THE SYSTEM AND ITS CAUSES.
Vice is co-existent with reason. Vice is a form of the abuse of reason.
As the city grew like a mushroom, so vice grew. All elements were attracted.
Vice crept in, grew and flourished. Its resources were human souls and bodies,—men and women.
It became a great, eating, nauseating, foul-smelling ulcer on the body municipal.
It needed control.
Control—police regulation—was given it. Flagrant, unblushing vice was hidden away in the corners of the city, to fester and die unseen.
But vice never dies. It lives on the body it has destroyed. Its existence is parasitic.
It grew, grew, grew. Then like a many-armed octopus it stretched out and out about it.
Craven souls, dealing with it, sworn by law to slay it, felt the terror of death upon them. Also, with Satanic insight they saw the—
POSSIBILITIES!
Gold! Gold! Luxury! Power! Wealth!
Ever since the beginning we have cried for them, sinned for them.
Here was the chance.