A distinguished Englishwoman, Mrs. Josephine E. Butler, one of the world's foremost workers for the cause of fallen women, and President of the "British, Continental, and General Federation for tho Abolition of State Begulated Prostitution", says: "State prostitution is the most rapidly corrupting influence you can imagine. Pastor Durand said to me at Liege, Tell your friends in England they do not understand it. It is the greatest and most terrible hindrance to the spread of the Gospel we have in our schools and churches. In Belgium there is a great moral revival. When I was in Brussels I was speaking about this to the Minister of Justice, and he said: We saw that our nation would cease to be; it was in an odious state of rottenness in the midst of the nations. It was destroying the physical and mental and moral vitality of the people. We had touched the bottom".
If the license system were instituted here, there would be an international traffic in women, and scores of outlawed women and prostitutes with hidden or chronic diseases would flock to our shores to get registered, in order to become mistresses of establishments, and would teach new forms of vice to our men and harlots.
No vivid word-painter, no mint for the coinage of new and poignant terms, could bring forth language which would fully express the horror of our detestation of such "Booth", "In Darkest England", a fatal policy as legalized vice, promoted libertinism, and encouraged procurement.
Lot lawmakers foresee the aftermath and comprehend the after reckoning, and not think that calamity can be averted by a fondling of or concession to such a monster!
The Bepressive System, which aims to subdue and quell this nefarious business, is the only method which appeals to the true citizen. A righteous nation will not say that its men must be impure in order to remain healthy and virile; for that is false physiology, and necessarily demands the sacrifice of women, who every one grants should be chaste. A nation as well as an individual can commit a sin which is beyond pardon, and its citizens can just as readily be come "sin's fools" in the aggregate as in the segregate.
Some apologists for prostitution profess to believe that repression would be followed by outbreaks of violent licentiousness, and they are in a measure correct. We do not wish to take an extreme position, such as has been tried heretofore, and do not urge measures which will attempt immediately to legislate the community into morality for that cannot be done.
On the other hand, the visible outbreaks of indecency which are now and again apparent in every locality are no more than symptoms of a diseased society; and certainly we cannot hope to palliate the malady by recommending more of the very poison which produced the toxic effect. We must at least avoid adding fuel to the flames.
With so many corrupt men and women in the community of every large city, and with so many nervous "stepchildren of Nature", it would be, we think, sheer madness to close at once all the long endured brothels, and that is not what we mean by the Bepressive System.
What is first necessary is the enlightenment of the public in the correct physiological law that the principles of nature and of hygiene conform, and that one individual's health is never dependent on another's damnation.
Even in the scheme of government of the universe we are taught that there is a place without the gates of the Holy City where there are reprobates of all kinds; and quite plainly, also, it is seemingly prudent to tolerate such a vent, for the immediate present, at least, in our large cities. But the law should take the stand that such a section is a hell gate and a mischievous pest, and not the abiding place of Nature's God. And the law also should at once take the stand that in this destructive business the men should be amenable to the same punishments as the women; and that the gentler sex, the sex which bears children, should not be portioned off as instruments for the irresponsible lust of profligate men.