COURTS ARE UNSTAINED.
The laws and the courts are uniformly against vice and against the men who exploit vice, for a lazy living or despicable gain.
The Supreme Court of California is representative of all courts when it said, in the case of Pon against Wittman in July, 1905:
"Under the Penal Code of this state, keeping or knowingly letting any tenement for the purposes of prostitution, keeping a house of ill-fame resorted to for the purposes of prostitution or lewdness, or residing therein, are criminal offenses, and every person who lives in or about such houses, and any common prostitute, is a vagrant. (Penal Code, sections 315, 316, 647.)
"Ordinance No. 1587 of the board of supervisors of the city and county of San Francisco also makes it a public offense to maintain such houses, or become an inmate thereof or visitor thereto, or in any manner contribute to their support.
"These laws have for their object the prohibition and suppression of prostitution, and that duty devolves, within the city and county of San Francisco, upon its police department.
"These houses are common or public nuisances. Their maintenance directly tends to corrupt and debase public morals, to promote vice, and to encourage dissolute and idle habits, and the suppression of nuisances of this character and having this tendency, is one of the important duties of government.
"The suppression of such houses, as evidenced by the stringent laws concerning them, is a public policy of the state."—California Reports, volume 147, page 292.
California and New York have splendid modern laws against white slavery and the traffic in women in its various forms. Nine states have enacted new laws against these evils this year. We rejoice in these laws, but they will never fully accomplish their purpose while the executive officers of our cities illegally make void the law by proclaiming or recognizing red light districts, where traders are illegally exempted from the laws and their penalties.
Since the laws are good and the courts everywhere faithful, for the most part, to the laws, why are the executive officers of our cities so far from fulfilling the purpose of the laws as interpreted by the courts? Many of our officials clearly, from their conduct, consider it "one of the important duties of government" not to suppress but to protect, favor and encourage these hideous haunts of vice and crime. Why?