Page:Roe 1911 What women might do with the ballot.djvu/11

 demand as well as those who make up the supply? Why not insist upon the arrest and conviction of those who visit immoral houses, as well as those who fill them as inmates?

These are practical questions.

They concern the double standard of morals which men and women have established and maintain.

Social ostracism of men who encourage the social evil has never been more than very faint-heartedly attempted, owing perhaps to the "whip-hand" men have held until recently in the world's economics.

Women have felt that they had to marry; it was their economic necessity, or they thought it was. And men, knowing this, have not felt the need of being scrupulous. Therefore, girls of the tenderest up-bringing, the most unquestionable purity, have been willingly given by ambitious parents, or have given themselves, in marriage with men whose relations to the social evil were notorious.

However, that time is now passed, at least in America. No longer are women the serfs, nor the toys of men, but through education and changed economic conditions they have entered into the commercial and industrial life and are becoming more and more independent.

It seems the time has arrived when women should insist upon a single standard of morals for men and women.

More important, however, than all the laws against procurers of women and the social evil; more important than the enforcement of these laws are the plans which are being developed for the education of our children regarding public morals. These are preventive. They look toward the future.

Vice is a moral fault, a defect of the natural character, or a defect as the result of training and habits.

The social evil of the present age and the white slave traffic which springs from it are the results of generations of mistaken training.

An American author living in Paris is quoted as saying: "The usual American girl of today is a half-sophisticated, wholly self-assured babe, with too much knowledge of the world before