Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/289

Rh would relate to the number of employees discharged. In Oregon there have been a score or more of prosecutions.

The welfare of the race and of women is further protected by mothers’ pension laws. These laws provide that a woman with young children whose husband is dead or incapacitated shall receive compensation if she or her children are dependent on her for support. This is a protection for the disintegrating home of modern industrial society and a protection for the children from the same influences that have necessitated the juvenile court. California, Oregon and Washington adopted such protective measures in 1913. Prior to 1913 only two states, Colorado and Illinois, had mothers’ pension laws. Now they are found in nineteen states.

The most widely admitted injustice to women is connected with prostitution, especially in its commercial aspects. Recent years have seen a nation-wide vice fight. On the Pacific coast the fight has been made, particularly in the cities, through vice commissions and reform administrations; Seattle, Portland and Los Angeles being notable cases. Portland has adopted what is known as the tin-plate ordinance which provides that the name of the owner of every rooming house, apartment and hotel must be placed conspicuously on the front of the building. The purpose of the tin-plate ordinance is to fix responsibility on the owners of the buildings. Cases are known where property which ordinarily rents from $40 to $100 a month brings a return of $350 a month when used for purposes of prostitution. The fact is on record that one piece of property in San Francisco costing $8,000 brought in $2,100 a week. The attack has mainly centered on the commercialized nature of the social evil. The unfortunate prostitute has thus yielded a large part of her earnings to the landlord, the lessee, or in some cases the organization which more or less controls her. Or she is prosecuted in the courts, and must pay a fine perhaps over and over again. The sinister aspect of the situation is that some one other than the prostitute reaps these dearly-paid-for earnings and escapes, while added suffering is meted to her. This situation explains the origin of the so-called red-light abatement laws. The abatement laws permit a judge to close any building that is used for purposes of prostitution. The building, may be opened again by giving a bond equal to the value of the building with the pledge not to allow prostitution within the building. Washington, Oregon and California have abatement laws, modeled on the recent Iowa law. The age of consent in each of these three states is eighteen years. As a result of the recent experience of the Pacific coast states, some headway has been made in fighting the sinister commercialization of prostitution.

The woman’s movement in its political aspects is well developed in the west. Women may now vote in each of the three Pacific coast states.