Let us not with smugness deny this woman as our sister, for she is; and we have wronged her. She has a better right to reproach us than we have to scorn her. Our guilt is greater than hers. There was a great fire in a factory in New York City. One hundred girls were burned to death or hurled themselves from windows to be crushed and mangled upon the structures below. The women who ply the trade of prostitution are as guiltless of their own destruction as were these poor girls. Their blood is upon society with its greed for money, its apathy, ignorance, indifference, active participation in crime, and its exploitation of the weak.
Let us cease to cry with self-assumed virtue, Spare us from contamination by the prostitute who brazenly has come among us. Let us be honest enough and decent enough to confess: We are guilty; we have made this woman what she is; she is ours. Let us first be just to her; and then let us see to it that no more of our daughters walk in her footsteps.
THE
Twentieth Century Magazine
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