The Man in Scarlet

The Man in Scarlet BY WILLIAM A. HYDE, PRESIDENT OF THE POCATELLO STAKE OF ZION All truth is precious, if not all divine, And what dilates the powers, must needs refine. — Cozvpcr. Flattery's the turnpike road to Fortune's door — Truth is a narrow lane all full of quags Leading to broken heads, abuse and rags, And workhouses — sad refuge for the poor! — Flattery's a mountebank so spruce — gets riches; Truth a plain Simon Pure, a Quaker Preacher, A Moral Mender, a disgusting Teacher, That never got a sixpence by her speeches. — Peter Pindar. I held it ever, Virtue and knowledge were endowments greater Than nobleness and riches; careless heirs May the two latter darken and expend; But immortality attends the former, Making a man a God. — Shakespeare. In considering a delicate subject about which entirely too little has been said in public, I shall make no apologies to the thinskinned and prudish, — they are warned in the beginning of my intention to deal honestly with a great question ; I promise the other class of readers that they may follow me without fear. A careful authority estimates that there are 1,200,000 female and 6,000,000 male prostitutes in the United States, and it has

580 IMPROVEMENT ERA been said on the authority of the highest class of physicians in the land that 75% of the male population of large cities who have come to maturity are sexually impure, and that a great proportion of that number are the victims of disease ! A million hearts beating despairingly for freedom within bared cribs ! A million wanton women running riot in an excess of unbridled passion that is at the same time their life and their death ! A million forms racked in the torments of a disease that eats out the very heart and marrow, — stricken, burning, dying, — without pitying word of friend or supplicating prayer of minister or priest, and after five years of a life of shame, hurled into the mystery of the future ! These are the women in scarlet of today ! A woman student of this question, recently said in an address : "I stand here in the presence of God to say that of the erring girls in this land, three-fourths of them have been snared, and trapped, and bought and sold." Mr. Stead, in his book, // Christ Came to Chicago, gives the testimony of a woman who knows these women, as follows : "Prostitution is an effect and not a careless, voluntary choice on the part of the fallen. Girls do not elect to cast themselves away. They are driven to the haunts of vice. The more distinctively womanly a girl is — and I mean by that, the more she has beauty, delicacy, love of dress and adornment, feminine weaknesses, — the easier a mark she is for the designing. And the designers are not wanting. Girls, and I say this emphatically, are not seducers. They have innate delicacy and refinement. I say honestly, that I do not believe that one women in ten thousand would cast herself at the feet of lust, except under duress or under the force of circumstances." With the average life of a prostitute but five years in her sins, what a traffic in human flesh there must be to keep the ranks supplied ! Who are the women in scarlet of the future, 0 mothers of this nation? A million girl babies, pressing their sugary lips to yours ! A million toddlers, crooning their mother-song to waxen dolls!

friE MAN IN SCARLET S& A million romping damsels with tossing curls, in whose eyes is the flashing glint of the sky, and whose laugh is the sound of mountain brooks ! O motherhood of the Nation, with sackcloth, with ashes on your heads, you may pray Death that he shall cut these down, ere they don the scarlet robe, but your prayers will be unavailing, for Death is not so kind, and the heartless world will continue to take its unsparing toll ! Who are the men in scarlet? Six million boys crazing the immature brain with the deadly glass of liquor ! Six million youths, tasting with laughing lips the bittersweets of sin ! Six million men, rioting in the prostitution of noble powers to the intoxicating music of the siren ! Six million men, waxed and perfumed — without, paragons of virtue ; within — moral lepers, and, God pity the world, no warning voice to cry, "unclean !" Six million men, trafficking in human life as one might deal in swine's flesh ! Putting a price on virtue ! Selling souls in the market to the highest bidder ! Six million men, with the horrid grip of Death clutching at their vitals, blighting innocence with their touch, poisoning the kiss of love, — breeding their leprous spawn, — blinded, crooked-limbed, degenerate, into an unoffending world ! Contaminating the very air of heaven with their breath ; from whose rotting bodies, the blaspheming spirit at last in horror flies, preferring to such punishment the judgments of the damned ! These are the men in scarlet of today! Who shall make up the vast army of the future, who, like their predecessors, shall go down into the dark valley of death ? Is it your boy, good father or mother, say ? With this stream of corruption flowing into the life channels of the nation, how long until Virtue shall flee front our shores, and in her place shall sit the ancient goddess of Lust, who shall rule until, ripened past the iniquity of Babylon, we shall become even as the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah ! Of the many causes that lead to this condition in our national life, can man with sure instinct, point to the principal ones?

