laws from the statute books of the state; it will be necessary to accomplish the immensely more difficult task of repealing them from the human heart, where they were written long ago in anger, and hatred, and jealousy and cruelty and fear, that is in the heat of all the baser passions. What I am trying to say is that the first step in any reasonable and effective reform is an entire change of attitude on the subject, and about the only good to be expected from the agitation about white slavery, with all its preposterous exaggeration and absurd sensationalism is that it is perhaps making for a changed attitude, a new conception; if it will accomplish nothing more than to get the public mind—if there is a public mind, and not a mere public passion—to view the prostitute as a human being, very much like all the other human beings in the world, it will have been worth all it has cost in energy and emotion and credulity. If this sort of repeal can be made effective, if the prostitute can be assured of some chance in life outside the dead line which society so long ago drew for her, the first step will have been taken.
The next step possibly will be the erection of a single standard of morals. And this cannot be done by passing a law, or by turning in an alarm for the police. That means thinking, too, and education, and evolution, and all the other slow and toilsome processes of which the off-hand reformers are so impatient. This single standard will have to be raised first in each individual heart; after that it will become the attitude of the general mind.
