work, easily accessible to the young reader whose mind would be improperly affected thereby, and its indiscriminate sale to such youthful readers, would be a violation of the provisions of the statute. It is therefore important and essential that the legitimate dealer in books or pictures should, for his own protection, avoid the handling of such alleged works of art or literature for common distribution as may be offered him in the course of trade by an unscrupulous publisher.

It will be observed from the foregoing illustrations that the laws for the suppression of obscene literature and related matters are laws passed in the interest of youth, and it is the duty of the criminal authorities to enforce such laws in the interest of the maintenance of public morals. Where the moral tendency of the young people of the nation-its future citizens-is involved, too much stress cannot be laid upon the importance of strictly enforcing laws prohibiting the circulation of obscene matters.

There are those, of course, who take issue with the theory of the suppression of any expression or idea or thought in the form of literature, on the ground that it is a curtailment of the provisions of the Constitution insuring to citizens freedom of speech and freedom of the press. We are told that, in the language of our Declaration of Independence, all men are created free and equal; but it must be borne in mind that freedom of expression and freedom of action are permissible only in so far as they do not infringe upon the rights of others. Every growing child has the right to be protected, in so far as possible, in his environment against those things which tend to demoralize and degrade and corrupt. It follows that any individual basing his action on a claim of freedom of expression and action which at the same time would tend to degrade, corrupt, and demoralize a large percentage of the population of the community, thereby invades the legal rights of that portion of the community, and is a subject for legal restraint. Where it is found, for instance, that young men are circulating obscene printed matter among young schoolboys, and that as a result such boys are led into

habits detrimental not only to their mental but physical growth, the perpetrators of such acts must be restrained, and, in some cases, punished through operation of the criminal law. Where, in a particular case, an alien is found to have shown obscene pictures to little girls, and to have followed up such exhibitions with indecent proposals, it is necessary that such alien be restrained and his power for harm terminated. Where, in a particular case, a grown man seeks to make a moral pervert of a boy or girl through bringing to their attention and giving into their hands obscene literature or illustrations, such a demoralizing factor in a community must be suppressed. Where publishers of cheap magazines fill the pages of their publications with lewd and sensuous stories and illustrations calculated to create improper thoughts in the mind of the young reader, to make light of the matrimonial state, to make vice attractive, and to condone offenses against the body politic, such publishers must be punished, and their publication made clean, or suppressed. We need not go far to find examples of such lewd and demoralizing publications. We have had flaunted in our faces only too freely of late the story of the dissatisfied working girl, who nevertheless has a servant in her own home, who deems it expedient and profitable to swap her chastity for a few of the luxuries of life, and who "gets away with it." Of course, if we wish to encourage our young girls whose home surroundings are not the most agreeable to forget the meaning of self-respect, and to gracefully and gaily wear the "scarlet letter," then by all means publish and sell such filthy imported outpourings of a perverted degenerate mental sewer. But if, on the contrary, we wish to rear true women who in turn, and not otherwise, may rear true boys and girls, give them a literature which encourages right living, and not one which condones and puts a premium on inexcusable immorality. The young men of much current fiction are just as ignoble as their sisters. There is no double standard of morality in these effusions. There is a single common standard of degradation. From these the poor little half-educated reader gets

his or her impressions of real life. Is it remarkable that the moral standards of the devotee of the "popular" magazine are low? It is an everlasting disgrace that any publisher should seek filthy profits from beastly reading matter and illustration. It is an everlasting disgrace to the manufacturers and exhibitors of motion picture films that the necessity for censorship is so universally recognized, however opinions may differ as to methods.

The suppression of obscene literature and pictures is an ever-present necessity. The eyes of the five-year old infant at the "movies" or in the public parks are apt to be assailed by pictured vice. A few years later the child finds that his school is not free from the circulation of obscene print or picture among his fellow pupils. At the budding age of sixteen he or she finds the cheap magazines bristling with the vaporings of sex perverts, and a little later, in more pretentious "literature," the same strain is in a lesser degree encountered.

