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"If we are ever to escape from the present impossible conditions, it seems imperative to draw the distinction sharply between sin and crime.. . .A sin is not less odious because it is not treated as a crime. Sins may even be incomparably more heinous than offences which the law visits with punishment. Nevertheless, some of the most grievous sins are not subjected to legal penalties, simply because it is recognized that such penalties cannot be enforced, and a law on the statute book that cannot be enforced is a whip in the hands of the blackmailer. Corruption in the police force can never be extirpated until this prolific source of it is stopped." (76)

The acceptance of these recommendations as a programme of action involves driving prostitution wholly from tenement houses and the homes of the poor; repressing all obtrusive manifestations of prostitution as a public nuisance; and the creation of a special and select body of Morals Police, analogous to sanitary police, to exercise the duties of repression and surveillance. It does not contemplate the suppression of scattered houses of ill-fame because the Committee believe this to be at present impracticable.

Professor Johnson suggests the prohibition of women in saloons and in dance-halls, wherever immorality becomes conspicuous; that citizens or parents should be able to bring complaint against tenants suspected of harboring vice; the extension of public education, especially to fit young girls for more efficient lines of industry; and, for the protection of the family, a requirement of a health certificate for both parties, before a marriage license may be issued. Dr. Prince A. Morrow not only concurs in all these proposals, but goes farther. He would penalize the transmission of venereal disease on the same grounds that fornication and spitting in public places are forbidden. He points out that venereal diseases, unlike smallpox, for instance, are transmitted by a voluntary act; and he concludes that whether communicated through culpable ignorance, or criminal imprudence, their transmission should be punishable. Dr. Morrow thinks the entering wedge of social control would be the compulsory notification of these diseases by physicians as of other contagious diseases (without the name of the patient) and enforced isolation. But he chiefly emphasizes, as do all other recent American writers, the necessity for the dissemination of knowledge and education in self control, among the young. Since the majority of prostitutes fall before the age of eighteen, and a majority of infected men are infected before twenty-one, the responsibility of parents, and of society, is infinitely greater than that of these ignorant and immature individuals. The far-off remedy lies in the social ostracism of the libertine, and the decline of the double standard for men and women.

After drink-crave and sensuality, we might enumerate a large number of characteristics or habits which result from and result in a tendency to degenerate. On the side of appetites would be the craving for opium, and for various kinds of unwholesome food. On the side of defects, would be all those sufficiently pronounced to have been enumerated in the table of causes, and in addition the mental incapacity to judge wisely in the ordinary business affairs of life. This last is one of the most vexatious causes of poverty with which the ordinary friendly visitor for a charity organization society has to deal. It sometimes manifests itself in the form of extravagance, but oftener in pure blundering, which does not even bring the satisfaction of temporary indulgence. "Against stupidity the gods themselves are powerless." A proverbial saying, which has a very direct bearing on the subject, asserts that "Poor folks have poor ways." This cause is widely operative; yet writers upon social pathology seldom give it distinct treatment, apparently thinking that it is an individual and not a social phenomenon. The social results of it, however, are not to be ignored. The development of modern industries puts upon the judgment of individuals an ever increasing burden. The breaking down of the barriers of custom, the rapid changes in the methods of industry, the increasing amount of purchasing to be done to obtain family supplies, the increased need of wise bargaining in the selling of ser-vices, the extension of the borrowing habit both for good and evil: these and a hundred other features of modern industry tend to add to sobriety and industry as prerequisites of industrial success, a further requisite -- that of good judgment, and a judgment that acts not only surely but promptly. From the proprietary farmer all the way down to the disease-burdened man who decides whether or not he will go to a hospital, mistaken judgments are constantly pushing people toward and across the pauper line. One of the commonest mistakes is an utter failure to appreciate in advance the burden of a debt at compound interest. The chattel mortgage shark, the pawnbroker, and the "instalment plan" houses thrive because of this failure. (77)