The Girl That Disappears/Chapter 16
XVI
REMEDIES THAT ARE POSSIBLE
I HAVE told you some pretty revolting things, but I believe it is necessary to tell them. There is only one excuse for a discussion, public or private, of the social evil. There is only one motive we can have in dealing with it, and that motive is a desire to find a remedy. There must be a cure, or at least there must be alleviation.
When I was police commissioner I received more than one deputation of clergymen, more than one individual clergyman, who came to me and said: "General Bingham, the street-walkers are parading up and down in front of my church, plying their infamous trade right under the eyes of the boys and girls who go to my Sunday school. Now you must drive them away."
"Certainly," I would say, "and where would you have me drive them?"
"I don't care where you drive them, but get them away from my church you must."
"How would it do," I have asked these men, "for me to drive the street-walkers over to Dr. So-and-So's church?"
And that is the way such conversation always must end. It's very well to say "drive prostitution out," but out where? It exisits. It is a fact. You can't kill a fact, but you can do something with it. And friends, as long as we fail to do something with it, we each and every one of us are guilty of participation in the social evil, for I assure you, that if prostitution were properly handled—I will make that stronger and say, wherever prostitution has been properly handled—the white slave traffic has been killed, and prostitution itself has been reduced to the minimum.