The enactment of further legislation to facilitate the abatement of the crime and injunction of property used for the purpose;
A propaganda which shall by forewarnings cut off both demand and supply.
In writing of results already accomplished, this Society says:
We closed all of the 63 immoral houses on the police fine list. Robert Thornton, resident U. S. officer to enforce the Mann Act, stated that about one-third of his list of 559 immoral women in Kansas City left town and that of the remainder from 100 to 150 found respectable employment and would not return to their old ways. This shows a reduction of 50 per cent. of the immorality in Kansas City due to the 559 prostitutes on the government agent’s list.
Since the closing of the red-light district in the north end the Society has shut up 15 or 20 other houses in various parts of the city. W. W. Knight, the newly appointed police commissioner, assures us that the town will be cleaned up. We have already given him information from our investigators which he says is very helpful.
In coöperation with eleven other civic and religious organizations our society is bringing to Kansas City the next Congress of the World’s Purity Federation, which will convene November 5th to 9th, and will bring to Kansas City the very best specialists on social questions. The Congress will consider causes of the social evil and how best to combat them. It is believed that it will be a strong factor in molding public opinion on this subject.
Societies
The recent merger of the American Vigilance Association and the American Federation for Sex Hygiene into the American Social Hygiene Association will doubtless increase the efficiency of the work attempted by the two former societies and prevent duplication. Charles W. Eliot is president of the new society and Jane Addams is an honorary vice-president while the directors include Martha Falconer, Mrs. Raymond Robbins, and the Rev. Anna Garlin Spencer.
The purpose of the society is thus stated: “To acquire and diffuse knowledge of the established principles and practices and of any new methods which promote or give assurance of promoting social health; to advocate the highest standards of private and public morality; to suppress commercialized vice; to organize the defense of the community by every available means, educational, sanitary or legislative, against the diseases of vice; to conduct, on request, inquiries into the present condition of prostitution and the venereal diseases in American towns and cities; and to secure mutual acquaintance and sympathy and coöperation among the local societies for these or similar purposes.”