Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/309

 *thing to people? If we can't do anything for them, when are we going to learn to let them alone? Or must this incessant interference, this meddling, this mauling and manhandling, go on in the world forever and ever?

As to what is to be done about it, since all that ever has been attempted has been so much worse in its effect than if we had never done anything, I suppose I need not feel so very much ashamed of confessing my ignorance and saying that I do not know. If it were left to me I think the first thing I should do is to repeal all the criminal laws on the subject, beginning with that most savage enactment the Puritan conscience ever devised, namely, the law declaring certain children "illegitimate," a piece of stupid brutality and cruelty that would make a gorilla blush with shame if it were even suggested in the African jungle.

Yes, the first thing to do is to repeal all the criminal laws on the subject. They do no good, and even when it is attempted to enforce them, the result is worse than futile. I myself, with my own eyes, in the old police court where I have witnessed so many squalid tragedies, have seen a magistrate fine a street walker and then suspend the fine so that, as he explained to her in all judicial seriousness, she might go out and "earn" enough money to come back and pay it! And not a person in the court room, so habituated and conventionalized are we all, ever cracked a smile or apparently saw anything out of the way—least of all the street walker!

But it would not be enough simply to repeal these