The very fact that the conditions and results of the social evil lie so far away from the knowledge of good women is largely responsible for the secrecy and hypocrisy upon which it thrives.  Most good women will probably never consent to break through their ignorance save under a sense of duty which has ever been the incentive to action to which even timid women have responded.  At least a promising beginning would be made toward a more effective social control, if the mass of conscientious women were once thoroughly convinced that a knowledge of local vice conditions was a matter of civic obligation, if the entire body of conventional women, simply because they held the franchise, felt constrained to inform themselves concerning the social evil throughout the cities of America.  Perhaps the most immediate result would be a change in the attitude toward prostitution on the part of elected officials, responding to that of their constituency.  Although good and bad men alike prize chastity in women, and although good men require it of themselves, almost all men are convinced that it is impossible to require it of thousands of their fellow-citizens, and hence connive at the policy of the officials who permit commercialized vice to flourish.

As the first organized Women’s Rights movement was inaugurated by the women who were refused seats in the world’s Anti-Slavery convention held in London in 1840, although they had been the very pioneers in the organization of the American Abolitionists, so it is quite possible that an equally energetic attempt to abolish white slavery will bring many women into the Equal Suffrage movement, simply because they too will discover that without the use of the ballot they are unable to work effectively for the eradication of a social wrong.

Women are said to have been historically indifferent to social injustices, but it may be possible that, if they once really comprehend the actual position of prostitutes the world over, their sense of justice will at last be freed, and become forevermore a new force in the long struggle for social righteousness.  The wind of moral aspiration now dies down and now blows with unexpected force, urging on the movements of social destiny; but never do the sails of the ship of state push forward with such assured progress as when filled by the mighty hopes of a newly enfranchised class.  Those already responsible for existing conditions have come to acquiesce in them, and feel obliged to adduce reasons explaining the permanence and so-called necessity of the most evil conditions.  On the other hand, the newly enfranchised view existing conditions more critically, more as human beings and less as politicians.