society still retains an irreducible minimum of murders. This volume
does not deal with the probable future of prostitution, and gives only
such historical background as is necessary to understand the present
situation. It endeavors to present the contributory causes, as they have
become registered in my consciousness through a long residence in a
crowded city quarter, and to state the indications, as I have seen them,
of a new conscience with its many and varied manifestations.

Nothing is gained by making the situation better or worse than it is,
nor in anywise different from what it is. This ancient evil is indeed
social in the sense of community responsibility and can only be
understood and at length remedied when we face the fact and measure the
resources which may at length be massed against it. Perhaps the most
striking indication that our generation has become the bearer of a new
moral consciousness in regard to the existence of commercialized vice is
the fact that the mere contemplation of it throws the more sensitive men
and women among our contemporaries into a state of indignant revolt. It
is doubtless an instinctive shrinking from this emotion and an
unconscious dread that this modern sensitiveness will be outraged, which
justifies to themselves so many moral men and women in their persistent
ignorance of the subject. Yet one of the most obvious resources at our
command, which might well be utilized at once, if it is to be utilized
at all, is the overwhelming pity and sense of protection which the
recent revelations in the white slave traffic have aroused for the
thousands of young girls, many of them still children, who are yearly
sacrificed to the "sins of the people." All of this emotion ought to be
made of value, for quite as a state of emotion is invariably the organic
preparation for action, so it is certainly true that no profound
spiritual transformation can take place without it.