In addition to the large social movements for the betterment of Public
Health, for the establishment of Temperance, for the promotion of Equal
Suffrage, and for the hastening of Peace and Arbitration is the
world-wide organization and active propaganda of International
Socialism. It has always included the abolition of this ancient evil in
its program of social reconstruction, and since the publication of
Bebel's great book, nearly thirty years ago, the leaders of the
Socialist party have never ceased to discuss the economics of
prostitution with its psychological and moral resultants. The Socialists
contend that commercialized vice is fundamentally a question of poverty,
a by-product of despair, which will disappear only with the abolition of
poverty itself; that it persists not primarily from inherent weakness in
human nature, but is a vice arising from a defective organization of
social life; that with a reorganization of society, at least all of
prostitution which is founded upon the hunger of the victims and upon
the profits of the traffickers, will disappear.

Whether we are Socialists or not, we will all admit that every level of
culture breeds its own particular brand of vice and uncovers new
weaknesses as well as new nobilities in human nature; that a given
social development--such, for instance as the conditions of life for
thousands of young people in crowded city quarters--may produce such
temptations and present such snares to virtue, that average human nature
cannot withstand them.

The very fact that the existence of the social evil is semi-legal in
large cities is an admission that our individual morality is so
uncertain that it breaks down when social control is withdrawn and the
opportunity for secrecy is offered. The situation indicates either that
the best conscience of the community fails to translate itself into