modified by many reactions upon the public consciousness, through a
thousand manifestations of the great democratic movement which is
developing all about us
Doubtless the attitude toward the victims of commercialized vice will be
modified by many reactions upon the public consciousness, through a
thousand manifestations of the great democratic movement which is
developing all about us. Certainly we are safe in predicting that when
the solidarity of human interest is actually realized, it will become
unthinkable that one class of human beings should be sacrificed to the
supposed needs of another; when the rights of human life have
successfully asserted themselves in contrast to the rights of property,
it will become impossible to sell the young and heedless into
degradation. An age marked by its vigorous protests against slavery and
class tyranny, will not continue to ignore the multitudes of women who
are held in literal bondage; nor will an age characterized by a new
tenderness for the losers in life"s race, always persist in denying
forgiveness to the woman who has lost all. A voice which has come across
the centuries, filled with pity for her who has 'sinned much,' must at
last be joined by the forgiving voices of others, to whom it has been
revealed that it is hardness of heart which has ever thwarted the divine
purposes of religion. A generation which has gone through so many
successive revolts against commercial aggression and lawlessness, will
at last lead one more revolt on behalf of the young girls who are the
victims of the basest and vilest commercialism. As that consciousness of
human suffering, which already hangs like a black cloud over thousands
of our more sensitive contemporaries, increases in poignancy, it must
finally include the women who for so many generations have received
neither pity nor consideration; as the sense of justice fast widens to
encircle all human relations, it must at length reach the women who have
so long been judged without a hearing.
