Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1900-11-22
CRUSADE AGAINST VICE.
Mayor Van Wyck of New York
Aroused by a Scathing Letter
From Bishop Potter.
STRONG PLEA IN BEHALF OF INNOCENCE.
The Police Arraigned as the Protectors
and Abettors of the Worst Elements
Mayor Van Wyck Pledges His Best Eff
forts to Bring About 3 Changed Con-
ditioa.

New York, Nov. 17.-Bishop Henry
c. Potter, bishop of the Episcopalian
diocese of New York, yesterday sent
a letter to Mayor Van Wyck, in refer
enc to vice in this city, and especially
on the East Side. This letter is the
one promised some weeks ago, when
the bishop publicly announced that
czie of his rectors had been grossly
insulted by the commanding officials
of a certain police station, and that
he proposed to take up the matter in
a manner which the heads of the po-
lice force should feel. The public has
been awaiting with interest the
bishops first move, and in connection
with Tammany halls announcement
that it proposed to look into vice and
stop it, the bishops letter, received
yesterday by the mayor, is bound to
form the principal subject of discus
sion in public places as well as in
private homes for some time to come.
Three Movements Against Vice.
At the present writing there are
three movements directed against
vice as it is displayed on the great
East Side. These are a quietly-con-
Quoted investigation by District At
torney Gardner, in connection with
Anthony Comstock's Society for the
Suppression of Crime; Tammany's
appointment of a committee to in
vestigate ponuical conditions, and
Bishop Potter's crusade.
Work at the Pro-CathedraI.
Bishop Potter,in his letter to Mayor
Van Wyck, first calls attention to the
work that is being done at the pro-
cathedral, $50 Stanton street, in en-
~deavoring to improve the condition of
the poor of the East Side tenement
district, in which it is located, and
says it has been recognized as an i'm
portant factor in promoting the yir-
tue and good order of the community
in which it ministers. He continues:
S~cathing Charge Against Police.
I'm view of these facts it would
seem that it has a valid claim on the
sympathy, cooperation and at least
courteous consideration of those who
officially represent our city govern
ment and the guardianship of decency
and good morals. 1 urge here no 9TH
er claim for it, and / beg to say that
/ am not now addressing you because
there has been in hat which L now
desire to bring to your notice a vulgar
and brutal absence of these in connec-
tiCn with one who happens to have
been my own representative. The per-
sonal element, SO far as he is or / am
concerned, is of the very smallest on
sequence. A matter of far greater con-
sequence, sir, is that when a minister
of religion and a resident in a particu-
lar ne~ighborhood, whose calling and
character, experience and t~rustfu1ness |
are all alike widely and abundantly |
recognized, goes to the headquarters
of the police in his district to appeal
to them for the protection of the
young. the innocent and the defense |
less against the ieprous harpies who
are hired as runners and touters for
the lowest and most Infamous deus of
vice. he is met not only with contempt
and derision, but with the coarsest |
contumely and obloquy."
Specific Charges.
Bishop Potter then goes on to tell
how. when two clergymen called at
the police station of the precinct to
complain of the notorious condition |
of affairs, one of them was told by |
the police captain hat he lied; and
that when, disheartened by such an
experience, the clergyman carried his
complaint to a higher authority in the
police, he was met with insolent deri- |
sion.
The bishop goes on to say:
Does Not Ask Impossibilities.
'I am not, I beg to say, unmindful
of the fact that the existence of vice |
in a great city is practically an newt
able condition of the life of such a
community. I am not demanding that
vice shall be stamped out by the po-
lice or any other civil authority. This |
is a task which would demand for its
achievement a rae of angels and not
of men. But I approach you, sir, to
protest with all my power against a
condition of things in which vice is
not only tolerated, but shielded and
encouraged by those whose sworn duty
it is to repress and discourage it, and,
in the name of unsullied youth, and
innocence, of young girls and their
mothers who, though living under
conditions often of privation and the
hard struggle for a livelihood, have
in them every instinct of virtue and
purity that are the ornaments of any
so-called gentlewoman in the land,
and before God and in the face of the
citizens of New York I protest, as my
people have charged me to do, against
the habitual insult. the persistent
menace the unutterably defling con-
facts, to which day by day, because of
the base completely of the police of
New York with the lowest forms of
vice and crime, they r subject.
In the Name of Innocence.
"And, in the name of these little
ones. these weak and defenseless ones,
Christian and Hebrew alike, of many
races and tongues, but of homes in
which God is feared, and his law rev.
erenced, and virtue and decency hon.
ored and exemplified, 1 call upon you,
sir, to save these people who are in
a very real way committed to your
charge, from a living hell, defling,
deadly, damning, to which the GRIM
inal supineness of the constituted au-
thorities set for the defense of de-
cency and good order, threatens to
doom them"
In the Hands Of the Mayor. i
Bishop Potter, IN conclusion, says
he has no method to suggest for the
lettering of the conditions; these are
in the hands of the mayor. He says