In addition to the movements against germ diseases and the suppression of alcoholism, both of which are mitigating the hard fate of the victims of the white slave traffic, other public movements mysteriously affecting all parts of the social order will in time threaten the very existence of commercialized vice.  First among these, perhaps, is the equal suffrage movement.  On the horizon everywhere are signs that woman will soon receive the right to exercise political power, and it is believed that she will show her efficiency most conspicuously in finding means for enhancing and preserving human life, if only as the result of her age-long experiences.  That primitive maternal instinct, which has always been as ready to defend as it has been to nurture, will doubtless promptly grapple with certain crimes connected with the white slave traffic; women with political power would not brook that men should live upon the wages of captured victims, should openly hire youths to ruin and debase young girls, should be permitted to transmit poison to unborn children.  Life is full of hidden remedial powers which society has not yet utilized, but perhaps nowhere is the waste more flagrant than in the matured deductions and judgments of the women, who are constantly forced to share the social injustices which they have no recognized power to alter.  If political rights were once given to women, if the situation were theirs to deal with as a matter of civic responsibility, one cannot imagine that the existence of the social evil would remain unchallenged in its semi-legal protection.  Those women who are already possessed of political power have in many ways registered their conscience in regard to it.  The Norwegian women, for instance, have guaranteed to every illegitimate child the right of inheritance to its father’s name and property by a law which also provides for the care of its mother.  This is in marked contrast to the usual treatment of the mother of an illegitimate child, who even when the paternity of her child is acknowledged receives from the father but a pitiful sum for its support; moreover, if the child dies before birth and the mother conceals this fact, although perfectly guiltless of its death, she can be sent to jail for a year.

The age of consent is eighteen years in all of the states in which women have had the ballot, although in only eight of the others is it so high.  In the majority of the latter the age of consent is between fourteen and sixteen, and in some of them it is as low as ten.  These legal regulations persist in spite of the well-known fact that the mass of girls enter a disreputable life below the age of eighteen.  In equal suffrage states important issues regarding women and children, whether of the sweat-shop or the brothel, have always brought out the women voters in great numbers.