Honolulu star-bulletin. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu, Hawaii]) 1912-2010, 1913-04-17
SHALL We PERpETUAIE A TERRIBLE FAILURE

the course OF the Iedllght bill III the territorial
senate that the only opposiion.to the bill is the
opposition Of those who are willing to admit that
this city and other cities of the territory should
support prostitution.
They are willing to admit that there should
be segregated district, that, in contrayention
to every moral and statutory law, the city should
tolerate the shame of women for the lust of men.
The only argument so far brought up against
Senate Bill 1873, which proposes to combat pros
titution by injunction in the courts, is the argu-
ment that to close up the segregated district will
scatter vice through the city, and that the scat
tering of vice through the city7will endanger the
homes
1t is an old, old fallaey; an old, old excuse.
But the plain fact, the terrible fact the fact that
not member of the Legislature can deny, is that
segregation does not segregate. And the further
fact is that the establishment and maintenance,
Of segregated district does not decrease the
prevalence of sexual disease.
Facts and figures we're cited last night on
both these points They were not answered i
they cannot be answered. James A. Rath, head
worker of Palama settlement, gave the health
c0mmittee of the senate the shocking informa-
lion that scores of prostitutes are regularly ply
ing their trade outside the IwiIei district and
that even when that district was at the height,
Of its reputation notoriety- as an estab-
lished brothel-house section, only a small per-
centage Of the women of the streets were kept
therein
DR.. ". G. Hobby gave the committee as shock
ing and unanswerable facts on the flourishing,,
Of sexual disease even nnder conditions of segre-
&C -, -; NJ,
Every Investigating commission, every city,
every community in the country that has looked
this subject of commercialized vice squarely ini
the face has come to the conclusion that segre-
cation is pitiful terrible failure It is fail
IRE here; it is a failure elsewhere
And segregation is the only alternative that
has been suggested for the outlawing Of vice I'M
der the Iowa abatementby injunction plan
If segregation is failure, is Hawaii to trust
to it? To trust to an outworn illegal, danger
Gus, ineffective, corrupting and degeneratingI
system?
physician from San Francisco made unsup-l
ported statements last night relative to the al
legged ineffectiyeness of the Iowa plan. Yet the
very latest Investigations have found that PLAN
to be the best yet conceived for battling against
vice 1t is the plan in which Nebraska followed
Iowa, and Washington followed Nebraska andl
california followed washington. Such a bill
applying to the District Of Columbia has passed
the United States senate and been favorably re
ported to the house. a recent summary of vice
crnsading, in the Literary Digest of January II,
1913 says .sThat segregation affords no solution
Of the problem seems to be now generally con-
ceded, and goes on with the significant com
ment that the Iowa plan is being adopted by cit
les that have made Investigations of the vice
question
There is said to be yelled opposition to the
bill because Honolulu is held to be peculiarly
situated as a seaport town and with large num-I
bers of unmarried men here The seaport
town. argument has been long ago exploded.
There never was an American seaport town Wild
81. for instance, than Seattle few years ago
during the Alaska rush. Month for month the
numbers of single men that flow in and out of
that seaport are twenty times those in Honolulu.
Yet Seattle, after long and bitter experience
;fh the restricted district under close police SUI
Revision. has forever banshed the redlight Sec
f;m and the state has just passed the Iowa in
;npction law. Seattle a few years ago had the
best-established red light district on the coast
f. not in the country And yet it was this very
sss4em Of segregation that debauched the chief
of ,,ol;ce and sent him to the penitentiary, con
victed of receiving money from disorderly and