Baxter Springs news., 1919-01-03
FIGHT SOCIAL I.
DISEASE NEXT
''Red Light" Districts Are Not
Essential to Our Cities
Social Disease War
Is Next War
By J. w. Kaltenbaeh

that the so-called "Red Light" or "Se-
gregated Vice District" is not essen
tial TO our cities as some have main
tanned before.
From the outset when Uncle Sam
set aside sixteen training camps,
where the boys of draft age were to
undergo their military schooling, a
warfare as highly organized and no
less efficient than the campaign in
France, has been carried on by Fed
eral agents against social vice and So
cial diseases.
AS a result of this campaign, writ
ers of authority today assert that
there are no more Red Light districts
as they were banished from the large
cities by reason Of the severe military
rules Laird down as a social 'barrage"
around the boys in these camps.
Space will not permit to go into de-
tails as to how this was accomplished
but the results are apparant in many
ways.
Statistics show that in the first
year of the war England had no less
than 1546 Of her men, in service, con-
taminated by so called social diseases
France was so bad that she had to
maintain huge detention camps where
men of this infection were kept apart
as severely as tho they were lepers-
the ratio in our own camps probably
never exceeded one per cent, or ten
to every thousand men, furthermore
five men carried disease into the camp
to one that contracted it after enlist
ment.
The stigma of shame attached Sc
verely to the boys enlisted from east
ern Kansas Oklahoma and western
Missouri; the reason for this can only
be chargable to a moral slackness in
the cities contiguous to this territory
and to the further fact that in inten-
sive industrial centers such as coal
camps, mine centers and oil and gas
fields with their transient workmen,
money is plentiful and flows freely
and the resultant tendency is greater
to debauchery and dissipation.
This "license" of freedom was i'm
mediately checked by our military
rules which forbid the presence of
questionable women on training
grounds and made the cities around
the camps keep clean house" when
the boys went out on furlough; the
government went further and caused
the arrest and detention Of all women
found to be frequenters around these
camps.
The campaign begun primarily to
adjust or insure the military fitness
Of the boys who went into training,
resulted in one of the greatest clean
up affairs the country had ever ex-
perienced and it was done so quietly
as to almost escape attention; how
ever, the war on social vice has not
been fully won and the work done by
the Federal Government only acts as
an armistice for when that great arm
of discipline is relaxed as it. is bound
to be after the training camps are
abolished, the forces of the under
world will stand blatantly ready to
peddle their wares "when Johnnie
comes marching home"
Venereal disease does not originate
in the army and is therefore not to
be attached as war epidemic; but as
a civil problem and a peace time prob
lem.
The protection of our homes is our
sacred duty whether against foreign
invaders or against the incipient thing
that attack individually and the city
Of Baxter Springs faces the problem
just as Kansas City or st. Louis or
New York face it.
Ignorance and modesty do much to
stimulate if not to foster the spread
of prostitution and its offspring, ven
ereal disease; you cannot stop crime
by turning your back upon it; it takes
action Of a kind that will stop the
traffic in such things and can only be
brought about by PUBLICITY.
City legislation to suppress ques.
tionable characters or resorts exist
ing in the confines of the city will do
much to discourage the pest; by re-
porting all cases Of social disease as
other contagious or infectious dis
eases are reported viii be a great help
and if necessary, tho a little unethical
some may say-the placarding Of all
homes or places where the disease is
known to exist.
When men and boys are confronted
A. - i