During the past three months, in New York city, the publishers of four magazines have been before the criminal courts for publishing and selling periodicals claimed to be indecent. One of these magazines was discontinued. Another adopted different and satisfactory standards, a third is marking time pending trial in the court of special sessions, and the fourth is still before the committing magistrate. A publisher of books was taken into court for selling an inde

cent book. He voluntarily withdrew the book from the market, and the plates were destroyed. Many individuals have been prosecuted and convicted for selling obscene pictures or printed matter. Drastic action of this character is necessary in many cases. In many more cases warnings and enlightment suffice.

The solution of the whole matter is education,-education of adults to the effect that the future happiness and usefulness of their children depend upon a rigid enforcement of the present laws; education of the children in matters of sex and sex hygiene by parents, so that eventually the quality of indecency will be removed from many things which at present tend to create lewd thoughts.

There will always be those who will seek to make a profit from the sale of prohibited matters. There will always be those pessimistic scribblers who hold up humanity in general as a thing of moral shreds and patches.

Eventually both will become so scarce that the wonder will be that at any period of the world's development they were in the limelight, and were regarded as of sufficiently evil potentiality to require special prohibitory provisions and special suppressive agencies.

NTIL recently the many crimes against morality and public decency were thought to be subject alone to state control and regulation. Accordingly, except in minor instances where particular offenses were violative of some positive enactment within the scope of its delegated authority, the Federal government was powerless to proceed. This condition brought about a particularly unfortunate situation respecting the rapidly growing evil in the traffic of young girls and women for immoral purposes. To be sure, each state had its own laws, enforced with more or less rigor, but such laws, because of their territorial limitations, were unable to reach the more dangerous cases whereby girls and women were harbored in one state and transported to another for the purpose of prostitution. No law existed prohibiting persuasion and inducements, by means fair or foul, to enter another state; and usually, when the other state was reached, instead of the inducement to and transportation for immoral purposes constituting a public offense, it was considered, being a matter of interstate commerce, beyond the jurisdiction of any particular state.

Protected, apparently, by what was thought to be one of the necessary consequences of our dual system of government, promoters of vice and immorality were exceedingly active, and becoming more so every day in our larger cities. The game was at the same time easy and profitable. The larger cities were crowded by thousands of girls annually pouring into them from the outlying districts, coming in the hope of profitable and decent employment. Unfortunately, however, in the cities the right sort of em

ployment was not so easy to find, and sometimes there was no employment at all. It was hard to turn back home a failure; rather than that, almost anything would do. On the other hand, everyone knew everyone in the smaller cities, and it was difficult for houses of prostitution to keep on hand and ever replenish youth and beauty to satisfy the passion of man. Therefore this old commercial story of supply and demand made the opportunity, and the great profits to be realized furnished the incentive, for the promotion of this great menace to the home life of America. And so with impunity the traffic went merrily on to the destruction of its subjects, the enriching of its promoters, and the shame of our great American commonwealth. Again, the vice was not wholly professional. There was quite a sufficiency of the occasional journeys to other cities with young girls and women. It may be that the framers of our American Constitution never dreamed of such a situation, and perhaps the interstate commerce clause was not intended by any of them to meet it; but, nevertheless, without that clause the Federal government was powerless to act, and under it, through the Department of Justice, the shameful condition is being effectively stamped out.

Proceeding under the interstate commerce clause, Congress, in 1910, passed an act, among other things providing:

That any person who shall knowingly persuade, induce, entice, or coerce, or cause to be persuaded, induced, enticed, or coerced, or aid or assist in persuading, inducing, enticing, or coercing any woman or girl to go from one place to another in interstate or foreign commerce, or in any territory or the District of Columbia, for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose, or with the intent and purpose on the part of such person that such woman or girl shall engage in the practice of prostitution or debauchery, or any other immoral practice,

whether with or without her consent, and who shall thereby knowingly cause, or aid or assist in causing, such woman or girl to go and to be carried or transported as a passenger upon the line or route of any common carrier or carriers in interstate or foreign commerce, or any territory or the District of Columbia, shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and on conviction thereof shall be punished by a fine of not more than five thousand dollars, or by imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years, or by both such fine and imprisonment, in the discretion of the court.

