“Last night Capt.  Lowery, of the Twenty-seventh Precinct, made a descent upon the dance-house in the basement of 96 Greenwich Street, and arrested fifty-two men and eight women.  The entire batch was brought before Justice Flammer, at the Tombs Police Court, this morning.  Louise Maud, the proprietoress, was held in five hundred dollars bail to answer at the Court of General Sessions. The fifty-two men were fined three dollars each, all but twelve paying at once; and the eight women were fined ten dollars each, and sent to the Island for one month.”

The italics are my own.  When we reflect that this dance-house, whatever it was, was unquestionably sustained for the gratification of men, rather than of women; when we consider that every one of these fifty-two men came there, in all probability, by his own free will, and to spend money, not to earn it; and that probably a majority of the women were driven there by necessity or betrayal, or force or despair,—­it would seem that even an equal punishment would have been cruel injustice to the women.  But when we observe how trifling a penalty was three dollars each to these men, whose money was likely to go for riotous living in some form, and forty of whom had the amount of the fine in their pockets; and how hopelessly large an amount was ten dollars each to women who did not, probably, own even the clothes they wore, and who were to be sent to prison for a month in addition,—­we see a kind of injustice which would stand a fair chance of being righted, I suspect, if women came into power.  Not that they would punish their own sex less severely; probably they would not:  but they would put men more on a level as to the penalty.

It may be said that no such justice is to be expected from women; because women in what is called “society” condemn women for mere imprudence, and excuse men for guilt.  But it must be remembered that in “society” guilt is rarely a matter of open proof and conviction, in case of men:  it is usually a matter of surmise; and it is easy for either love or ambition to set the surmise aside, and to assume that the worst reprobate is “only a little wild.”  In fact, as Margaret Fuller pointed out years ago, how little conception has a virtuous woman as to what a dissipated young man really is!  But let that same woman be a Portia, in the judgment-seat, or even a legislator or a voter, and let her have the unmistakable and actual offender before her, and I do not believe that she will excuse him for a paltry fine, and give the less guilty woman a penalty more than quadruple.

Women will also be sure to bring special sympathy and intelligent attention to the wrongs of children.  Who can read without shame and indignation this report from “The New York Herald”?

    THE CHILD-SELLING CASE.