable that a work of such crudeness could satisfy a
metropolitan public, even if some of the most marked faults of
construction were acknowledged as the results of the forceful
expurgation of the police. Nevertheless, the only significance of the
play lies outside of its artistic sphere, and belongs entirely to its
effort to help in this great social reform. The only strong applause,
which probably repeats itself every evening, broke out when the old,
good-natured physician said that as soon as women have the vote the
white slavers will be sent to the electric chair. But it is worth
while to examine the sermon which a play of this type really preaches,
and to become aware of the illusions with which the thoughtless public
receives this message. All which we see there on the stage is taken by
the masses as a remonstrance against the old, cowardly policy of
silence, and the play is to work as a great proof that compl