CAN NEVER CLIMB BACK
into respectability and forgiveness again.
This is the philanthropic aspect of the base. But it has another. It has its criminal aspect.
County Crown Attorney Fenton, who is the secretary of the Society for the Prevention of Vice, was asked what his society was doing in regard to the social evil.
“The society,” he said, “is in statu quo at present. The gentlemen who compose it did what they could and got a great deal of help from the police commissioners but they could not get Major Draper into their way of thinking. Letters passed between the chief and me but nothing ever came of it. My last letter requested him to give me a list of the houses known to the police to be houses of ill fame, but this he refused to do on the ground that he did not know what use I was to make of the information.”
Here Mr. Fenton laughed very heartily.
“What were the plans of the society for the eradication of the evil?”
“I don’t think the society had any hope of wiping out the evil. All they hoped to do was to keep it in check. I know that my views were simply these. The law of the land declares that keeping a house of ill-fame, or being an inmate thereof, are offences punishable by