The Salt Lake tribune. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1890-current, 1914-01-09

truth as it is. Such action always
pains the Pccksniffs and Chadbands
whose role is that of moral censorship.
] saw both the plays in their pris-
tine ''impurity. There, was not an
indecently suggestive word or situation
in them; not thing that would pro-
woke lascivious snicker; not An atom
that would arouse coarse and low emo
tions. They were almost religious in
their vivid earnestness. They showed
evil as the hidcous, poisonous thing it
is.
Meanwhile there were n dozen play.
houses in New York where nightly and
sometimes daily there were paraded
groups of half'naked women directly
appealing TO nothing but sensuality,
and where there were jokes of thinly
clad vile meanings. These were tole-
rated because they were customary,
they were conventional, and to the
Pharisee convention is morality.
The two plays mentioned struck n
note that it Is all too much needed that
we hear, to wit; the commerciahzing
of vice and its intimate connection with
partisan politics in cities
In the report of the vice commission
of Chicago of 1911 appears this para
graph; =,
% Prostitution is commcrcielized
business. The first truth that the com
zens OF Chicago is the fact that prosti.
tuition III this city is q commerclaliZed
business of large proportions, with tre-
mendous profits OF more than Sl5 200, :
600 per year, controlled largely by men,
not women. 1t is abhorrent to the
moral sense of a community like Chi
| cago, the second largest city in the
| country, that there should be within
its borders a group or groups of men,
| vicious and ignorant to degree, who
are openly and defiantly breaking the
laws of the state, and bringing into Ill
repute the honor of the city. Think
OF business which demands supply
| of 5000 souls from year to year TO salts
| fy the lust and greed of men. These
statements may seem exaggerated and
| highly colored, but careful, ultra
conservative study of conditions has
put the commission in possession of alb
solute facts upon which TO base these
conclusions.
| There is another aspect Of the condi-
tlons to which, for reasons that per
| haps are obvious, the commission did
| not allude; and that Is that this whole
unspeakable business could not exist
without the connivance and participa-
tion of the men in control of the party
| political organizations III the city. In
| our partisan politics. governed city com
| mercialiZed prostitution is a part of the
| government, Through the lace curtains
of the brothel are reached out the hands
that corrupt the police, and that help
pull the strings that regulate our law
enforcement. When Bayard WELLER
| shows that this Influence reaches
through the ward boss on up to the
| United States senate he exhibits q shat
| tering truth, for the senator Of his
| party stands upon the apex Of the pile
whose base is IN the city slum.
1t is no wonder that the artist finds
in these facts a mine of tragedy and of
heart-break that appeals to his creative
genius. For here is the most tragic, the
most dramatic situation of our times.
1t is no wonder either that those
moraIists, whose morality consists il
crying Naughty Naughtyl" when
some one uncovers the septic germs OF
a national sewer. should clamor that
the lid should be slapped on again; tC
them typhus is preferable to bac
smell
The greatest enemies of the drama
are those that force playwrights eve
down to the level of convention. insist
on sweet prettiness or only traditiona
tragedies. and prevent authors of genius
from setting forth for US the terrible
| dynamic sins of our day,
Let me say again: vice in its bare
| revelation harms no one; 1t is the
glamour of vice, the covering up OF
vice that lurcs,
"Vice,' says Winifred Black, al.
the stupidest thing in the world Why
do you think it is so aluring' Yor
must think so, for YOU protest against
The one way to keep away from it /!
TO know all about it, to realize jus
what it is and what it is not and never
can be. -