ome forevermore a new force in the
long struggle for social righteousness. The wind of moral aspiration now
dies down and now blows with unexpected force, urging on the movements
of social destiny; but never do the sails of the ship of state push
forward with such assured progress as when filled by the mighty hopes of
a newly enfranchised class. Those already responsible for existing
conditions have come to acquiesce in them, and feel obliged to adduce
reasons explaining the permanence and so-called necessity of the most
evil conditions. On the other hand, the newly enfranchised view existing
conditions more critically, more as human beings and less as
politicians.

After all, why should the woman voter concur in the assumption that
every large city must either set aside well-known districts for the
accommodation of prostitution, as Chicago does, or continually permit it
to flourish in tenement and apartment houses, as is done in New York?
Smaller communities and towns throughout the land are free from at least
this semi-legal organization of it, and why should it be accepted as a
permanent aspect of city life? The valuable report of the Chicago Vice
Commission estimates that twenty thousand of the men daily responsible
for this evil in Chicago live outside of the city. They are the men who
come from other towns to Chicago in order to see the sights. They are
supposedly moral at home, where they are well known and subjected to the
constant control of public opinion. The report goes on to state that
during conventions or "show" occasions the business of commercialized
vice is enormously increased. The village gossip with her vituperative
tongue after all performs a valuable function both of castigation and
retribution; but her fellow-townsman, although quite unconscious of her
restraint, coming into a city hotel often experiences a great sense of
relief which easily rises to a mood of exhilaration. In addition to this
he holds an exaggerated notion of the wickedness of the city. A visiting
countryman is often shown museums and questionable sights reserved
largely for his patronage, just as tourists are conducted to lurid
Parisian revels and indecencies sustained primarily for their horrified
contemplation. Such a situation would indicate that, because control is
much more difficult in a large city than in a small town, the city
deliberately provides for its own inability in this direction.

During a recent military enca