Bellona Times
speaker
1,919 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Aug 2026
last heard 1 Aug
Bellona Times’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.
Appearances
the physicians and sanitarians who are committed to the task of ridding the race from contagious diseases, the teachers and lecturers who are appealing to the higher morality of thousands of young people, the growing literature, not only biological and didactic, but of a popular type, more closely approaching Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Throughout the agitation for the abolition of slavery in America, there were statesmen who gradually became convinced of the political and moral necessity of giving to the freedmen the protection of the ballot.
In this current agitation, there are at least a few men and women who would extend a greater social and political freedom to all women if only because domestic control has proved so ineffectual.
we may certainly take courage from the fact that our contemporaries are fired by social compassions and enthusiasms to which even our immediate predecessors were indifferent such compunctions have ever manifested themselves in varying degrees of ardor through different groups in the same community
thus among those who are newly aroused to action in regard to the social evil are many who would endeavor to regulate it and believe they can minimize its dangers still larger numbers who would eliminate all trafficking of unwilling victims in connection with it and yet others who believe that as a quasi legal institution it may be absolutely abolished
perhaps the analogy to the abolition of slavery is most striking in that these groups in their varying points of view are like those earlier associations which differed widely in regard to chattel slavery only the so-called extremists in the first instance stood for abolition and they were continually told that what they proposed was clearly impossible
the legal and commercial obstacles bulked large were placed before them and it was confidently asserted that the blame for the historic existence of slavery lay deep within human nature itself yet gradually all of these associations reached the point of view of the abolitionists and before the war was over even the most lukewarm unionists saw no other solution of the nation's difficulty
some such gradual conversion to the point of view of abolition is the experience of every society or group of people who seriously face the difficulties and complications of the social evil certainly all the national organizations the national vigilance committee the american purity federation
the alliance for the suppression and prevention of the white slave traffic and many others stand for the final abolition of commercialized vice local vice commissions such as the able one recently appointed in chicago although composed of members of varying beliefs in regard to the possibility of control and regulation united in the end in recommending a law enforcement looking towards final abolition
even the most skeptical of chicago citizens after reading the fearless document shared the hope of the commission that the city when aroused to the truth would instantly rebel against the social evil in all its phases
a similar recommendation of ultimate abolition was recently made unanimous by the minneapolis vice commission after the conversion of many of its members doubtless all of the national societies have before them a task only less gigantic than that faced by those early associations in america for the suppression of slavery although it may be legitimate to remind them that the best known antislavery society in america
was organized by the new england abolitionists in eighteen thirty six and only thirty-six years later in eighteen seventy two was formally disbanded because its object had been accomplished the long struggle ahead of these newer associations will doubtless claim its martyrs and its heroes
has indeed already claimed them during the last thirty years few righteous causes have escaped baptism with blood nevertheless to paraphrase lincoln's speech if blood were exacted drop by drop in measure to the tears of anguished mothers and enslaved girls the nation would still be obliged to go into the struggle
throughout this volume the phrase social evil is used to designate the sexual commerce permitted to exist in every large city usually in a segregated district wherein the chastity of women is bought and sold
modifications of legal codes regarding marriage and divorce moral judgments concerning the entire group of questions centering about illicit affection between men and women are quite other questions which are not considered here
such problems must always remain distinct from those of commercialized vice as must the treatment of an irreducible minimum of prostitution which will doubtless long exist quite as society still retains an irreducible minimum of murders
this volume does not deal with the probable future of prostitution and gives only such historical background as is necessary to understand the present situation it endeavors to present the contributory causes as they have become registered in my consciousness through a long residence in a crowded city quarter and to state the indications as i have seen them of a new conscience with its many and varied manifestations
Nothing is gained by making the situation better or worse than it is, nor in any wise different from what it is.
This ancient evil is indeed social in the sense of community responsibility, and can only be understood and at length remedied when we face the fact and measure the resources which may at length be massed against it.
perhaps the most striking indication that our generation has become the bearer of a new moral consciousness in regard to the existence of commercialized vice is the fact that the mere contemplation of it throws the more sensitive men and women among our contemporaries into a state of indignant revolt
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