The majority of these men have
wholly lost the flavour of sacerdotalism. They are not pastors, but
detectives, statisticians and mob orators, and not infrequently their
secularity becomes distressingly evident. Their aim, as they say, is to
do things. Assuming that "moral sentiment" is behind them, they override
all criticism and opposition without argument, and proceed to the
business of dispersing prostitutes, of browbeating and terrorizing weak
officials, and of forcing legislation of their own invention through
City Councils and State Legislatures. Their very cocksureness is their
chief source of strength. They combat objection with such violence and
with such a devastating cynicism that it quickly fades away. The more
astute politicians, in the face of so ruthless a fire, commonly profess
conversion and join the colours, just as their brethren went over to
prohibition in the "dry" States, and the newspapers seldom hold out much
longer. The result is that the "investigation" of the social evil
becomes an orgy, and that the ensuing "report" of the inevitable "vice
commission" is made up of two parts sensational fiction and three parts
platitude.
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