582 IMPROVEMENT ERA The leading cause finds its root in the greatest lie of all history- -thai "prostitution is a necessary evil!" If all the devils of In 11, ripened in shrewdness and grizzled with age from the time of Adam, had sat in fiendish conclave to invent the falsehood that would strike most deeply into the purposes of God for the happiness of his children, this would be the sum and essence of all their ("iiiinmir No believer in God's revelation accepts the conclusion that it is necessary to do any wrong zvhatcver. That Goa has denounced adultery, is proof sufficient that a virtuous life is1 possible for all men This diabolical lie is the expression of a moral cowardice that, in the face of a deeply imbedded sentiment, dare not oppose evil ! It is the spirit of compromise that says "for fear of a greater harm, we will suffer a lesser one." It is the expression of an error that presumes a physical condition in man that must be met, no matter at what cost to society ! Has it turned out, then, to be true that "our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not ; and our crimes would despair if they were not cherished by our virtues," for this theory says that if you stop licensed prostitution, you turn a thousand libertines into the sanctuaries of society there to defile, and does not count on sufficient manhood in the earth to defend the rights of the home ! It is to the shame of Christian nations, that they have to turn to the heathen for a repudiation of this master lie. Count Okuma of Japan has said, with reference to the abolition of the social evil : The Northern States of America, when declaring the liberation of the negroes, were not unmindful of the ruinous effects which the emancipation of slaves would bring upon the cotton plantations of the South; yet they showed no hesitation in carrying out their humanitarian declaration even at the point of the bayonet. They knew that all considerations of economical interests must be ignored until the abolition of slavery became an acknowledged fact. The question of licensed vice, like that of slavery, is a question of humanity, [Italics mine] and should be dealt with as such, regardless of the effects its abolition may entail upon public sanitation or the moral condition of society. It has been argued that the abolition of licensed quarters will result in the spreading of abominable diseases, and will in no way elevate the moral tone of the masses as long as human nature

THE MAN IN SCARLET 583 docs not change. We are not unaware of such possible effects, but these are questions we must strive to solve only after the emancipation of unfortunate women is carried out. There is in the wisdom of this statesman the golden grain of thought, corresponding to the word of revelation, "For I the Lord cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance." This man would emancipate the white slaves as Lincoln did the blackones, by striking without hesitation at the chains that bind them, and then he would turn to the other questions as they came, and solve them as our country has solved the questions that grew out of the war of the Rebellion. In my oppion, the second great cause of prostitution is the false standard that has prevailed in the world, coming down from the time that woman was a chattel, that puts the brand of disgrace upon her weakness, and absolves her male companion in his sin ! O that medieval knighthood might be found in the breasts of men of today, when men kissing their sword blades, "Would covenantt to fear, revere and serve God religiously; * * * to maintain the just cause of the weak, such as widows, orphans and maidens, in good quarrel; to expose themselves for them according as necessity required; * * * that avarice, gain or profit should never oblige them to do any action, but only glory and virtue; and that they would hold themselves bound to conduct a lady or maiden; that they would serve her, protect her, and save her from all danger and all insult, or die in the attempt; that they would never do violence to ladies or maidens although they had gained them by arms." Instead of such chivalry we have the despicable poltroonery of a society that permits a man to rob, despoil and corrupt the virtue that he once swore to cherish ; his sword, once honorably stained with blood in the defense of innocence, is now rusted in its scabbard, and, judged by those old standards, as fit only to be the lowest menial among the slaves, he today lifts his head shameless and unafraid among men ! Weigh the virtue of your boy and your girl in the balance, and say which is the more valuable? Compare them now — this shy, shrinking being — innocent, believing, loving, whose life is centered in her purity, and who losing that, loses all self-respect — "whose fair flower, being once displayed doth fall that very hour;" who

584 IMPROVEMENT ERA gives herself as the bird its song or the rose its perfume. Her virtue cannot be valued, for "it is far above rubies !" This sturdy masterful male, has no virtue save in his strength of will. Shall you pit this incarnation of aggressive passion against this creature whose only defense is her innocence, and when she falls, absolve him as working out the lazvs of nature? Shall we have tzvo standards? Shall she lie in the gutter, while he, perfecting himself in the arts of seduction, goes on to other conquests ? If man's condemnation for sin comes in the ratio of his light, so shall his infamy, in comparison with the weaker vessel, be in his strength, and the man should have the scarlet letter burned in his breast, the man should wear the scarlet robe, while gentle, pitying hands should raise the woman back to self-respect, and the life and virtue, bathed and renewed in tears of repentance ! Until the unholy standard now prevailing in the world is reversed or equalized, and the burden of odium placed on strength and not on weakness, we are inviting boys and men to enter the scarlet army. As to those women who by the error of confiding love become illegitimate mothers, who nurse their babes with tender maternal light in the eye, it has been said by a sympathetic observer, "that they are by no means the worst in their station. Many of them are of the very best — refined, intelligent, truthful and affectionate." The greatest writers of the world have testified to this ; and that such as these, whose sin was based in love and in the maternal instinct, and who bravely bear in their arms the evidence of their shame, are barred from the full fruits of repentance, is one of the gravest crimes of humanity! That marriage to her companion in guilt in a measure absolves her, and permits the veil of forgetfulness to shield her, is an admission of her merits in the case, and places the responsibility of the act upon the man. What part a lax society, of which woman herself forms a potent part, has in this moral condition we cannot fully judge, but in this day of fear for the race would one think that arguments for the purity of man would fall on the doubtful, unwilling ears of any woman? And yet there are women who look upon this class of immorality as unavoidable and necessary, and who would pass their daughters over to the hands of men on a doctor's certificate ! O perverse womanhood that holds itself so cheap ! Know you not that you are educating men to the scarlet when you permit

