PROTECTED VICE AND CRIME.
By T.
A few days ago in New York City a district attorney had the courage and ability to cause a den of vice and crime to be invaded so suddenly that he caught its inmates at their evil work before they had any chance to hide. Seventy-five persons were arrested, and among the number was a local politician and several policemen. The place was within a block of one of the police station-houses, and the character of the establishment was well known to the police force, as is evidenced by the fact that several policemen were in there when the attorney made his arrests. Concerning the incident the New York World editorially says: “The fact stands clearly proved by this raid that criminal resorts are running openly in defiance of the law, which could at any time be closed if their proprietors and conductors did not have the benefit of police protection. But that fact has long been notorious.” Could a worse condition of things be imagined? Crime and vice is a regular money-making business. All our large cities are hot-beds of it. The police forces in these places are corrupted, and make large sums thru protecting criminals from the penalties of the law, instead of arresting them and bringing them to justice. The education along this line has continued until there are thousands of persons who say that this deplorable condition can not be helped, that we will have to get along the best we can with it, and just let it alone. A mayor of one of the foremost cities of the United States has recently advocated that it would be better for the city to license prostitution rather than leave it to the protection of the police and for the policemen to reap a private benefit or tax from it. It was argued by this mayor that it would be less corrupting to the police to have the city levy this tax, and then the public would derive a large revenue from it beside. Of course a city tax on vice would be on a parallel with the licensing of the liquor traffic. But one must confess to a most intense mental and moral shock at the thought of it. The principle of licensing the brothel and the saloon is just the same, but we suppose it seems-worse to think of licensing the former because we are not so used to it. But is it not queer that men and women will say that this condition of things cannot be gotten rid of, and that we must put up with all these vices and evils under the lawless protection of the police, and at the same time these very persons will tell us in eloquent terms that the world is getting better and better. The individual who is but half awake, who has but one eye partly open, ought to see and know better than to affirm that the condition of things in this world is improving. What will be the final and awful result of this tide of evil is a question that may stir the bravest soul.