And today, Olga Nethersole’s prediction has fallen flat. Her name, or the names of her mimics, no longer are blazoned on the electric signs of Broadway. Olga Nethersole, and the principle for which she stood, are in oblivion.
* * *
This is the era of keepers, too. Our collective national appetite has been entrusted to the keeping of four Bills. I refer to Bill Bryan, Billy Sunday, Bill Anderson of the Antisaloon League and Billy-Be-Damned. Those of us who once owned thirsts rapidly are becoming reconciled to the prospect of seeing about every other man in this country established in the role of his brother’s keeper—not his barkeeper, perish the thought—but the sort of keeper who keeps his charges locked up in an iron barred cage and whacks them across the nose with a steel rod of sumptuary discipline should they manifest a desire once in a while to indulge in a little personal liberty.
It has become the custom for many police departments to resort to underhanded methods in obtaining evidence wherewith to bring guilty persons to trial for certain offences, the plan adopted being the employment of what is commonly known as “stool pigeons”—go-betweens who act in direct conjunction with the police. Concerning those who allow themselves to be so employed there is little to be said other than that they are not fit for decent society. It is a sneaking way of securing a living and those who lend themselves to it ought to be ostracized by citizens who believe in conforming to the ordinary decencies of life.
* * *
Moral reformers are altogether too ambitious. They want to abolish vice but they cannot do it. Vice is not crime, although the two things are often confounded. The word “vice” literally means a fault or error. A crime is a deliberate violation of the law of God or man.
Why should we be so serious and so violent in our attitude toward human vice? The root of the evil is in the weakness or wickedness of human nature. What is needed is to invigorate humanity with that moral strength which resists the inroads of vice. There are periods in the history of every nation when certain forms of vice are particularly flagrant. This was so when civilized Greece had lost her pristine manliness. It was so when pagan Rome was near her fall. It was so, unhappily, in England in the nineties of the last century, which saw the popularity of such literary and artistic decadents as Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley. Wise reformers will not ever deceive themselves by thinking that they can eradicate vice. They will try to lessen vice by moral suasion and by removing the economic causes which are the promoters of evil living. To put wretched people into jail is not the best way to reform them. It is better to make them see that a life of virtue pays better than a life of vice. This may be a low utilitarian standard, but it will appeal to those who are altogether guided by considerations of profit or loss.
* * *
The alimentary canal of the business world needs a physic. It’s the same in business as with the human system, when things get clogged. We’ve been gorging the system of the business world until its tripe needs scraping. We’ve kept the hopper too full for a healthy elimination, and we need calomel and rhubarb for a change. Capital has allowed its cormorant-like propensities to assume the proportions of a boa constrictor in trying to swallow not only the calf but the whole herd. Labor, following closely in the wake of capital and profiting by its example, has pulled the bridle off of the horse and started it down the road of reason for a head-on collision with the captain of industry, who is stepping on the tail of his big Packard, and both will be injured. Cornering the earth and setting the price of all things required for man’s welfare has come home to roost in demands for wages double and treble what they used to be, and both capital and labor must be purged of this overload on the liver of righteousness or the undertaker will have an unusually thriving business very soon.