THE MAN IN SCARLET 585 the idea to go unrebuked that men can do these things and still be decent! Where does the young woman stand on this proposition of the "man in scarlet?" Is it sufficient for you, young woman, that your fiancee, the morning before marriage, shall take you aside, and in a spirit of high honor, tell you that he is unvirtuous ? Clearly better that he should tell you then than not at all, but is that sufficient, when, crushed and bleeding at heart, you have to choose between a humiliating scandal and this shell .of a man who now stands brazenly in your presence? Should you not, if you had the choosing, prefer a primitive man, with a stone ax, and be housed in a cave with virtue for your companion? What right has this man to ask or require virtue of you when he has nothing to give in exchange for it? Should this fraud have entered the lists, competing with honorable men for a priceless gift? There is an excess of modesty on the part of some young women, and the sooner they come to look marriage, with all its possibilities, squarely in the face, not blinding their eyes with prudery, the better it will be for them and the race ! When woman politically was at the complete mercy of man, there was greater scope for the exercise of our pity, but now, where in a rapidly increasing proportion of our country she is granted political power — pity must in a measure give way to a demand from the better element of the men that woman shall always stand for the amelioration of her sex, by her voice and vote. There is nothing so discouraging to those who attempt the role of reformers as to find that woman, who is the most "vitally concerned in the great questions of the betterment of the race, is frequently misled and deceived by the sophistries of men whose lives are a standing lie to their professions. It is inconceivable to think of a wrong in which money does not in some way have a part. "The love of money is a root, not the root of all evil," and in the study of this question, we come without fail to the omnipresent dollar, and learn that in one city of our country $20,000,000 is made annually by prostitution, a large proportion of it going into the hands of promoters. We learn that women are sold on the market at $50 to $75 per head as cattle are bought. We learn that girls are systematically seduced, and farmed out by promoters who get wealthy from the degradation

586 IMPROVEMENT ERA of their victims. We learn that the trade is international — honeycombing all civilization. At these revelations we whould stand amazed, but for the sign of a rift in the cloud of moral blackness, shown in the progress of the last two years. We are assured that the "white slave traffic whereby girls are trapped and sold into vice, is being so thoroughly investigated and vigorously prosecuted, both in Europe and America, that the trade will soon be overcome." This is gratifying as to the cure of the violent symptom of the purchase and sale of human flesh — but still the money power has another and perhaps more dangerous hold on the promotion of vice to which the world is not so thoroughly awake. Can any one doubt that the secret of the vitality of this evil lies in venal officers purchased by corrupt capital? There is scarcely a city of five thousand inhabitants or upwards, where there are not restraining or prohibitive laws against prostitution, and similar enactments against other lewd association of the sexes, and yet in how many of these towns do we see the sphinx-like faces of the guardians of the law in the performance of their role, which is rather to studiously avoid toe full a knowledge of violations of the moral code. Governor Folk stated a patent truth when he said that "wherever there are violators of the law who remain unpunished, you may be sure there is graft;" and while governments are paying men today to do their duty, vice is paying them another salary to keep their hands off lawbreakers, and the omnipotent dollar is thus one of the most powerful factors in this great social problem. It is usually quite easy to trace the source of this corruption, though not always so easy to prove it ; but for the reason that the responsibility in our governmental system is centralized, we may with moral certainty place our hands upon the offenders, be they either active or passive, and that these are men in scarlet, who sit in high places, who zvill deny? "Truth, why shall every wretch of letters Dare to speak truth against his betters! Let ragged Virtue stand aloof Nor utter accents of reproof; Let ragged wit a mute become, When wealth and power would have her dumb." It is difficult of belief that Christian communities can be

