We have grown
familiar of late with this process: it was displayed at full length in
the passage of the Mann Act, and again when the Webb Act and the
Prohibition Amendment were before Congress. In 1873 its effectiveness
was helped out by its novelty, and so the Comstock bill was rushed
through both houses in the closing days of a busy session, and President
Grant accommodatingly signed it.
Once it was upon the books, Comstock made further use of the prevailing
uproar to have himself appointed a special agent of the Postoffice
Department to enforce it, and with characteristic cunning refused to
take any salary. Had his job carried a salary, it would have excited the
acquisitiveness of other virtuosi; as it was, he was secure. As for the
necessary sinews of war, he knew well that he could get them from Jesup.
Within a few weeks, indeed, the latter had perfected a special
organization for the enforcement of the new statute, and it still
flourishes as the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice; or, as
it is better known, the Comstock Society.
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