Valdez daily prospector., 1913-04-14
MONDAY. ApRIl. li. 1913.
SEARCHING TRUTH THROUGH
 THE EMOTIONS.


 sprung from he investigation now going on in Chicago may have some good results. \ ccr- tain portion of employers may have their hearts moved to better the wages and the conditions of the young women in their service. But if the discussion proceeds along it's present lines, we fear that a deplorablr balance of evil will appear in the sum total. The InVeStigal ion has been most lln- wisely guided. and il has been permitted to drift into channels which lead not toward the truth, but quite otherwise. Reasonable persons would admit that a too scanlv wage, by making il more difficult to resist tempt alton, would in many cases render cas- ger the lapse from virtue. But when from the testimony given tEe assumption is made that low wages are a chief cOntributi ing cause of immortality, and when in particular testimony is given and iS eravcly commented upon as if i: were the statement of socia fact, tn the effect that reproach must be withheld when the scan- tiness of the wage is given as thu: reason for tranSgreSSiOn, then it t,ecomes evident that the invcsti- ductivc of vastly more harm than good.
 If these crude and nasty as SumptiOnS were true. if this re- 1atiOn between wages and virtue is accepted as established, if we must believe that the bulWarks of morality are to be sought in eco homie conditi ions. then millions upon millions of sermons that have been preached through he long centuries and are preached today are shown Io be false and futile, he theory of the moral sentiments must be discarded. and all our prevailing standards of right conduct will be over thrown. The emotions are a highly unsafe guide in the search for economic or social truth. and the discussion of the evidence given in Chicago has been in great part purely emotional. The light of reason and of experience seems to have been rXtinguished or obscured while these matters have been talked about.
 To assume that virtue and pllr- fly are merely a question of the difference between SG and SS a week is to leave quite out of sight the influence of home training and aSsoriat ion. and to deny all saving influence to the innate moral sense. Under the teachings of such a doctrine human society would undergo frightfrul depre- dation. It is amazing that min- isters of he gospel dr not see the tendency of the line of thought and discussion so lightly entered upon.We should suppose that they would thunder from the pull pit their denunciatinn of these Meek-old theories that. if they gained d general acceptance, would deprive the church of in- nurncr and it's moral teachings of all value.
 Yet there will D" greater need than ever of moral teaching if this invest igaiion should spread from Chicago to a dozen other states and if men and women should continue to rXtrmporlZf theories of social and ecomnomiC conditions. Vice is a monster we know, but the poet has told us too, what happens when we be- come too familiar with the mon- sler. The familiarity has be- come somewhat intimate in these days, and it is not a wholesome intimacy, it is one not for con- demnatinn but for palliation an, excuse. Moreover, there is { frightful wrong in an inquiry tha must as one of it's effertS direct dishOnOring suspicious against immense numbers of young wO- men in the employments under scrutiny, young women who's,