THE MAN IN SCARLET 587 apathetic with such conditions existing. Laws are for the protection of society, and we spend large sums in the election and support of legislatures only to find carefully prepared laws inoperative. An influence as effective and far-reaching as it is quiet and cunning, lays its hands upon an officer and he becomes mute. A few men usually say which law shall and which shall not be enforced, and, wrapped up in the mysticism of that stoic who dangles his "billy" on the street corner with the seriousness of a philospher, largely lies the fate of the youth of our country ! O what secrets these figureheads could divulge, "had the cat not stolen their tongues !" "O that mine officer might write a book "telling of the surreptitious nightly visit to some lordly dame — the stealthy assignation that only the moon and the policeman saw — the "rolling home in the morning" of the youthful pride of some old mother — the nightly matinees of crime for inquisitive juveniles — and all the damnable things that make the modern nights in our cities more appalling than any that Babylon in her palmiest days of vice ever saw ! And yet the good people accept the result with an indifference that would better become a cannibal than freemen of the grandest nation under heaven ! Here if ever is the time for a mob, — not the mob of passion, but of intelligence and determination, to publicly burn in effigy, however rich and powerful, these protectors of vice, and drag their names at least, through the mud of the gutter ! And yet there may be a more peacable and more undemonstrative way, by which the people can, if they will, cure this public outrage. In connection with the love of money being one of the direct and indirect causes of prostitution, the saloon plays a very important part. The saloon is the vestibule to the house of ill-fame, and the house of ill-fame is the back entrance to the saloon. Never were two master evils more agreeable and congenial companions. They are almost conjugal in their relationship, and it is incomprehensible that theorists will haggle over prohibition, when very many of the boys who lose their virtue, do so with liquor-befuddled brains, and many of our girls have gone down to ruin through a glass in a wine room ! When, in our cities, an evening of revelry in a saloon is followed by a night of debauchery, and the boy, innocent before but for his drinking, emerges from this pit of shame as red as its inmates !

588 IMPROVEMENT ERA That one of these evils is a benefit to, and promoter of the other, cannot be denied, for you will find few saloon men who look with disfavor upon the prostitute, male or female, and few men in scarlet who do not frequent the saloons. In a recent reform campaign, the fact became known that rival liquor dealers had manipulated the city administration for the purpose of obtaining a saloon license near the red-light district, — had driven the inmates from their pens like sheep, to return them later when the fight was won. Hell has no two agents more powerful than the saloon man and the prostitute. As Christian people we profess the virtues of religion, and talk of ideals ; as Americans, we boast of an almost perfect government, and conscious of these spiritual and political advantages we supinely view our race rushing down the turbid river of sin to its death, and raise no hand ! We must stop and split hairs over personal liberty, or the rights of men engaged in crime, or worse, we weigh against the invaluable gems of purity the price of a dollar's taxes! Self preservation is the first law of individuals, communities and nations : "Weak is that throne, and in itself unsound, Which takes not solid virtue for its ground," and in heaven's name is it not time for American citizenship to cease "pretending to virtues that it does not possess," and if necessary, trample upon n thousand objections and technicalities that breed in the way, and strike at the giant evils that are eating at the heart of humanity ! Now that T have gone thus far, let some one with more hardihood than I connect this conclusion with our political system. I fear to follow it, for presently T shall show the "rag, tag, and bobtail" of the saloon and tenderloin elements of our citizenship, serving »s retainers to men whom our patriotism has taught us to respect, and who would blush, and in an excess of emotion might even become indignant, at any attempt to establish any relationship with these, and some of them, while not flagrante delicto criminals, may by association, implication and personal interest be found to be wearing the scarlet, and heaven forfend ! This question lies very deep, and ultimately it must come home

THE MAN IN SCARLET 589 to the heart of every one of us, perhaps, in one way or another, for in sorrow we have to confess that the home must bear its share of the blame. Out of nearly four thousand prostitutes it was found that more than eleven hundred, or nearly 40 per cent, came from the home. This, again, from Mr. Steads' book: The recruiting grounds of the bagnios are the stores, where girls work long hours for small pay, the homes that have few comforts, and practically no pleasure; the streets, where girls are often cast, still unknown to sin, but in want and without shelter; in a word, places outside the levee where distress and temptation stand ever present as a menace to purity and rectitude; behind every effect there is a cause. In the case of prostitution the real cause lies not in the girls who fall, but in the social conditions that make the fall easy, and the men who tempt to the step, and furnish the money to support degradation, after the step has been taken. Before reform in the levee is possible, there must be reform in the home, on the mart. One of the greatest enemies of virtue is the false modesty and prudery that characterize the home and society of today. It is rooted in an ignorance that is inexcusable. It would seem to be a necessary element in the preservation of the race, that each succeeding generation should profit by the learning of the past. Traveling over the mountains, we find poles in the snow drifts, pointing the way to safety ; the mariner refers to the chart to locate the sunken reef ahead; the education in government, art and science of today is built upon the foundation laid at creation,— and yet we have fathers and mothers, who have been enlightened in their contact with life, who lock their lips to their children with never a warning word ; and educators, with a knowledge of the deep things, looking pityingly but silently upon the maiden flitting like a moth before the flame. What a lamentable thing it is that there are men whose business it is to lay traps for girls, and so few to raise the warning voice, or if they speak, do so in an incomprehensible way. Is this couplet, to our shame, indeed correct ? "The sages say, Dame Truth delights to dwell. Strange mansion, in the bottom of a well!" If so, we may bury our morality there also, in the due progress of time !

