The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1893-05-11

| so each great city is the receptacle OF the
filth and corruption of its respective
tributary districts.
If this filth were drained in TO be de.
stroyed in the fire Of u righteous life, all
| might be well for the nation. But the
| city is the heart of the nation today
Into it flows its life. 1t flows out again,
and it flows out contaminated Of neces-
sity by all the influences that make or
unmake the life Of the people who dwell
In the city. Luxury and idleness and
| crime and poverty are in the cities SUI
preme forces. These are the powers that
create prostitution. In the cities they
are massed, and the aggregate results
from these causes make up its horrible
| total.
There are scores Of women who enter
this life because they are vicious in dis
position, because they are lazy and igno-
rant and because they prefer, from vanity
and selfshness, life of coarse luxury to
q life Of honest toll. A large per cent,
larger than one would wish who believes
in the best there is in man, will be found
in this class. And yet to many an hon.
est working girl in our great cities there
comes again and again the unspeakable,
horrible alternative, which rises and will
not down at the bidding, either to beg, to
steal, to starve, to commit suicide or to
sell her body. This is the sad story which
the city writes in these modern days for
the lover Of the race to read.
ITS BRAzEN BoLDNEss.
Second-The house of the strange wo-
man has become in the modern city an
| established institution. 1t has become
a commercial enterprise. 1t has its law
Of supply and demand, and the conse-
auent corruption Of the life of the peo-
Pile is something incomprehensiblo to
those who have not seriously studied it.
A group Of earnest Christian women,
impressed with this horrible fact and Of
its growing reality, went a few years
ago to the editor Of great newspaper in
London and laid before him the facts of
this social evil in his great city. AT first
he hooted tho idea. 1t seemed to him
monstrosity impossible in the English
world. They insisted upon its truth. He
decided to investigate it for himself; he
did investigate it. The result was that
he hurled that immortal thunderbolt
into modern society printed in the Pail
Mall Gazette, entitled THE Maiden Trib.
ute to Modern Babylon"
An explosion followed the hurting of
that bomb which shook the world. Phar-
isees and hypoorites succeeded in putting
Mr.. Stead into prison for his bold as
sault, but the great and the noble in the
English world rallied in the hour of trial
to his support, and the reaction swept
from the statute books of England every
disgraceful law that bound woman with
the chains of q slave through the past
generation. The report Of Mr.. Stead
was investigated by men Of the highest
character, and every statement and every
allegation was found to be substantially
true.
If the truth were known today in the
great cities of America, the story written
by Mr.. Stead could be rewritten here
with equal force and unanswerable log
ic. So great is this power as an institu-
ton that it lays hold of society in our
city on every side. The cabmen, for in
stance, who rule certain class of pas
senger traffic, are almost every one in
the employ of these houses of i'll fame,
and beneath the seats of their cab cush-
ions are kept the cards of direction to
the various establishments. A sailor
cannot enter the port of New York with
out receiving letters inviting him to
these brothels high and low. Even some
of our own great newspapers print in
their personal columns with marvellous
effrontery, from Sunday to Sunday, the
advertisements of these infamous estab-
lishments. Nearly every saloon in tho
city Of New York and in all our great
cities has private parlors in which
women Of loose character are found,
and it is scarcely possible for o man to
enter saloon without coming in con-
tact with this underworld of social vice.
Every gambling establishment in the
city is the vestibule to the house Of i'll
fame.
Not only is this true, but there are
vast districts of our cities through which
it is impossible for man, young or old,
to pass at night without being addressed
and solicited by woman. A young
woman newspaper reporter recently un-
dertook the experiment Of walking the
streets of New York through the entire
night to see what adventure might be-
fall woman unaccompanied. She wrote
her experience Cor one Of the daily news
papers. In it she declared that she was
not addressed or solicited by any man
at any hour of the night or on any street,
and she passed through some Of the most
unfrequented and dangerous. She gave
it as her opinion that woman who went
about her business could go and come
through the streets of the city at any
time unmolested. But I dare to say to
this young woman that she will meet an
unpleasant revelation if she will array
herself in masculine ATTIRE and walk the
streets of the city. 1t will be scarcely
possible for her to report accurately ev-
cry incident that will occur.
The boldest Of these spirits that con-
duct the commercial transactions In
this underworld often accumulate great
power and wealth. The great masses
who feed their Golfers go down in disease
and despair and death. The horrible
number of those who are thus given to
the corruption Of the youth and the
manhood and the homes Of the nation
Is something appalling. AS the modern
IJy grows IN numbers this evil grows
apace, and even in higher ratio than the
arithmetical proportion.
1t is said by those who have studied
the situation most carefully that in the
city Of Paris there are 100000 women
given to this evil life. There certainly
are not less than $4,000 in the city OF
New, York, and the lowest estimate for