The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1883-05-14
STREAMING AT A GNAT,

STREAMING AT A GNAT
cry has gone up against the opium dens
of Mott street, New York, that they are en-
ployed to seduce young girls into smoking
opium as prelude to worse vices. The pull
pit has Illuminated against this iniquity, and
the authorities are enlisted to root out the
evil. A very commendable movement. If
the Chinese of Mott street have been guilty
of these sins as charged, let them be brought
to justice, and their practices stopped. But
a thousand Mott streets in New York.
Some streets for miles on either
side are rotten with sin and
its appliances for its reproduction
There are thousands of dens in the great
metropolis as vile and dangerous as the
opium dens can be by any kind of possibili-
| ty-thousands of pl aces where young girls
and young boys are ipducted into the ways
of vice. There are streets that are one vast
pandemonium of debauchery and tempta-
ton after nightfall. Music and dancing and
,
and back Of these are still worse and lower
means of dissipation. The streets swarm with
bedizened women, and the saloons and
concerts are crowded to overlooking with
them. sturdy welcome is extended to all.
The gayety and abandon of it all intoxicates
the inexperienced, aud, seeing only the gilt
! ter and show, many young man and young
woman have thrown away decency and self
respect to enter upon this life apparently so
| free from care. Besides the streets and sa-
| looms and concerts are other resorts, if posi-
BILE still more disreputable, and still nearer
that point whence to- turn back is
| impossible. These places-thousands
of them-are open all day and
all night the year round, and
ayers are known to the police-the business
is all but as open and bold as business is on
| Broadway. Why not exterminate few of
| them? Why roll up the eyes and raise the
hands in horror over Mott street? Mott street
| isn't half so dangerous as is Seventh ave-
nue., with its Cremorne Garden and the Hay
market, or side streets with their Bucking-
ham Palaces and other like places of resort
One does not have to live in New York city
| to hear of these. Their fame is known to
the other side of the continent. An
utter stranger could go to New York and
| find score of places that are but the high
way to perdition for the young of both
| sexes. Mott street. even as bad as pictured
is but pimple on body packed with loath-
some pustules. If it were blotted out to-day,
and lined with churches, it would not be
missed, 1t is only too evident that the secret
of this movement is to be found in the fact
| that the proprietors OF the Mott street places
political influence. The officials are
| not afraid of them. To the
everlasting shame of American city Off
cials it must be declared that crime of all
kinds goes UNPUBLISHED and unrebuked. The
votes of the human brutes that batten on
| fallen humanity in our large cities are
guaranty of immunity from police interfer-
! ence. 1t is safe to say that there are not a
hundred places out of the 20, 900 that nightly
seek fresh victims in New York city but are
known to the police. 1t is known too, that
every kind of crime is practiced in
them with boldness that would
be alarming, were the truth
known. The sluggers and thugs
that people the saloons of white men are
thousandfold more dangerous to society COL
lectively and individually than are the pro-
prietors of the opium dens, infamous as these
| are. The brutes that grow up under the ad.
vantages of metropolitan civilization could
give the heather points in wickedness of
which he never dreamed. In the name of all
that is good, let the opium dens be closed,
and then let the war be carried into Africa
by closing the ten thousand places that
catch thousand victims where Mott street
THE savants of Germany are getting their