590 IMPROVEMENT ERA A plain, matter-of-fact, refined way of teaching children, beginning at a time so early that the instruction will not be colored by their consciousness, the nature, use, and sacredness of the various organs of their bodies, would at least prepare them for the revelations of life, that they might have the defense of the intellect and not go blindly into sin. Let the first information that the child receives on this subject be pure, and prompted by love, and not impure and vile and prompted by the evil one. Don't let Satan precede you to the inner consciousness and heart of the child, for if you do he will lay his color scheme there and influence all that you may thereafter attempt to supply. Are parents too ignorant to know how to do this intelligibly? Then can the state have any higher or more patriotic aim than to provide teachers that shall be capable ? However, I think this to be true, that any parent, who seriously senses the need of it, will find a way to communicate the truth. There are higher duties than the study of music, or money, or fashions. Father and Mother, do not wait until your boy has become a man, — grown there, not as cattle come to maturity — for the very beats live the law of life — but wading to that station through the vast stream of filth that flows from the sewers of our civilization, but call him to you now — take him by the hand and point him to the light. Are your hearts right? Then build him an altar in his boyhood's paradise where he may worship. Enshrine the mother there, and next to God, let him worship her. Let him breathe her sweet sanctity day by day, and as his vision broadens, let her typify the sex. If he have sisters, let them be so gracious in his sight that he will be their knight in armor. Exalt virtue until it shall become a family deity. Usher him into his powers knowing that there are things beneath the sky that are sacred. When he can understand by the throbbing of his own nature, — tell him that if he lay unhallowed touch on womanhood, that you will weep for his sin, but will not stand in the way of his punishment ; and tell him that God hates the fornicator and adulterer worse than all lawbreakers save the murderer! If, after that, he dons the scarlet, you may face the future bravely as to your own responsibility, for God is just! A dangerous custom is the unrestrained and promiscuous mingling of the sexes. As a companion to the mistake that chil-

THE MAN IN SCARLET 591 dren should go to their maturity in mind before they are taught religion, is the error that boys and girls should freely mingle together unprotected. The tendency of greater civilization is greater liberty, and it would appear that uiir institutions are in advance of the improvement in our natures. Is it a necessary consequence that enlightenment means moral decay? Must nations blossom beautifully and bear rich fruit of civic strength, inevitably to fall at last with the worm at the core? When man came from his primal condition up to a fuller knowledge of himself, he laid aside the high instinct or inspiration that animals are born with, that sexual power is for procreation only, and that normal passions are the gift of God, as any other attribute, and added lust to the language, and license to his liberty ; appropriated his bodily powers for base uses, and laid the foundation, not only of physical, but of spiritual decay. So it is that our children are born into the world inheriting evil tendencies and weaknesses, and our lax society rules permit them to roam the streets and fields together like the wiser and more sensible animals. We find as a result in many instances, not the instinct for mating, a commendable and God-given one that came to Paul and Virginia in due and proper time in their island home, who before had roamed the forests, scantily clad and hand in hand, unguarded and yet innocent because they were primal children — but a prudish and dangerous knowledge that has informed the mind as to the possibilities of passion, but stays the tongue from frankness and candor, and makes of human animals, of all God's creatures, the only sexual perverts. On the way back to the beginning what should be our course? The restaints of family authority that shall solicitously house the children at proper hours at night, and shall preside gently, lovingly, and sympathetically in their groups for their amusement ; and to assist, there should be at hand the kindly influence of the law. It will take some time to undo the wrong accomplished by six thousand years, but however great the task, It is our duty to begin it. Corresponding to the debased ideas surrounding sex, is the thought that marriage is a privilege rather than a duty ; that comfort and gratification are the main reasons for its existence ; and some men with claims to unselfishness, on general principles, have in) higher ideals. It is a short cut from that idea to the one that