Other provisions of the act specify a fine of ten thousand dollars and imprisonment for ten years in certain circum

stances.

Immediately after the passage of this commonly designated "white slave" act, the Bureau of Investigation of the Department of Justice commenced operations, with results well known; for experience has taught the American people that once the secret service and the Bureau of Investigation begin activity, criminals are put on the run. The means whereby white slavers are brought to justice perhaps would make an interesting story, but those methods are not for public distribution. Once known to law violators, their effectiveness ceases. Suffice it that special agents and local white slave officers cover practically every foot of American soil, so that today the path of the violator of any Federal law is rather precarious. Necessarily is this so, because the detecting energy of Uncle Sam never ceases, and sooner or later all crimes and criminals are rounded up. The very first report made to Congress by the Attorney General after the passage of the white slave law in 1910 shows that the act was "diligently enforced throughout the country with most satisfactory results.

One

hundred and forty-five prosecutions were had, resulting in seventy-six convictions, fourteen acquittals, and ten nolle prossed, or otherwise discontinued, leaving fortyfive cases pending on July 1, 1911." The sentences in those cases ranged from a few months in jail to ten years in the penitentiary, the severity of the sentence depending upon the character of the offense. For enticing young girls to go from one state to another for immoral purposes, the courts usually imposed the heaviest penalty.

True, convictions were not always an easy matter, because the illegal traffic in human bodies and souls was too profitable and its promoters too strongly intrenched to permit a cessation of their activities without a struggle. Accordingly, the white slave act was first attacked on the ground of unconstitutionality. But the Supreme Court said "No," and held it to be within the scope of the delegated authority of Congress.

Failing in that attack, promoters of immorality sought to turn the act to their benefit. Unscrupulous women conceived the possibility of blackmail, which a broad consideration of the words "other immoral purposes" in the act afforded. The public sentiment standing behind prosecutions under the act, and the earnest activity of the Department of Justice endeavoring to wipe out the vicious traffic, made easier the blackmailing operations of these women. Blackmailing cases became so frequent as to require some special action to detect and punish them that they might not impair the sentiment which had theretofore uniformly supported prosecutions.

To meet this situation and reach those who had brought about violations of the act without having themselves directly committed the offense, the idea was conceived of prosecuting such persons for conspiracy to violate the act, in those. cases where the woman agreed fully and willingly to the transportation and acquiesced in all of its purposes, being equally culpable with the man. course, a prosecution upon such a theory brought on another protracted and hardfought legal battle; but again Uncle Sam won out, the Supreme Court upholding the prosecutions. Since that recent holding of the Supreme Court the activity of the blackmailer has greatly diminished; indeed about ceased.

Of

The establishment of the right to proceed against the woman brought on a still further difficulty. In nearly all white slave prosecutions the testimony of the girl or woman is desired and often absolutely essential to a conviction of the principal offender. Because she may be prosecuted for conspiracy, the government is powerless to compel any self-incriminating evidence from her.

This situation has resulted in the failure of a few prosecutions. But ever alive to the necessities of law enforcement, no sooner does an obstacle appear than the Department of Justice can suggest means for its overthrowing. Therefore it is that Congress has already been requested to pass a law providing that in prosecutions under the white slave traffic act no person may refuse to testify, but any person so testifying is to be immune from prosecution because of anything concerning which evidence has been compelled.

So vigorously has the Department of Justice, through its Bureau of Investigation, hunted down the white slaver that up to June, 1915, more than 1,196 convictions have been had with the imposition of aggregate sentences of more than 2,000 years and fines of more than $150,000.

Indeed, so successful has been the work of the Bureau of Investigation in

the enforcement of this particular law, in addition to its many other and varied activities, that the Attorney General in his latest report to Congress is able to say that :

enforcement of this act is beginning to make It is believed that the continued vigorous itself felt, and that the interstate transportation of women for immoral purposes is decreasing.

Modesty forbade that he say more, but were the whole truth known it would doubtless appear that the once prosperous business of trafficking in the bodies and souls of our young girls and women is now resting on a tottering foundation, soon to collapse and crumble to its disastrous but deserved grave of oblivion.

Harvey