Have tenement houses moral resources
that can be trusted to keep her safe from this temptation?
"This is a wicked villany that must not be permitted, come whatever
else may. We hear of danger to 'our young men,' from present
conditions. What sort of young men must they be who would risk
the sacrifice of their poorer sisters for their own 'safety'? And
it is being risked wherever houses of this kind are being shut up
and the women turned into the streets, there to shift for themselves.
The jail does not keep them. Christian families will not receive
them. They cannot be killed. No door opens to them: yet they have
to go somewhere. And they go where they think they can hide from
the police and still ply the trade that gives them the only living
society is willing they shall have, though it says it is not."
And they did go there. Dr. Parkhurst was not to blame. He was
fighting Tammany that dealt the cards and took all the tricks, and
for that fight New York owes him a debt it hardly yet knows of.
Besides, though those raids hastened the process, it was already
well underway.
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