592 IMPROVEMENT ERA gratification may conic without the expense of marriage, and the consequent condition of the world where celibacy is at a premium, and to the point where marriage vows are lightly held. The command "to multiply and replenish the earth" is obscured by the indolent sensual customs of the day ; and the result is the turning aside of women from the channels of production to the high road of vice, associated with her male companion in scarlet who is the prime cause of it all, for there are few normal women who would not marry and be virtuous wives and mothers with the right opportunity. The sentiment, broadly diffused in the minds of men, that marriage is a duty would do much toward solving the social evil, for women are essentially home lovers and home makers. Judged by the canons of religion, marriage is a duty, sanctified into a sacrament ; and by the canons of government it is a duty emphasized into a vital need, and it should be the highest aim of our institutions to encourage, promote and protect the relation. It is a significant fact that in history the downfall of a nation follows closely on the heels of its moral decay, and that nations in their prime are the most virtuous. It is also true that with marriage general and well regulated is to be found the highest type of humanity. Some may think that these fundamental instincts of man are not to be regulated or directed by artificial means, but in the inculcation of our civic virtues, would it be impossible, by the use of illustrated biographies to hold before children the most ideal forms of domestic life, that they may learn that there is no higher manifestation of patriotism, than to marry for the good of self, the family, and the state ? The objection that the high cost of living is a deterrent of marriage, is only partially justified ; but that it is a fact that in the less complex form of society, in the rural districts, for instance, a greater per cent of the people marry happily, is proof sufficient that a return to the simpler life would, whether on account of cost or for other reasons, render marriage more popular and social sins less frequent ; and here may be the place to say that the efforts of reformers may well be directed in an attempt to direct the stream of humanity from the cities back to the rural districts. "Back to the farm," a slogan now repeated feebly, should be taken up with enthusiasm, and the beauties of country

THE MAN IN SCARLET 593 life, with the chances of success in agricutural pursuits, should be so advertised as to take from the perils of the city the glamour and attraction that yearly are drawing into the vortex of death, thousands of the best and strongest of our race. That cities are the strongholds of vices against which reformers are leading their forces, is proof enough of the undesirability of the cities as the nurseries of our citizenship. In the tenderloin districts of the City of New York is frequently decided the policy of the United States government, and just so soon as the rural population shall outnumber that of the city, we may look for an upward tendency of morals and of the spiritual life that follows. That the girl who gravitates from the home or shop to the street displays her first sign in a magnificent willow plume, is enough evidence that vanity plays a great part in this modern tragedy of life, and side by side with that weakness, run poverty and the grinding of the faces of the poor. Between the confessed prostitute and the virtuous girl among the poor, are all the grades, from the sorely tempted, suffering privation and want, to the victim, fallen but still concealing her shame, herself the tool of unprincipled men. When the final judgment is declared, the men in scarlet, who sit in the places of wealth and power, will have much to answer for ! That governments, professing to be founded on a desire for the protection of society, can in any way lend themselves to vice, is an almost unbelievable thing, and yet, governments, state and municipal, have been silent partners with whoredom and with other forms of intemperance. To give a license to a bawdy house is to sell to certain ones the privilege to do what without the license would be a legal crime. Its effect is to lend a degree of respectability to vice, for if women in a restricted district are immune from prosecution for a consideration, and those on the street are liable, the state protects the sinner. Society is in some respects its own greatest enemy. To tolerate vioe under conditions, is to say as plainly as words can express it, that any boy, observing those conditions, has the consent of the state to commit an inherent wrong. The state, by this act, sets itself up against the precepts and rules of the church, and the warning dictates of history, — but yet we see this done, until in some towns men visit such places in the light of day without the blush of shame ; for, becoming

594 IMPROVEMENT ERA "familiar" with vice, they come at last to "embrace" it publicly. If statesmen cannot come to the point, where in their judgment they can co-operate with moralists to brand the social evil as hateful and repugnant to every interest of preservation, religious and national, at least they should see that it is so banished that only to the vile should it be known, so that the publicity and advertising now accorded it, might be withdrawn from it. With shame, we turn again to the heathen to learn wisdom : Count Okuma further declares that the maintenance of licensed quarters is an affront to the imperial edict of 1905, urging the educational authorities to lay great emphasis upon the ethical training of the rising generation. The Japanese boys and girls are taught in public schools to cultivate all virtues, and qualities necessary to make them morally strong, but "how can we," asks the count, "expect them to grow moral and noble when we set before them an example of shameful immorality by maintaining an ignoble institution?" The Philanthropist, in summing up the evils of a license system, among other charges, says : It confers the sanction of law upon the barbarous trade in women. It fosters vice instead of preventing it, in that it contemplates op portunity, facilities and "safety" for the "guests" who are more than equal participants. It makes a permittjed trade of the cruel and dastardly occupation of the procurer and procuress. It grants permits at a price that will not prohibit the dreadful trade, but invites it. If these statements be true, we may with certainty place the responsibility for much of the present evil upon the very men charged with the making of the laws, and these, though some of them perhaps innocently — must carry much of the blame until there is a severance of co-partnership between governments and crime. Ethical solutions of this evil, have all the range in plan, from personal and religious work directed to the raising of the individual, to the advocacy of free love as recognizing the fullest liberty of men and women ; from police control and regulation under the supervision of physicians, to insistence upon the single standard in the sexes, and the prompt arrest and punishment of all male violators of the law ; from the advocacy of a still more liberal divorce system, to the overturning of economic conditions

