The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1860-02-13

vinces.
An article from Chicago paper, which we
reprint In another place, gives revolving pic
ture of the manners and morals of the people
in the new cities of the Vest We have be-
come 80 far accustomed TO recording elope-
ments of wives from their husbands, and uice
rersa, In the West, that such cases attract but
little attention. The common excuses for these
misdemeanors, that they are unavoidable in
new country and an unsettled state of socie-
ty, where the domestic hearth is in the draw
ing room of q hotel, will not answer in the
particular matter before us to-day. This is a
case wherein woman Of mature age, refined,
courteous, well educated, properly trained,
surrounded with all that makes life agreeable,
presiding over luxurious home, descended,
not with one person, but with many, to break
her marriage vows. And that the case is not a
singular one in that section of the country,
may be gathered from the context Of our Chi
cago cotemporary's rather remarkable article.
This picture of social life in the West is
not fattering, and shows that the West
sinks as rapidly or more so into vice and
immortality than 1t progresses in population
and material wealth. Within year it seems
that two clergymen have been obliged to give
up their churches on account of immoral con-
duct; at Racine clergyman has seduced the
wife Of brother in his church; two leading
men in Chicago have debauched their sisters
in. law, and so on to the end of the disgusting
chapter. ---
We allude to this Chicago contribution to
the erotic literature of the day not because
Chicago is any worse than other places in the
interior. Occurrences fresh in everybody's
recollection 60 to prove that other places
Boston for example-are quite as bad, so far as
secret vice is concerned And yet we find the
editors and the parsons in these very places
crying out to the metropolis, "Get thee behind
me, Satan, for I am holier than thou" The
fact is that there are many small cities and
towns in the interior where the per cent.
age of crime is greater in proportion to the
population than in the metropolis, with all
its foreign and floating population, to say no.
thing of a VIGOROUSLY scanty and inefficient
police force. And it is likewise fact, beyond
Ill pckauNcueulc, euot Wnilo AcdIAy oil tuc lclO-
MES committed here are done by foreigners new
ly arrived, the sinks of iniquityt to which the ru-
raj editors and parsons so pathetically allude
are maintained and supported by non-residents,
provincial journalists on spree, country
traders piloted by dry goods drummers or
clergymen eager for forbidden fruit The po-
lice rolls contain the names of some of the very
hypocrites who are SO loud in proclaiming the
city of New York, this grand imperial city of
which every American citizen should be proud,
Sodom or a Gomorrah. The truth is that the
people from the country know much
more of the wickedness of New York
than our own citizens Without the
strangers, the gambling bells, the brothels, and
other disreputable houses of the metropolis,
could not be sustained. Our people do not
frequent them, and, as general rule, do not
know where they are. What is done secretly
in Chicago is repeated openly in New York by
the same persons, and we write this to hold
them, and not the citizens of New York respon.
sible for their immortality. The time for such
shamming and humbugging and double faced
hypocrisy has gone by. Let us have no more
of it, but every tub fair and square on its own
bottom.