nl_e17

Gardener, "A Battle for Sound Morality," Aug 1895
crowded with criminals who were born with vice in their blood; until
paupers, the offspring of outcasts, burden the state and curse--they
know not what.
It is notoriously true that brothels and vice-factories get their
recruits from the ranks of childhood--from the ignorance which is
unprotected by law. These children's lives are wrecked and the state is
burdened with disease and vice and crime and insanity, which is
transmitted and retransmitted until its proportions appall those who
understand. Now it is our contention, first, that these children, for and
because of their own right to a fair chance in life to be well and happy
and successful, are themselves entitled to protection, if need be, from
even their own ignorance or desire in this matter as in matters of
property, contracts, or marriage, and second, that in interest of public
health and future generations, it is of vast importance to the state to
protect her children in this matter also (even against their own wishes)
until their own judgments may be supposed to have matured
sufficiently for the state to say: "Now you must choose for yourself and
take the consequences. If you choose now to pollute yourself and the
public fountain of health, I cannot interfere, unless you use violence
upon others, until you become in one form or another a public charge.
With your morals, as such, I have nothing to do; but with your capacity
and willingness to add to the volume of crime, vice, disease, insanity,
and mortality, I have something to do, and I will protect myself, also.
Until you were of mature age and judgment, I also protected you even
against yourself."
This is the position of those of us who urge immediate legislation
in every state upon the "age of consent." That most of the writers who
have taken part in the agitation have not based their arguments wholly
upon this scientific and natural basis is doubtless due to the fact that
this form of legislation appeals strongly to many who are acoustomed
to look upon all such matters from a religious or philanthropic point of
view. It has been the policy of the ARENA to let each writer give his or
her own views and arguments as he or she saw fit. But the state of
New York struck the basic priciple and keynote when her two State
Medical Associations (Allopathic and Homeopathic) passed resolutions
asking for this legislation "in the interest of public health and clean
heredity," in the interest of future generations as well as in that of the
unfortunate children whom its protection will save from the physical
hell which they do not understand is in store for them and from the
social degradation which is also inevitable, and as cruel and relentless
as the folds of a python.
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