THE MAN IN SCARLET 595 to make the lot of women more tolerable. These ideas have their various advocates, and some of the arguments are worthy of consultation, but in discussing this subject through the organ of the Young Men and the Priesthood of the church, we are brought, with the certainty of the "needle to the pole," to the only ground that the Latter-day Saint can consistently occupy, which position embraces the best wisdom of man, fortified in addition by the word of God. Ultimately, after all is said that can be from the standpoint of the statesman, as to the underlying causes of the social evil, we must come to the root of the matter by admitting that a disregard of the word of God and of religious ideals is primarily responsible for the serious condition of the world in this respect. This sin is strongly antagonistic of righteousness, for of all the sins except murder, it is essentially the most direct enemy of spirituality. A man may lie or steal, or bear false witness, or covet, or break the Sabbath, and thereafter come quickly to repentance and spiritual regeneration ; but men who commit the sin of adultery, put the seal of condemnation upon their spiritual part, as though by this act they had locked their senses from the light. That "an adulterous generation seeks for a sign," is but the result of the fiat that Faith cannot be the handmaiden of such. "That he who looketh upon a woman to lust after her, shall deny the faith and shall fear," is the logical statement that his light shall go out in darkness. "Whosoever shall defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy," can find no surer fulfilment than in the fact that such are denied the guiding hand of faith to lead them to salvation. The lack of faith in God in the world, is the most serious disease of today, and immoraliy is at the same time one of its causes, and its effect. With virtue comes spirituality, and with that, comes all the graces of Christianity. The social evil is but a symptom. The world is forgetting God, as it forgot Him in the days of Sodom and Pompeii. That men will study with all the ingenuity of science Jiow to evade the poison of physical disease, and utterly disregard the poisoning of their souls, is sufficient evidence of the havoc that this sin plays' with the better part of man. As a physician of these moral wrongs. T think less of these physical penalties, and while, as warning, I would show them up in their enormity, the only hope

596 IMPROVEMENT ERA that I would offer in mitigation would be the suggestion that perhaps the more that the victims burned here, the less they would burn hereafter! Back of this evil stands hell with its cohorts, and opposed to it, on earth's battlefield are God and His forces ; there can be no compromise, it will be a struggle without quarter. "Thou shalt not commit adultery," written on Sinai, is the statement of an uncompromising attitude toward this wrong; it has never been revoked, and this war will end in the triumph of virtue, or it will end in fire and molten lava. A careful writer upon these subjects has lately said that "before the Gentile invasion of Utah, an illegitimate birth is said to have almost been unknown," and this is an index of the morals of the "Mormon" youth at that day. Our memories go back to the time when, as boys, we listened to stirring denunciations of sexual vice, and lived in an atmosphere charged with high ideals of purity. Boys and girls lived in virtue, mated happily, and in a high order of conjugal love fulfiled the first law of God. The occasional infraction of the law by the young was followed by a public confession and the forgiveness of the offender. The violation of sacred marital vows was marked by the severest penalties that the Church could inflict, excommunication ; and in customs that would seem Puritanical to the world today, the Latter-day Saints hewed to the line of personal purity as closely as human nature would allow. That their treatment of the sin of. adultery was and is based upon a sane, consistent, estimate of human nature, and rests upon a basis of charity so broad as to be sublime, are proven by these words of their law. Referring to the adulterer, and to impress upon believers the enormity of the sin, the Doctrine and Covenants, 63: 15-18, says: Let such beware and repent speedily, lest judgment shall come upon them as a snare, and their folly shall be made manifest, and their works shall follow them in the eyes of the people. And verily I say unto you as I have said before, he that looketh on a woman to lust after her, or if any shall commit adultery in their hearts, they shall not have the Spirit but shall deny the faith and shall fear: Wherefore I the Lord have said that the fearful, and the unbelieving and all liars, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie, and the

