[Theodore Roosevelt by Theodore Roosevelt]@TWC D-Link bookTheodore Roosevelt CHAPTER VI 74/82
Our duty to achieve the same moral level for the two sexes must be performed by raising the level for the man, not by lowering it for the woman; and the fact that society must recognize its duty in no shape or way relieves, not even to the smallest degree, the individual from doing his or her duty. Sentimentality which grows maudlin on behalf of the willful prostitute is a curse; to confound her with the entrapped or coerced girl, the real white slave, is both foolish and wicked.
There are evil women just as there are evil men, naturally depraved girls just as there are naturally depraved young men; and the right and wise thing, the just thing, to them, and the generous thing to innocent girls and decent men, is to wage stern war against the evil creatures of both sexes. In company with Jacob Riis, I did much work that was not connected with the actual discipline of the force or indeed with the actual work of the force.
There was one thing which he and I abolished--police lodging-houses, which were simply tramp lodging-houses, and a fruitful encouragement to vagrancy.
Those who read Mr.Riis's story of his own life will remember the incidents that gave him from actual personal experience his horror of these tramp lodging-houses.
As member of the Health Board I was brought into very close relations with the conditions of life in the tenement-house districts.
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