XLVII
In no respect has the utter impotence of medieval machinery in suppressing vice been more definitely proved than in the great failure of society in dealing with what is called the social evil. Whenever my mind runs on this subject, as anyone’s mind must in the present recrudescence of that Puritanism which never had its mind on anything else, I invariably think of Golden Rule Jones and the incidents in that impossible warfare which worriedhim into a premature grave. He was an odd man, born so far out of his time that the sins of others never troubled his conscience. He was so great, and knew so much of life, more perhaps than he did of history, on every page of which he would have found the confirmations of the opinions life had taught him, that he divined all lewdness, all obscenity to be subjective and not objective, so that he found less to abhor in the sins of the vicious than in the state of mind of their indefatigable accusers and pursuers. And he had his own way of meeting their complaints. Once a committee of ladies and gentlemen called upon him with the demand that he obliterate the social evil, off-hand and instantly. They were simple, brief and to the point. They informed him that the laws providing for chastity were being broken, that there were prostitutes in the city, and in short, urged him to put a stop to it.
“But what am I to do?” he inquired. “These women are here.”
“Have the police,” they said, a new, simple and happy device suddenly occurring to them, “drive them out of town and close up their houses!” They sat and looked at him, triumphantly.
“But where shall I have the police drive them? Over to Detroit or to Cleveland, or merely out into the country? They have to go somewhere, you know.”
It was a detail that had escaped them, and presently, with his great patience, and his great sincerity, he said to them:
“I’ll make you a proposition. You go and selecttwo of the worst of these women you can find, and I’ll agree to take them into my home and provide for them until they can find some other home and some other way of making a living. And then you, each one of you, take one girl into your home, under the same conditions, and together we’ll try to find homes for the rest.”
They looked at him, then looked at each other, and seeing how utterly hopeless this strange man was, they went away.