Whatever the individual citizen may think of the policy of attacking the property owner who reaps the profits of commercialized vice—which is the sole aim of the abatement law—he cannot ignore the duty of guarding the referendum principle. It should be made unpleasant and unprofitable for men to tamper with petitions. And at the next legislature the law should be so strengthened as to make the punishment of such acts swift and easy.
The act was sustained but a test case was soon made in order to bring the law before the Supreme Court, where its constitutionality must be decided.
Women are equally alert to fight legislation, dealing with the social evil, which discriminates against the sex. This fight is constantly carried to the courts, the final place of appeal, if the battle is lost in the legislature. Women succeeded in having a piece of legislation declared unconstitutional in New York four or five years ago as a result of their almost united protest against it; that is, the social workers, the suffragists, the medical women and nurses, women’s club leaders and others united in an endeavor to prevent an important measure from being put into effect after it had passed the state legislature.
The object of their attack was Clause 79 in what is known as the Page Law, which clause provided for medical examination of convicted prostitutes and their compulsory detention during treatment. Their objection to this process of “hygienizing” vice was made by the women on the ground that the prostitutes were not being imprisoned until reformed, or until sufficiently punished, but until presumably well, when they were to be returned to the streets. It was contended that this clause was utterly worthless from a sanitary standpoint and “its indirect influence, as has been proved by the history of every regulative act, will be to increase the evil which its direct influence will not be competent to cure.”
Pamphlets describing the law and its inevitable consequences were printed by the women and distributed widely among their organizations. One of these was signed by the following groups of persons: the Women’s Prison Association, which took the lead in this struggle; National Woman Suffrage Association; Hygienic Committee of the Woman’s Medical Association; Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, State of New York; The American Purity Alliance; the National Vigilance League (Men’s); Friends’ Philanthropic Committee; Council of Jewish Women, New York Section; Woman Suffrage Party, New York City; Equality League of Self-Supporting Women; Brooklyn Auxiliary of the Consumers’ League; and the American Federation of Nurses.
The battle for remedial measures is only half won when the desired legislation is placed on the statute books. It is hardly half won, for the enforcement of these laws is contested inch by inch by powerfully organized forces of vice with almost unlimited financial resources and the aid of the most skilled lawyers. Women are alive to this fact, and realize the necessity of eternal vigilance in law enforcement. A few passages of recent history will illustrate their determination not to relax their efforts simply because good laws have been obtained.
Judicial Decisions
Commercialized vice is a national problem recognized as such by the Mann Act which makes it a violation “for any person knowingly to persuade, induce, coerce, or cause, or to aid or assist any woman or girl to go from one state to another for prostitution, debauchery or other immoral purposes, with or without her consent. The maximum penalty if the victim be over 18 is five years’ imprisonment and $5,000 fine; and twice that amount if she be under 18.”
The difficulty sometimes is to get judgment in the courts in cases of arrest under the Mann Act.
In Minnesota the women’s clubs made a state issue of a case in which a married man, deserting his family, took a girl from Wisconsin to Minnesota, and was sentenced by Judge McPherson to three months in the county jail and a fine of $1,000. The women’s clubs petitioned the judge of the United States Court of Appeals, who makes the assignments of the district judges, to assign Judge McPherson to another district, “lest another case of white slavery be placed upon the calendar subject to Judge McPherson’s judgment.” This petition was refused, on the ground that the degree of punishment is expressly intrusted to the trial judge. It was stated also that the United States district attorney who prosecuted the case was satisfied with the sentence. The man had pleaded guilty to taking a girl under eighteen across state borders for cohabitation. Judge McPherson defended his sentence on the ground that there was no evidence to show that the girl was coerced. The club women countered vigorously with a statement to the effect that coercion was not the point; that by the man’s own story, plus all human experience, the girl was surely entered on a life of prostitution; what they wanted was such punishment as would be the talk of every barroom and a specter to any man who contemplated doing it in the future.[[14]]