One of the saddest features of police work is dealing with the social evil, with prostitutes and houses of ill fame.  In so far as the law gave me power, I always treated the men taken in any raid on these houses precisely as the women were treated.  My experience brought me to the very strong conviction that there ought not to be any toleration by law of the vice.  I do not know of any method which will put a complete stop to the evil, but I do know certain things that ought to be done to minimize it.  One of these is treating men and women on an exact equality for the same act.  Another is the establishment of night courts and of special commissions to deal with this special class of cases.  Another is that suggested by the Rev. Charles Stelzle, of the Labor Temple—­to publish conspicuously the name of the owner of any property used for immoral purposes, after said owner had been notified of the use and has failed to prevent it.  Another is to prosecute the keepers and backers of brothels, men and women, as relentlessly and punish them as severely as pickpockets and common thieves.  They should never be fined; they should be imprisoned.  As for the girls, the very young ones and first offenders should be put in the charge of probation officers or sent to reformatories, and the large percentage of feeble-minded girls and of incorrigible girls and women should be sent to institutions created for them.  We would thus remove from this hideous commerce the articles of commerce.  Moreover, the Federal Government must in ever-increasing measure proceed against the degraded promoters of this commercialism, for their activities are inter-State and the Nation can often deal with them more effectively than the States; although, as public sentiment becomes aroused, Nation, State, and municipality will all cooperate towards the same end of rooting out the traffic.  But the prime need is to raise the level of individual morality; and, moreover, to encourage early marriages, the single standard of sex-morality, and a strict sense of reciprocal conjugal obligation.  The women who preach late marriages are by just so much making it difficult to better the standard of chastity.

As regards the white slave traffic, the men engaged in it, and the women too, are far worse criminals than any ordinary murderers can be.  For them there is need of such a law as that recently adopted in England through the efforts of Arthur Lee, M.P., a law which includes whipping for the male offenders.  There are brutes so low, so infamous, so degraded and bestial in their cruelty and brutality, that the only way to get at them is through their skins.  Sentimentality on behalf of such men is really almost as unhealthy and wicked as the criminality of the men themselves.  My experience is that there should be no toleration of any “tenderloin” or “red light” district, and that, above all, there should be the most relentless war on commercialized vice.  The men who profit and make their living by the depravity and the awful misery of other human beings stand far below any ordinary criminals, and no measures taken against them can be too severe.