THE MAN IN SCARLET 597 whoremonger and the sorcerer, shall have their part in that lake which burnetii with fire and brimstone which is the second death. Verily I say, they shall not have part in the first resurrection. Then, with this picture of the penalties to the breaker of the moral law, we turn to these words of encouragement and helpfulness to the erring : Thou shalt not commit adultery; and he that committeth adultery, and repenteth not shall be cast out; but he that committeth adultery and repents with all his heart, and forsaketh it, and doeth it no more, thou shalt forgive; but if he do it again he shall not be forgiven, but shall be cast out.— Doc. & Cov. 42:24-5. And again, Doctrine and Covenants, 49:92, speaking in general terms of all classes of offenders, and specifically including adultery : "If any shall offend in secret, he or she shall be rebuked in secret that he or she shall have opportunity to confess in secret to him or lier whom he or she has offended, and to God, that the Church may not speak reproachfully of him or her. There is everywhere in the teachings relating to this subject, a strong distinction between the simply erring, and the one whose heart is lustful, and "go thy way and sin no more" has raised the truly repentant to their feet, and placed them in the path of virtue, where their offenses have been forgotten. That the world brought other conditions into the communities of the Saints, is a damaging confession for their supposed moral and social superiority. Now, in the great flood of humanity that is making up the new West, we are so mixed as to be losing our identity. What can we say of the "Mormon" boy of today? It is more difficult to estimate his merits, but there is no place where we may definitely segregate him from his surroundings, and place a value upon his inherent qualities. One thousand young men, married and unmarried, arc going each year into the world as ambassadors of the truth. w:*h very few exceptions they return — after two years of mingling with the world, having been subjected to its many forms of temptation, — bearing the testimony of their purity shining in their eyes, and vibrating in their voices. These are in a measure select men of the Church, but there are

598 IMPROVEMENT ERA many, many such who bear aloft the standard of virtue that their fathers bore. These truths give the lie to the charge made by uninformed persons, that a system of marriage, repugnant to the accepted notions of society and therefore renounced by the "Mormon" people, could in any way the least remote, have been associated with the thought of social impurity. The lives of the Latter-day Saints were and are a standing rebuke of this assumption ; and that cloud that has hung over them in the minds of many honest people should once and for all time be dispelled. Would it not be a contradiction of all past history to find a people, mixed as flour in a sieve with the world, preserving inviolate their primitive history and conditions ? The fusing of nations as of minerals, mixes together and makes of the compound a base alloy, and today, the "Mormon" people face a worse problem in the preservation of their young in purity, than they faced in confronting mobs, or in braving the wilds of the Western desert. For them, isolation, while depriving them of experience, would perhaps have continued them in a moral tone that would have made them in time a light to the world ; but who shall doubt but that they now have the opportunity to demonstrate the saving power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as believed in by them? Who are the men in scarlet of the future? Surely not the boys who have been taught that it is better for them to die than to lose their virtue ! Surely not the boys who recall, with faith believing, that "no adulterer shall see the Kingdom of God." Surely not those boys, whose sisters in the faith of Christ are among the choicest women of the world ! But there shall come, no doubt, the final sifting of the unclean from among the virtuous by the inevitable process of the law, for the unclean "shall deny the faith," and their wrecks shall strew the path of the Church as from the beginning, a warning to those who shall follow after ; and in the hereafter these shall be of the "liars, sorcerers, adulterers and whoremongers, and whosoever loves and makes a lie." "Who suffer the wrath of God on the earth," and, dying, "surfer the vengeance of eternal fire, for these shall suffer the wrath of Almighty God, until the fulness of times when Christ shall have subdued all enemies under

THE MAN IN SCARLET 599 His feet * * * but where God and Christ are these cannot come, worlds without end." — Doc. and Cov. 76. How much less of being martyrs, are the victims of society, greed and ignorance, who crave the better things of life, than are the victims of religious bigotry? To give up life for principle, may be the accepted definition of martyrdom, but to be sacrificed to the lust of the world is a more pitiful, if a less honorable, death. To be immolated at the blazing stake has no more torments than to see day by day the better part of you trampled in the mire by beasts in human form under the license of government ; to part with earthly goods or life itself does not occasion the anguish that comes to the refined and sensitive soul that parts with its virtue ; and so I believe that there is no irreverence in me if I paraphrase the words of John the Divine, to illustrate a very probable condition at the day of judgment: And when there was opened the judgment book, I saw before the throne, the souls of women in scarlet that had been sacrificed on the altar of lust and greed, and they cried with a loud voice, saying, how long, O Lord holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge the blood of virtue upon those that dwell upon the earth. Behold, O Lord, they have laid snares for our feet and have entrapped us in their nets; they have bought and sold us as the beasts of the field, and have kept us in the captivity of sin. Willingly would we have been mothers to the sons of men, but we have been cast off and utterly defiled, and of the mighty and strong ones who sat in the places of power, none have come to deliver us. O Lord, merciful and just, wilt thou not have compassion on us and avenge us of our enemies! And who shall declare that the great Judge of the quick and the dead who said to the repentant woman found in transgression, "go thy way and sin no more," shall not take from these victims before the altar the scarlet cloak of infamy and receive them into a sphere of happiness and progression ! "But the inhabitants of the earth, the rich men, and the governors, and mighty men, and every bondman and every freeman, who wears the robe of scarlet, shall hide themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains, and shall say to the mountains and the rocks, fall on us, and hide us from the face of Him that sitteth on the throne ; and from the wrath of the Lord, for the great day of His wrath has come and who shall be able to stand !" POCATELLO, IDAHO