to secure their votes for a corrupt politician. The disreputable women,
wishing to conceal their real names and addresses, did not want to be
registered, in this respect at least differing from the lodging-house
men whose venal votes play such an important part in every municipal
election. The women's political club responded to this appeal, and not
only stopped the coercion, but finally turned out of office the chief of
police responsible for it.

The very fact that the conditions and results of the social evil lie so
far away from the knowledge of good women is largely responsible for the
secrecy and hypocrisy upon which it thrives. Most good women will
probably never consent to break through their ignorance save under a
sense of duty which has ever been the incentive to action to which even
timid women have responded. At least a promising beginning would be made
toward a more effective social control, if the mass of conscientious
women were once thoroughly convinced that a knowledge of local vice
conditions was a matter of civic obligation, if the entire body of
conventional women, simply because they held the franchise, felt
constrained to inform themselves concerning the social evil throughout
the cities of America. Perhaps the most immediate result would be a
change in the attitude toward prostitution on the part of elected
officials, responding to that of their constituency. Although good and
bad men alike prize chastity in women, and although good men require it
of themselves, almost all men are convinced that it is impossible to
require it of thousands of their fellow-citizens, and hence connive at
the policy of the officials who permit commercialized vice to flourish.

As the first organized Women's Rights movement was inaugurated by the
women who were refused seats in the world's Anti-Slavery convention held
in London in 1840, although they had been the very pioneers in the